I think it’s always good to have a fail safe basic butter biscuits recipe that you can call on at a moment’s notice. It’s one of those things everyone should have up their sleeve.
I like this one because depending on the type of biscuit you’re planning on making, you don’t have to refrigerate the dough first. Unless you’re making some delicate shapes, you can easily get away without it.
This recipe is very adaptable – add chocolate chips, add a curd, add colouring – it handles it all well, and it’s very good at keeping it’s shape too.
You can even cut out a little and fill in with hard boiled sweets – when it comes out the oven, leave for a few minutes so that the sweets can set again, but not too long as they’ll harden and stick on the tray. Then you’ll need a jackhammer to get them loose again!
Cut the insides out and replace them with a different colour – that’s super effective and very pretty!
Basic Butter Cookies
Author: Keeper of the Kitchen
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 30
Ingredients
225g butter
200g sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp. vanilla extract
400g all-purpose flour
½ tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. salt
Instructions
Preheat over to 180C
Add butter & sugar into the Thermomix Bowl. Mix at speed 4/10 seconds.
Add the butterfly and mix at speed 3 for 60 seconds
Add 2 eggs, vanilla, flour and other ingredients, then mix speed 4/30 seconds
Set on the dough setting for 1min 30 seconds and tip out into a bowl. If it’s looking very sloppy you will need to refrigerate it for up to 30 mins, but it should be okay immediately.
When you’re ready to roll out, tip it out onto a well-floured tray. Roll out, or make balls, and proceed with your cookie making fun.
Place on a tray and bake for 8 – 15 minutes, depending on the size of the cookie.
Allow to cool a little before lifting the biscuits.
Through all the milestones of life – birth, breastfeeding, parenting choices, weight management, relationship rise and decline – I try to remain non-judgemental and realise that everyone has their own path to walk, but every year, around this time (early February) my inner judge and jury come out in full force when I walk through the supermarkets and see ‘pancake mix’ sold in single use plastic bottles.
I’m sorry. I really am. I can’t put my judgemental face away right now.
Our local supermarket has a huge display of pancake mix today. It’s £1 for a bottle that makes 6 pancakes. SIX.
The ingredients are: Wheat Flour, Sugar, Palm Oil, Whey Powder (Milk), Dextrose, Dried Egg Yolk, Salt, and you’ll need to add oil for cooking.
Yay for the unnecessary deforestation. Not to mention the plastic that ends up in landfill.
(See, I told you this makes me all judgey! )
If you were to, oh, I don’t know, make your own pancake mix your ingredients would be flour, eggs, milk, salt and a bit of oil. Then you mix it together. My three year old can do it!
And to make six pancakes? Your ingredients – assuming you don’t go for caged hen eggs or the cheapest possible flour – will cost you the grand sum total of 27p. A little over 1/4 the cost of those ‘convenient’ little bottles. If you’re going all out luxury and putting two eggs in the batter, you’re still looking at 35p for six pancakes.
The only time I can imagine justifying buying pancake mix is if you’re hiking, carrying your week’s food with you and you wanted to make pancakes one morning, on an open fire, high up in the mountains. And even then I’m not convinced.
Okay. I’m going to step off my pedestal and give you the pancake recipe I’ve been making since I was a child, since my mom took us high up into the mountains (by car) to make pancakes on a camping stove in the snow.
Some pancake recipes call for one egg, some for two. I like doing two with savoury pancakes as it makes them a bit thicker, and sturdier, and better for holding something like ham and cheese or chicken mayo. One egg is fine for holding sugar and cinnamon or chocolate spread or similar light fillings. Or, hmmm… bananas, cream and caramel.
The recipe below is for 6 pancakes which is generally enough for the three of us. You can double or triple or x100 it without much effort – just increase the mixing time.
If you’re not sure how to cook a pancake, the best way of learning is seeing, so have a look at these youtube videos!
Quick Pancake Recipe
Author: Keeper of the Kitchen
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 6
Ingredients
100g plain flour
1 or 2 eggs
300 or 280g milk (depending on how many eggs you use)
10g (1tbs) vegetable oil
a pinch of salt
Fillings
Cinnamon, sugar and lemon juice to taste
Instructions
Add all the ingredients into a bowl and whisk. It’s easier if you use a whisk or an electric beater, but even a fork will do it eventually. Mix till it’s all combined and you have a runny, smooth, lump free batter.
If you’re using a Thermomix, mix for 10 seconds/speed 5
Turn the stove up to a medium high heat, and pour into a frying pan enough batter to cover the base. I use a standard sized soup ladle, about half full for each pancake.
Let it fry for a minute or so, till the edges start to brown, then use a spatula or flip over and cook the other side for about 30 seconds
Tip the pancake onto a plate and sprinkle cinnamon, sugar and lemon juice over
Repeat till you’ve used up all the batter
TIPS:
Having added oil to the batter, you shouldn’t have to add any to the pan, but pans differ, so if the batter sticks add a dash of oil.
I use brown sugar because I prefer it, but it’s also really nice with castor sugar
If you really don’t know how to cook pancakes, there are hundreds of videos on youtube that can help you.
I want to share a really basic recipe that I use in a lot and should add here to refer to. It was the very first recipe I made by Thermomix: Vegetable Stock Cubes / Bouillon.
At first I wasn’t sure if it was worth bothering, to be honest. Vegetable stock cubes are so cheap, and having them in a box is so convenient. But then I had a look at the ingredients and I realised that an attempt at cutting preservatives and additives out of our food falls flat if the very basic underpinning foundation ingredient contains those things.
Here are the ingredients of our usual vegetable stock cubes:
If I were to lay those ingredients out on a two plates, I know which one I’d go for.
While this recipe is an adaptation from the Australia Every Day Cookbook and is written for the Thermomix, there’s no reason why you couldn’t mix it in any high powered blender and make it part of your every day seasoning.
You cant freeze this stock, due to the high salt content, but it lasts really well in a jar in the fridge, and can be topped up with whatever you have on hand, really, but here’s a great starter recipe.
Home Made Stock Cubes/Bouillon {{Thermomix Recipe}}
Cuisine: Basic
Author: Luschka
Prep time:
Cook time:
Total time:
Serves: 1 litre
Don’t taste this recipe and fret over the salt. It’s VERY salty, but it’s a concentrate. A tablespoon full goes into a litre of liquid, i.e soup, of which you have a cup at a time. It’s lower in salt per serve than an egg! If you lower the salt amount you will have to freeze the stock, but with the correct salt, it won’t freeze at all but can keep in the fridge. The great thing about this recipe is that it is very flexible. You can use whatever you have in the fridge. I know a few people who pop all their vegetable scraps into the freezer to keep particularly for making this stock concentrate.
Ingredients
2 celery stalks, with leaves
2 large carrots, cut into chunks
1 onion, peeled and quartered
1 tomato, quartered
1 courgette, chopped
1 garlic clove, peeled
50g mushroom (optional)
a teaspoon each of basil, sage, and rosemary
20g parsley
30g olive oil
200g sea salt or pink salt (don’t use table salt, it’s very high in Sodium, which is what you want to avoid in a healthy diet)
Instructions
Chop all the vegetables and herbs for <b> 10 seconds on Speed 7 </b>
Add the oil and salt, and <b> cook at 90 for 20 minutes on speed 2 </b>
It turns into an unappealing looking green gloop, but adds amazing flavour to all your dishes.
Leave to cool and place in a jar in the fridge for up to six months.
If using less salt, freeze in spoonfulls or ice cube trays and use as needed,
