Baking with the girls...

Have been at it in the kitchen again the last few days... Yesterday we used the the Chickpea & Bean Salad recipe from the other day to make up a Quinoa version... Is basically the same except for cooking 1 cup of Quinoa in 2 cups of water with 1 tsp of Chook stock powder... This was cooled & added to the other ingredients...Went down a treat with the family & we still have heaps left for dinner tomorrow night...

 Chocolate Maccadamia nut Brownie.....
Also made up a batch of Chocolate Maccadamia Brownies to help "Grease the wheels" at B☼'s work....
 This is a "Coles" recipe I grabbed from Simple Savings & have altered slightly.... (just can't help myself)
 

Fudge Brownies...

200g unsalted Butter
150g chocolate, chopped
1 2/3 cups sugar
4 eggs
 2tsp vanilla essence
1 cup plain flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1 cup chopped Maccadamia Nuts
Method
1. preheat oven to 180
2. Lightly grease and line a 180by280cm shallow cake pan (I use a square Silicone "pan")
3. Melt Butter & Chocolate in Microwave or in a double boiler on stove
4. remove from heat. stir in sugar.
5. beat in eggs, one at a timethen stir in Vanilla
6. sift in dry ingredients and mix.
7. stir in nuts.
8. pour into prepared pan and cook for 35 -40 min
9. Allow to cool completely in pan, then remove cut into desired sized pieces...

 Vanilla Essence...
A few of the Vanilla beans that I bought a while ago were finely used to make 700ml of Vanilla Essence today...

16 beans (8 for each bottle) were slit down the middle, had the seeds scraped out, chopped into 1.5cm long sections & then placed into 2 swing top bottles we once used for home brew...
16 x beans was $10.40 &  700ml  Vodka  was $32.00...

All up it worked out to be  $32.40 for 700ml or $4.60 per 100ml of pure Vanilla Essence which is a small savings on the purchased bottles but a lot more fun to make with the kids...
**Sits back & smells Vanilla scented Fingers**


Bread Mix...


Also did up a bulk batch of bread mix for the bread maker...
We make a 1kg wholemeal loaf in an Aldi machine...
 
350g of white flour
250g of ATTA flour
1.5Tbsp of milk powder
1Tbsp of raw Sugar
1.5tsp salt
This is all bagged up in reusable clip lock bags & kept in a 8.5L Decor container until needed....
To use we first add 2Tbsp of oil & 350ml of water to the bottom of the bread pan.. On top of this goes the bread mix followed by 1tsp of bread improver & 1.5tsp of Dried Yeast....

This saves us time when it comes to putting the bread on late at night or as your running out the door in the morning....


Have a great one all.....
: )»