One Girl and her Thermie

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homemade icing sugar

Save money with Thermomix: Icing sugar

Save money with Thermomix. It’s what we as owners and users say all the time. But finally, I’m able to share some of the cost savings with specific recipes like this icing sugar but also one that is a wow, demonstration recipe.

Why is it a wow recipe?  Well simply put it shows off the milling function beautifully.  Speeds 7 – 10 and Turbo: Grinding or miling ingredients such as sugar, wheat and coffee beans, blending to a completely smooth texture for creamy soups, smoothies, and ice-cream and chopping tough ingredients such as cured ham and hard cheeses.

Powdered sugar, also called confectioners’ sugar, or icing sugar, is a finely ground sugar produced by milling granulated sugar into a powdered state. Powdered Sugar is made by grinding granulated sugar with cornstarch to the desired grain size. White in color, powdered sugar has a sucrose content of approximately 97.0% and a cornstarch content of approximately 3.0% to prevent caking and increase shelf life. However, making your own in your Thermomix can your money on buying ready-milled icing sugar and you can do it instantly, hence not needing any corn starch too, so 100% pure.

But we’re here to talk about cost savings, so I’ve done a quick search for some tomato soups in an online supermarket. I’ve chosen Tesco today, but I will be comparing all of them in this series of articles to be fair.

Compare this with the cost of their granulated sugar, which you can mill into icing sugar

The cost savings would be £1.15 on the Silver Spoon and only 70p on the Billingtons. 

That kind of makes sense, as Golden Caster Sugar is more expensive so you would see a saving but not as much. But image how much you could save on a weekly, monthly, or even yearly basis. These pennies can add up to pounds very quickly especially if you bake a lot which I do.

*What Is Golden Caster Sugar? Most commonly found in the UK, golden caster sugar is made from unrefined sugar cane and sometimes beets. It has a subtle buttery flavor and gives baked goods a lovely shade of brown.

Ingredients

  • 200 g sugar

Preparation

  1. Place sugar in mixing bowl and grind 20 sec/speed 10. Use icing sugar as needed.

Hints & Tips

  • Icing sugar can be stored for long periods of time in an airtight container.
  • For best results, grind sugar in 100-200 g batches.
  • If more icing sugar is needed, repeat the process.

Get this recipe on Cookidoo https://cookidoo.co.uk/recipes/recipe/en-GB/r178855

How to make your Thermomix pay for itself

So you’ve taken the plunge and bought a Thermomix. That’s fabulous. Our unique selling point of a Thermomix is the cost-saving from day one, so here’s a helpful guide of what you should be making in your Thermomix TM6. Here are my 5 top recipes that I encourage everyone who buys a Thermomix to make regularly to ensure you start to make your Thermomix pay for itself.

1. Stock paste

The vegetable stock paste is something that I always have in my fridge and one of the recipes I always suggest to my customers that they make first with their Thermomix.  I put homemade vegetable stock into everything I do from curries, stews, risottos and of course soups. One heaped teaspoon of Thermomix stock paste is equivalent to one stock cube without any of the nasties. When you know what goes into your food, including something as simple as stock paste, you start to eat cleaner and healthier. Making your own vegetable stock paste is neither difficult or expensive. All you need are some vegetables, good quality salt, and an excellent blender. 400g of vegetables makes one mason jar full of stock paste which lasts for about four months in the fridge. The sea salt acts as a natural preservative so no other additives are needed.

Yes, you can follow the recipe to the fullest, but my favourite and craziest idea is to wing it. I either empty the vegetable tray in my fridge on a Sunday evening and cook all the leftover vegetables before they go bad. I’m always a bit excited to see what colour my stock paste is as I never follow the TM recipe and depending on what vegetables I use, it’s a different colour. I don’t why but red cabbage always features heavily in my stock paste – it’s one of the vegetable I buy and only use half of it.

Here’s the Vegetable Stock Paste Cookidoo Recipe, I roughly follow.

2. Nut, seed and rice milk

Have you ever looked at the ingredients in any of the supermarket nut milks? Take example almond milk. Chances are you find a whole lot of ‘extra’ crammed in there that really don’t need to be there.  Do we really need locust bean gum, gellan gum, lecithins? I don’t even know what half of them are. And when you see the almond milk percentage, it’s low’ super low. As low as 2.3%. Making your own homemade nut milk will mean you keep your milk preservative and additive-free.

The process of nut milk is simple; soak some nuts, wait and blend. If you are adding it to make a bechamel you can strain it, but if you are drinking it as part of a smoothie or shake, I don’t mind the ‘bit’s and leave it as it is. Store-bought nut milk has a sweet taste, so if you like that, you can sweeten it with a little honey or a couple of dates.

The best part of it is that homemade nut milk is easy and so much cheaper than store-bought and you know exactly what’s in it. I’ve milked almonds, cashews, pecans, hazelnut, and cashews. The sky is the limit.

Check out my recipes here: Almond Milk, Soya Milk, and Rice Milk

3. Almond meal

Many people who lean towards a Thermomix are those who are gluten free and making a change in their diets due to health reasons. However, it’s not just for medical reasons, alternative flours and meals are becoming really popular for baking these days. One of the most popular flour substitutes is almond meal, which is simply ground up whole almonds. It often costs much more than an equal weight in almonds; currently £1.25/100g. A store-bought almond meal will become rancid very quickly once the oil in the nuts is oxidized during the processing. Milling nuts, seeds or grains (rice, quinoa, oats, etc) fresh whenever you need a meal or flour will not only save you money but also give you a much healthier product! Mill for 30 seconds, speed 10, or until flour is achieved (will vary for different nuts, seeds, and grains).

4. Icing sugar

In the UK, one of our regular demonstration recipes is a frozen fruit sorbet or berry foam. These recipes not only show the magical blending capability of the Thermomix but it’s the ability to make icing sugar.

Did you know that icing sugar and caster sugar are simply milled versions of granulated white sugar? Yet, they are always more expensive! Everyone has granulated sugar in their pantry or store cupboards and all you need to do is mill 2 seconds, speed 10 when needing caster sugar and 1-3 minutes, speed 10 when needing icing sugar and hey presto, you have all 3 versions. It’s not just the cost-saving that is great here but the space-saving too especially needed in London where we have tiny houses and flats with little or no storage space.

5. Yoghurt

Homemade yogurt tastes great and it is better for you too. The key to this is to use the most delicious milk you can find. You can eschew the powdered milk if you want, but you will need to leave the yogurt to ferment twice as long and sometimes the texture can be a little unusual. There are plenty of Cookidoo recipes for yoghurt especially now that the Thermomix TM6 has a ferment mode too. But my favourite yoghurt recipe is one that I’ve been doing successfully for years and still works out perfectly every single time.