Does it Freeze? Croissants

This is the first in what might be a series of posts, testing if things freeze well. Given my love for Costco, I often find myself with larger quantities of things than I can eat and there are some things I don't get because I'm not sure that I will be able to store it. So I thought why not start testing out some things where the risk is small eg. 12 croissants for $7.50, if the 8 I freeze get ruined, it's not the end of the world.

Item: Day old fresh croissants

Prep: individually sealed in ziplock backs with as much excess air sucked out as we could get without squishing them.

Frozen: over night- solid when removed the thaw

Defrost: on bench 1-1.5 hours-ish

Serving: heated for 15 seconds in microwave, served with Cherryberry home made jam, recipe here

Results: Excellent! defrosted pretty much like fresh. Possibly slightly stale/crispy on some parts, but once warmed in the microwaved as I did, or if you toasted it, the texture and taste was perfect. I am only going on how it felt, so it might not have had any bad spots at all. The Costco croissants on sale was an excellent by, but even at full price ($9.50) I will certainly buy them again to have on hand for breakfasts and lunches. 

Chia Puddings

Chia seeds are something I don't know much about, but having bought some at Costco I have a lot of them to experiment with. Previously I have made some Banana, Blueberry, Chia and Oat muffins which were really nice and great to freeze  Today I made a batch of puddings in different flavours. Before now I made a chocolate chia pudding with a recipe from Food Wishes, and then I made a vanilla one with almond milk and vanilla bean paste with a small amount of sugar added.

Looking at many online recipes I think the basic mix for a pudding is 1/4 cup Chia: 1 cup liquid. 

Today I used almond milk for all my puddings and made Chai, Banana, Chocolate, Mango, Cherry+Raspberry and vanilla. I made them in little yoghurt pots that came with my Aldi yoghurt maker, so they will be great to take to school. Chia is very healthy with lots of protein, omgea 3+6 and fiber. Almond milk a little watery to drink for my taste, but not bad at all and with only 40 calories per cup its s great option instead of regular cows milk if you would rather use your calories on other things. 

1. Pour one scoop full of Chia seeds (1/8 cup) into each jar or container.

2. Add other flavorings:

Chai: 1/2 a Chai Latte pod (or some Chai powder)

Banana: 1.5-2 Tbsp banana milkshake syrup

Chocolate: 1 heaped teaspoon cocoa powder, 1-1.5 tsp sugar

Mango: a few cubes of chopped up mango, 1 level tsp sugar

Cherry+Raspberry: 3 tsp Cherryberry Jam (recipe here)

Vanilla: 1/4 tsp vanilla paste, 1 tsp sugar

3. Pour in 1/2 cup almond milk or as much as you can fit. If you can't fit enough liquid in your pudding will be crunchier, so you might need to play around with how much of different fillings can go in.

4. Put the lids on and shake up the jars. Open and stir if any seeds have stuck in bunches to the sides. Leave the jars for a few minutes and shake again. Then leave in the fridge for 3 hours or overnight.

 I haven't tasted them all yet, but I know that chocolate and vanilla are both yummy. Out of the others the only two I think some people might not like would be the chai and banana, but given they are both normally milky drinks I like, I think they will be good. Anything fruity and sweet I always like, so I know the mango and cherry+raspberry with be good. 

Easiyo Yogurt- Home Made Yoghurt

Today I had a lovely trip down the Smith's Beach at Philip Island. It was busy, but not TOO busy. It was actually a nice amount of people to watch surfing and snorkeling etc, without everyone being on top of each other. If I was a better blogger I would have taken photos. But I didn't...oops. This might have been somewhat related to the downside of my day which was the large filling I had to get in the morning. The dentist was great and it didn't hurt at the time but has been very uncomfortable all day since the anesthetic wore off.  So dinner today will be some home made yogurt, jam and berries so that there is minimal chewing involved.

I thought I would share my recipe with you while I'm at it. I got this from another blog some time ago and I can't seem to find the same one any more. THIS blog looks like it has a similar recipe however and a few variations such as coconut milk which might be very tasty to try out. My recipe varies only slightly in that I will use a couple tablespoons of sachet mix (eg. Easiyo mix or similar) to get the culture in there.

Home-Made Yogurt
just under 1L milk (I use long life)
100g milk powder
2 Tablespoons yogurt mix.

1. Whisk your powders with about 1/4 - 1/2 the milk until it is dissolved. 
   
2. Add the rest of the milk and whisk again.
   
3. Boil water and fill your Easiyo thermos to the fill line.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Put the lids on and wait 8 hours or so until your desired taste and consistency is achieved. Move to chill in the refrigerator. 
   
5. Eat with yummy toppings!
   

The current batch I have isn't my best. I didn't measure out my milk powder and used too much I think as I used half a sachet of vanilla yogurt to get the nice flavour...that is also quite old powder that has been sitting open in the fridge for some time. Also I left it for longer than normal. So many reasons for the strange texture I got, kind of gooey like honey but thicker. It taste really nice those, just a nice mild not too sweet vanilla. Of course once you add all the jam and fruit like me the 'lower sugar' reasoning is redundant. 

If you have never tried making yogurt before I highly recommend the Easiyo maker. It's easy and cheap and so much nicer than store bought!

Home Made Bread Machine Jam

I went to visit a friend in the afternoon yesterday, I left with a bag full of fresh and very ripe plums from her mother's tree, perfect for making jam! As I am a lazy and only part-time lady of leisure, I like to take shortcuts as much as possible to still get the fancy result. Enter the bread machine. I bought mine about 18 months ago in a sale and generally I use it to make pizza dough and jam. All I have to do is chop fruit (and with berries I sometimes don't even bother with that!), dump it in the machine and an hour and a half later... JAM! Sometimes the jam can be quite runny but it doesn't bother me as I generally eat it mixed in with plain yoghurt anyway.

I made three kinds of jam today, using up the plums and other fruit I already had in the fridge from Christmas or stored away in the freezer. The mango/strawberry came out a bit runny, I think I needed more pectin or more boiling time, I think maybe the fact that the mango went in frozen had an affect because the bread machine runs on a timer.  I actually made the blackberry/plum jam in the pressure cooker and that was quite good, didn't take long and easy to clean up compared to the stove because the pressure cooker pot is bigger than my other pots.

Cherryberry- Cherry and Raspberry Jam

700g Cherries (de-pitted- resulting in what looked like a violent murder contained entirely on my bench-top)

300g frozen raspberries

500g CSR Jam Sugar

500g castor sugar

10-15g pectin (Jamsetta)

Blumberry- blackberry and plum jam:

600g chopped plums

400g blackberries

10-15g pectin (Jamsetta)

1kg sugar

Manberry- mango and strawberry jam:

300g chopped strawberries

400g chopped mango

10-15g pectin (Jamsetta)

700g sugar

These gorgeous labels were made using the Jam Labelizer, a website entirely dedicated to creating cute jam labels using one of a few different templates and adding your own details or pictures. I highly recommend! I also used Skip To My Lou to make a recipe card for the lemonade scones.

I also bought some cute little jars, Kleerview jam jar plastic and ingredients to make lemonade scones to make up a little gift pack for another friend who has just moved out with her boyfriend.  (Please excuse the placement of these pictures, I'm new to this and don't know why they're all over the place...)

      

I think the finished product has turned out to be really cute! Pressure cooker seems to give good results in terms of thickness, however I think I will just go back to using the Jam Sugar by CSR rather than trying to work with pectin on its own, as it seems a bit tricky when using different types of fruit.

Let me know what your favourite recipe or combination for jam is!