I've been given a gorgeous Food Processor, now what should I make with it?

[Astrophe]

I've wanted one for years, and DH bought be a lovely big one for my birthday. And now all I can think of to make is cheese cake, pesto and hommous...none of which I make perticularly often. I'll do soups too, but we are just going into spring here, so not so many in the coming months.

So, what do you make with yours? I want to make sure this doesn't end up in the apliance grave yard.

Brilliant for pastry. Use it all the time for this.

I also use mine for spice pastes, marmalade, some cakes, nut powders (eg ground pistachios ), pesto etc etc

what sort of cake taffetacat? I made a butter cake yesterday, and it was pretty dense and uninspiring...ok, but not brilliant.

Yes, works best for dense cakes, I use it for ones with nuts rather than lots of flour. You won't get an airy cake using a fp, you need a whisk for that.

One of my favourites is an orange and almond cake, which keeps brilliantly - even freezes well. You get a whole orange and blitz it in the fp then dump in all the other ingreds and shove in cake tin. My kinda cake.

oooh, taffetacat that cake sounds wonderful. May I have the recipe?

Sure, here goes:

1 medium orange
175g softened butter
175g light brown sugar
3 eggs
175g self raising flour
half a teaspn bicarb of soda
50g ground almonds

Preheat oven Gas 5/190C. Grease and line 23cm cake tin. Cut orange in half fish out any pips. Then whiz in processor to a finely chopped puree. Tip all other ingreds in fp whizz for 10 seconds until smooth. Pour into tin and level. Bake 25-30 mins until risen and brown. Cool 5 mins in tin before cooling on a rack.

That's fantastic Astrophe!

Definitely get using it sooner rather than later or you'll fall into the trap that DH and I always find ourselves in. So many times we have been bought or buy for ourselves some fantastic gadget for the kitchen and then it just stays in the box gathering dust. I think the trick is to get one thing and use it often. Maybe start with soups and dips and then move on to more adventurous things - just to build up your experience!

Julie

thanks arewenearlythere and taffeta :) I'm going to make that cake today!

taffeta, I made it...YUMMMMM!!! And nice and easy! I doubled it too, so now have one in the freezer for next weeks picnic! Thank you!

Anyone know any other recipes which work well in the processor? Am thinking heavy things like friands. banana bread, muffins?

Falafels, hummous, pesto, pastry, orange polenta cake, biscuit base for cheesecake etc, romano sauce... cor lots of lovely things!