Have you heard of coffee machine cooking?
Guest post
It’s amazing what some creative home cooks can come up with—did you know that there’s a woman in Sweden who does all her cooking in a coffee maker? This is something I had to try – and I have to admit, the results were a pleasant surprise. Check out these recipes and you may wonder why you ever bought an oven! Oh and have a look here for a list of recommended coffee machines
Cappuccino cookies
You probably wouldn’t imagine that you could bake with your coffee machine, but you most definitely can (in small batches, at least). These sugar cookies are baked one by one on the hot surface of your traditional drip machine’s burner, but if you’d rather stick with the oven, then you could brew yourself an espresso—particularly good with chocolate recipes—and add it to your recipe to replace some of the water or milk elsewhere.
If you want to go this route and infused your cookies with coffee, there are plenty of different flavours of coffee bevvies out there like this range, so feel free to get creative. I bet you could invent an entire bakery’s worth of cookies with just a few tweaks to the basic recipe.
Banana and chocolate pancakes
You can even use your coffee maker to prepare breakfast, and I don’t mean your morning coffee – I’m talking about banana and chocolate pancakes.
You’ll need to melt some butter on the hot plate again, but this time, add your pancake mix of plain flour, milk, eggs and a pinch of salt. Wait until the butter sizzles then pour a lair of batter on to the plate – not too much otherwise they will be too thick and break when rolling.
Cook until the lower side of the batter has hardened. Providing you haven’t poured on too much batter, the top lair should bubble. Using a thin, plastic spatula, flip the pancake over until it browns.
Once the pancakes are cooked, put them on a plate and add a few slices of banana. Don’t pack in too many otherwise you won’t be able to fold the pancake into a tidy roll.
Quickly melt some Nutella, (or any bar of chocolate) in a saucepan and pour it over the bananas and pancake. Carefully roll the pancake and top it off with some powered icing sugar.
Hot waffles
I set about looking at other foodstuffs that would fit into the coffee maker and decided waffles are the right size, soft and fluffy and delicious to eat – especially dripped in hot chocolate fudge and topped with strawberries.
What you need to do is place a piece of kitchen foil over the burner (just to help you with clean-up, it’s perfectly safe to put the food directly on the burner), and put your waffle on top. Give it ten minutes on one side until it is nice and crispy, then flip it over and do the other side. I would avoid the temptation to speed the process along by covering the waffle—it tends to trap steam and make things soggy.
Summer salad
I am conscious of healthy eating as well, so thought I would try a salad which is perfect for summer afternoons. First of all, I melted butter over the hot plate in a small oven-safe bowl, and threw on some chicken hearts seasoned in salt and pepper. They take around 45 minutes to cook, turning occasionally.
Use the salad mix as a bed. I went with lettuce, tomato, mozzarella cheese and sliced lemon rind. Put the chicken hearts on top then sprinkle some parmesan cheese and crushed almonds (or any nuts) on top and drizzle some balsamic vinegar over it to finish it off.
Coffee makers are surprisingly versatile and can be used for much more than brewing up a cup of coffee. Try it for yourself and take delight in your concoctions.
Image credit: JFXie
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