Wow, I can not believe how much fun we had in Las Vegas for our Thermomix reward, trip, I did not expect to visit Vegas but if I did get to go I had 2 things on the list to do see the Grand Canyon & see the Cirque du Soleil show O & both of these activities just happened to be included in this amazing trip. We were lucky enough to stay at The Cosmopolitan right next to the famous Bellagio, with magnificent views of the Bellagio fountain. After exploring some of the other hotels I’m sure we stayed at the best one on the strip! Yes it is a long trip over but it was worth it, it was so fantastic to meet up again with fellow Thermomix consultants we met at the Paris reward trip last year & others we have met at previous Thermofest trips. This time there were about 80 of us all together including group leaders & admin staff.
At check in room, we were provided some nibbles & cool drinks. Then up to our amazing room on level 52! What a view & the fountain put on a display straight away, I had a quick look around outside & around the facilities before getting ready for our first event, a cocktail party, complete with a welcome green Thermomix themed cocktail, there were lots of drinks but not too much food just some small bites. A few people went out for dinner & some went to try their luck at winning some money in Vegas.
The famous night club Marquee opened at 10.30pm we had free entry because we were staying at The Cosmopolitan, only a couple of us went up & had a bit of a dance & a looksie, it was very busy & we later found out that in the off season it is only open Friday – Monday night. You could buy a glass of wine for $12 or a bottle of wine for $395, when we asked about this apparently the bottle secured you a poolside table & table service as well.Completely jet lagged we got into bed very late or should I say early on Tues morning.
The buffet breakfast at the wicked spoon provides so many options it was so hard to choose – even sorbet for breakfast! There was an omelette station, with anything & everything you could imagine, then in a room just off the restaurant, we had our first training session on social media with Scott Cramer from Multi Brain. Then it was so exciting to have a chat with Executive Chef at The Cosmopolitan Matt Crane & even better he gave a tour of The Cosmopolitan restaurants & behind the scenes in the kitchens, including the pastry area with Executive Pastry Chef Vincent Pilon. (Check out his awesome instagram account here.)
After lunch at the wicked spoon we had a little bit of free time before meeting our transfer to the helicopters.
A flight for 13 helicopters into the Grand Canyon, we were all so excited & I loved that they had music playing in our headsets. (It stopped when someone wanted to talk though)
I had tears of joy streaming down my face as we entered the Canyon.
Cheese is one of my favourite ingredients & so I have wanted to make this recipe from current top chef in the world Massimo Bottura from his restaurant Osteria Francescana. I loved watching the Netflix series Chef’s Table & the episode with Massimo was great. (Watch it here) And another reason to get excited for me is that I will get to eat a dish prepared by Massimo himself when I am in New York in early October – the foodie stars have aligned & I am booked into a progressive dinner cooked by 6 top chef’s including Massimo Bottura!! Yes I am extremely excited I wonder which dish he will be making it may even be this one? This is a recipe from Dani Valent’s cookbook In the Mix 2 cookbook it has been adapted for the home cook. Normally featuring not only 5 textures of parmasean but 5 ages of parmesan. I decided to use 5 different types of parmesan instead, making the best I could with what I could get & I was very happy with the results 🙂 Apart from my domestic cream siphon not working very well that is!
I even made homemade ricotta for one of the elements to the dish – see my cheese making post here.
One of the elements even called for making a parmasean stock out of the rind of the parmasean 🙂
This is a Ben Shewry recipe from Dani Valent Cooking, Elaine was Ben’s Grandma – what a delicious fun cake to make & photograph 🙂 YUM!! thermomix ganache is so easy & amazing!!
What a fun morning we had at TAFE in the studio – I whipped up a batch of fresh pasta dough in the Thermomix (2 eggs & 200g flour, kneaded for 2 mins in the Thermomix) I got out the pasta machine & rolled it out. I wanted to try a different style of food photography – after getting my classmate to be a hand model – I decided I wanted my own “posh lady” hands in the shot instead & was very pleased with quite a few of the photos I got. After a bit of editing I will probably use this first shot for our end of year exhibition.
This recipe is a slight variation on a family favourite when we were growing up, also the first job I ever had was helping a lady bake cakes to sell to cafe’s, & we made a version of this (along with the Chocolate Zucchini Cake recipe).
First soak your poppy seeds in the milk ( also if you run out of poppy seeds you can substitute with black sesame seeds if you need too :-))
Next blitz the lemon zest with the sugar, to make a lemon flavoured sugar.
Mix all the cake ingredients together; the time is quick & the speed slower to avoid making the cake to tough & dry.
Another tip from my younger days is if you are not using your homemade butter use the paper that the butter came in instead of baking paper, it’s something my mum always did & she saved the butter papers in the fridge in case we needed to use them for a cake. It’s a great way to save money & time because the paper is already “pre-greased” with some of the leftover butter 🙂
While the cake is cooking you cake make the glaze. If you don’t have whole vanilla beans & you want to use vanilla bean paste that is fine too :-).
When the cake is cooked through poke some holes all around it & pour the glaze over so it soaks into the cake.
We have just finished our studio lighting section of our photography course at TAFE & needed to arrange some photo shoots that we set up by ourselves to use lightning in a dramatic way. Well I had the idea that I wanted to make my favourite sorbet from the In the Mix Cookbook that uses dry ice – The dry ice not only creates a bit of theatre but also gives the sorbet a slightly fizzy taste in your mouth enhancing the sorbet experience even more 🙂
It was nerve raking setting up all the lighting etc plus everything up to make the sorbet & then even more so making the sorbet in front of some of my classmates, but then it was really fun & delicious, I got lost in the drama of the dry ice!! And somehow I ended up with over 200 photos!! I I have decided to use the photos for a bit of self promo for the latest Thermomix reward trip to Las Vegas & the Grand Canyon. I have to get all my sales in by June 30 to count for this amazing trip. I was so close at the end of May so I have decided to get it a good crack, while hopefully giving my customers & friends a good crack up of a laugh at my funny photos!
Thanks to all my amazing customers & friends, I have made it to the Thermomix reward trip to Las Vegas & The Grand Canyon.
It’s so exciting that so many awesome new customers have started their amazing Thermomix journey over the last month or they are just about to start 🙂
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