I was hoping someone on here could help me.  I usually use bought shortcrust pastry for the base when making pies in my pie maker, but today I thought I would try making my own.  I used the recipe for the rich shortcrust pastry from the UK everyday cooking book (kindly posted by Judy  )  Although the pastry was really easy to work with, as soon as it went into the heated pie maker it started shrinking down and contracting in size, and when I went to take them out of the pie maker, the "lids" or tops of the pies hadn't sealed with the bases, because the pastry bases had shrunk so much.   When trying to lift out the pies, the tops just came off and the pies stayed in the pie maker.   I never had this problem with the commercial bought pastry.  Any ideas why this might have happened and how I could fix it?  Was the pastry too rich, too short   Would another recipe work better??

I am so pleased people are enjoying these muffins   

Thermilover, there are plenty of homemade sauce recipes on this forum that you could try.   My favourite tomato sauce comes from Quirky Jo's blog Quirky Cooking.  Sometimes I put a couple of tablespoons of the homemade sweet chilli sauce (from this forum) into the batter as well to add a wee bit of a kick.

We have a Miele CP, and it is pretty idiot-proof.  I have used other (cheaper) dishwashers in rentals /units that were harder to work out how to use.  Just don't get their top end high tech navitronic one - the base model is simple and robust. 

Wow chookie - your garden sounds amazing!  We are at the end of our summer crops, and are just picking tomatoes, capsicums, carrots and herbs now.  I have planted purple sprouting broccoli, but it has not grown enough yet.

How do you bottle apples?  we have been given a large bag from our neighbours, but I haven't heard of bottling apples before?

I made this today using all red capsicums, and I doubled the recipe.  Double quantity fits nicely in the TM31, but I wouldn't want to do any more than that.  My red peppers were quite wet once I had chopped them in Step 2, so I left the MC out while I cooked them for the 20 mins to let some of the water evaporate.  I used 2/3 thickened cream and 1/3 full fat milk in the last stage, because that was all the cream I had left.  The sauce is certainly delicious and full of flavour!  It is still a bit liquid for my liking, so I might reduce the milk/cream at the end next time.  I am going to use some and freeze some. 

I loved making this sauce, because we had a huge bag of peppers from the garden, so I roasted some to peel and freeze, and I used the tops and bottoms of the peppers to make this soup. 

Thanks again for a wonderful recipe farfallina! xx

Lol Judy. Perhaps the boys would like to pick out the skins Karen. 

LOL the fussy little beggars probably would too Cookie!

I bought these silicone bowl covers from Howards Storage World.  They are food grade plastic and freezer, oven and dishwasher-safe.  I have been using them as an alternative to glad wrap and alfoil.  They form a really good seal over the bowl (plastic, ceramic, glass and wood), and are great for keeping food fresh in the  fridge, reheating things in the oven and also for covering dough as it rises.  I love them!  They come in different sizes.

Ive done the same thing before Katie    But when I pulled my bits of paper out, some tore off and stayed in the middle of the quiches ……. I just got people to pick them out when they ate them!  I love the tin you made them in though - where did you get that?

PS:  I just looked at that blog - looks like a great cooking blog!  But I couldn't find the recipe for impossible quiche ….. could you post a link please Katie?