Greek orange marmalade dessert

If you have ever been to Greece, you will have seen there are thousands of ‘wild’ orange trees lining the streets.

Orange trees in Athens. Pic: Andrew Gustar

I love walking through Athens in spring, when the trees let their delicious floral scent fill the air when it’s blossom time. When the fruit ripens, the trees are replete with juicy-looking oranges. 

But while you can pluck these oranges and take what you want for free, you’d be laughed out of town if you tried to snack on one, as the fruit is so bitter it’s a very unpleasant eating experience.

However, while you cannot eat these the normal way, many Greeks use this bitter fruit to make a sweet called ‘glyko tou koutaliou’. The addition of sugar and honey in a preserving process cuts through the bitterness to create a nice marmalade-type of dessert.

You can use normal oranges (such as navel oranges) but many people prefer the Seville or Asian oranges as otherwise the sweet can be, well, too sweet.

To make roughly 1 kilogram of this (approximately two average-sized mason jars):

You will need:

• Oranges (normal 'Navel' oranges from a shop or, if you have access to them, the free, bitter kind). You will need 8 to 10, depending on the size.
• 1kg of caster sugar (yes, I know it's a lot. Bear with me).
• 4-5 tablespoons of Thyme honey OR 3-4 tablespoons of lemon juice to taste.

How to:

• Wash the oranges well if they’re shop-bought, especially if they are waxy. It’s worth grating the outside layer a little, as it helps to unlock the zest.
• Put the oranges whole and unpeeled into a large pot and cover them completely with lots of water, then bring these to the boil. Let them stay on the boil for 5 to 10 minutes (depending on how hard the oranges were in the first place).
• Drain the water and leave the fruit to cool down, because once cooled, you can slice into thick wedges and, after removing the creamy white pith, throw the wedges into the pot again and cover with the sugar.
• Resist the temptation to add water. The aim is to reduce the sugar and juice of the oranges into a thick marmalade.
• Bring to the boil, keep on the boil for 10 minutes and remove to cool down. Cover and leave for a day.
• The next day, bring the sticky mixture back to the boil, testing to see if the mixture is too sweet or too bitter. If it is too bitter, add the honey; if too sweet, add a few tablespoons of lemon juice.
• Boil for 10 minutes and scoop into your mason jars.

Greeks often eat this as a little treat, for example when they come home from school and want a light treat, or instead of cake for dessert.

George’s family usually give us several jars of this to take back to the UK with us but, as we rarely eat this sort of thing it has been left lying in the fridge. And as we are getting ready to head back to Athens we need to make room for more.

So I cheated with ready-made shortcrust pastry (with a little baby to look after I’m all about saving time) and made it into a tart. I blind-baked the pastry base first for about 20 minutes on 160 (find out how to blind bake here), then added a jar of the glyko to fill it up to the top of the crust, then baked again for 30 minutes on 160 (I have a fan-assisted oven which gets very hot so I usually take the heat down a notch from most recipes).

Oh it ain't pretty but it tastes pretty darn great! 

Basically, with the marmalade being made by our family and the pastry coming out of a shop, the whole thing took hardly any time to prepare or bake, which is great when it comes to fitting in dessert-making around feeding and entertaining a five-month-old baby!

Now although it wasn't elegantly prepared (I'm sure you will make it look much better), it smelled so good that we became rather impatient. I suppose we could have left it to cool down completely but we are greedy and hungry so ate it when it was a decent temperature.

As the ‘marmalade’ that our family gave us was quite sweet, we topped it off with cool Greek yoghurt to cut through the sweetness, but if your pie is more bitter to the taste, some delicious honeycomb or vanilla ice-cream will do just nicely!

Biscuit Baking the Tim Fisher Way!

Tim Fisher is an award-winning and widely respected pastry chef, having won more than 50 competition awards including over 30 medals at the British Open Cookery Championships. He also won the Dessert of The Year title in 2004.

And I, budget baker that I am on occasion, have had the immense privilege not only of meeting Tim on many occasions but also enjoying samples of his work - melt-in-the-mouth chocolate chip cookies, mini pastries, petite gateaux and delectable savouries when he catered for my friends' events.

This is why I am so happy to endorse his Biscuits and Cookies book, which can be snapped up at Amazon for a sweet £14.

I've enjoyed trying out his recipe for peanut butter cookies (you may recall I am obsessed with PB, and have a couple of years ago posted my own budget PB cookie bake). I won't say whose is better but I'll give you a clue - it's Tim's. Don't tell him! I'm also going to try out his custard cream and jammy dodger recipes - the sort of biscuits one never thinks to make at home but Tim makes it look easy...

What I really like is that Tim has made this book exceptionally accessible to the normal person who likes to bake every now and then. Too often recipes call for random and expensive items, like Belgian woodland truffle flakes, or Fijian salamander scales dipped in 100% Cambodian carob. This is not baking on a budget, but cooking on credit.

But Tim's book is designed to help even casual bakers like myself produce great-tasting treats for friends and family without having to shell out on unusual ingredients. Of course, if you want that little bit extra, there are some fancy biscuits in there too for those extra special occasions!

For those of you who happen to live in Surrey, England you might be interested in joining his Facebook: Tim's Pastry Club, or following him on Twitter: @timspastryclub Instagram: Tim's Pastry Club www.timspastryclub.com

Bake Off's pastry perfection: what is Blind Baking and how can I do it?

I s-pie. Pic: Samantha Beddoes (2012)

The Great British Bake Off (#GBBO) has filled us with a host of new terminology. Cream cakes are no longer cream cakes: they’re crème patisserie. In fact, it's actually Crème Pat. 

Those spaces under the oven where we all store our spare cake tins is actually a proving drawer, which should be kept clean and clear and tidy for when we need to prove our home-baked dough.

We're now alert to the dangers of soggy bottoms and dense sponges.

And, what is more, we all have to blind bake whenever we make pies.

But what is Blind Baking when it comes to pastry? Well, it's basically a way to get a perfect pie crust.

If you cook the pastry without its filling, the pastry could rise and become bumpy and uneven. But if you cook it with the filling from its raw form, the moisture from the filling could make the bottom of the pastry crust flabby and soggy. 

So blind baking involves weighing your empty pastry case down and cooking for a certain length of time to help get that perfect crustiness.

The easiest steps to follow when it comes to blind-baking shortcrust pastry (whether sweet or savoury) are as follows:

1. Heat oven to 200C/180C fan/gas mark 6.
2. Fill the pastry case with a round of greaseproof paper and add baking beans (these are basically ceramic peas and can be bought quite cheaply from Lakeland or Amazon) to weigh it down.
3. I usually prick the bottom of the pastry a couple of times. I’m not sure why. My mum always did it so I do it.
4. Bake for 15 minutes (check on it though as some ovens are slow and fan-assisted ovens are fast) then carefully remove the paper and beans and cook the pastry for five more minutes.

This can then be cooled ready for whatever filling you need to put into the pie, flan or tart. 

PRO TIP: don’t touch the ceramic beans when they are hot. Please learn from my fail.

Krispie cakes - the no-bake party cake

How to use leftovers to make no-bake party cakes

Krispie Cakes. Credit: SimoneySunday

Cakes. Who doesn't love them? Likewise, marshmallows, Rice Krispies and sprinkles. What's not to like?

Now combine all these winners together and you get: Krispie Cakes!

Breakfast cereal always creeps past its use-by date in our house. We rarely eat breakfast (our morning food is a late porridge or a coffee at work).

Therefore, we have boxes of cereal which need to be used up as I love food but hate waste. And Krispie cakes are a wonderful way of using up spare or leftover Kellogg's Rice Krispies (or their no-name or store equivalent).

You will need:
1 bag of marshmallows
Rice Krispies
A saucepan
A few sprinkles for dressing (optional).

I used this massive bag of marshmallows from Lidl, which gave a nice colourful sheen to the cakes - yellowy pink. It cost just 69p.

To make:
Place marshmallows in a saucepan on a low heat and stir gently for a few minutes until all the marshmallows have melted.

Turn off heat immediately.

Slowly pour in the Rice Krispies and stir until all the Krispies are covered with the melted marshmallows.

Spoon out scoops of the mixture into paper cupcake holders and leave to cool. Sprinkle with Hundreds and Thousands or any cake sprinkles. I used some multi-coloured sugar balls from Tesco which looked pretty and added extra crunch.

Serve and enjoy!

Pizza. With Fruit? It must be - Fruit Pizza

I am not a great fan of doing any unnecessary work in the kitchen. Most of us live extremely busy lives, balancing work, family and social events so the idea of having to slave over a table making pastry or labouring to create the perfect icing is simply unappealing.

While I am all for doing things on a budget – and making pastry or icing from scratch is cheaper in the long-term – there has to be a limit to being a domestic goddess. Not all of us have kitchens the size of a supermarket, despite what TV chefs would have you believe.

Not all of us are so wealthy that we can afford not to work so live a life of baking luxury. There has to be a line drawn between doing it yourself and doing yourself in.

And this is where my fruit pizza comes in. It’s simply called Fruit Pizza. I believe I made this up out of my own head, having tried a recipe for making my own savoury pizza, and deciding that I could make a dessert along the same lines. I certainly have never seen this recipe anywhere else!

Fruit Pizza
This recipe will have your friends, family and even children oohing and aahing and getting all excited, despite the fact they are basically eating fruit – lots of it.

It looks amazing when it comes out of the oven, in all its sizzly, sweet, sticky glory and tastes divine. You can mix and match fruits to your heart’s delight – but a word to the wise, oranges, clementines and satsumas do not sit well with the other fruit. Leave the strong citrus fruit alone and stick with berries, bananas and orchard fruit.

You will need:
1 large, flat pizza tray, circular or square, lightly oiled
1 sheet of Jus’Roll puff pastry OR BETTER STILL make it yourself - recipe for this is elsewhere on this blog.
2 large apples
1 cup of blueberries
1 cup of strawberries, sliced lengthways
1 cup of blackberries
1 cup of raspberries
½ cup of custard – pouring custard will do but you can make it yourself and keep it in the fridge until you’re ready to use it. Don’t allow it to be too thick-it has to be spreadable.
Two tablespoons of icing sugar to dust
Some cream – Elmlea low-fat pouring cream does the trick

What to do:
Roll the pastry out over the pre-oiled tray – whether square, round or rectangle, it doesn’t really matter. Score a distinct line about 1cm away from the edge of the pastry all round – this will help the edges to rise up in puffy goodness and go all brown.

Don’t make the base too thin – the fruit juices will penetrate the pastry base otherwise.
Take the cold custard and spread it over the base as if you were spooning tomato puree over a savoury pizza base. Sprinkle some nutmeg or Allspice if you like.

Start laying the fruit onto the custardy base. Have fun creating faces, patterns or just being liberal-handed. It doesn’t matter.

Cook it for 20 minutes on gas mark 6 or the electric equivalent. Personally, cooking with gas is just the best thing in the whole wide world, until the government announces that we’ve run out. I’ll cross that ecobridge when I come to it.

When the edges are all puffy and goldeny brown, take it out of the oven, dust it with the icing sugar and serve immediately at the table, using pizza cutters and a slice. If you leave it too long before you get to the table, the icing sugar will have dissolved.

Serve with low-fat Elmlea double pouring cream (30% less fat than normal cream) or go the whole hog and serve with vanilla ice-cream.

How to be extra:
People at school used to say I was “being extra” if I drew in the margins of my essays. If you want to be extra, crush a meringue nest into pieces and put that over the top. These usually come in packs of eight and you can use the other seven for another fabulous dish like cherry meringues or Eton mess. Or just eat them by your own, when nobody but the cat can see. And he can’t tell a soul…..

How to save money
1) Berries freeze brilliantly if you are using them for baking or for smoothies. So I tend to buy bulk whenever there is an offer on for blueberries, blackberries, raspberries and strawberries. So if you freeze these – and they keep for ages – you can save money and time when you make this in the future. Apples can also be cut up into nice slices and, if sprinkled with a little lemon juice to prevent oxidisation, can also be frozen. However, strawberries do not freeze well AND keep their shape afterwards, so best to buy these fresh.

2) Make your own custard – but not from scratch, using vanilla pods and all that. Who has the time? Insanity. But do always have a tub of custard powder and granulated white sugar in your cupboard. This will help you save lots of money as buying a carton of pouring custard is exceptionally costly – you use it once and it’s gone.

And that's basically it! Enjoy.

A gravity-defying surprise for the birthday boy

Every year my husband and I have been together I've made him an unusual birthday cake - the first was a triple-layer chocolate cherry cake; three years ago he got a white chocolate and strawberry cake, and two years ago I made a chocolate explosion cake (see the pic at the bottom - from 2013). But this time, I thought I'd push the boat out a little and try out one of my new Lakeland toys which I'd been given at Christmas.

Coffee Walnut with Buttercream Icing. And Maltesers!

I decided to make him a coffee walnut cake with coffee buttercream icing.This is a very basic cake to make but can pack a wonderful flavoursome punch depending on how much coffee powder you use. I figured I'd need an easy cake to bake as I would be spending a lot of time decorating it - and I only had a few hours from the time I got in from youth group on the Friday until he came home from his friend's birthday party.

I tend to be lazy when it comes to baking cakes. None of this having to use a certain mixing dish or what-have-you. In fact, I don’t even like having to pound butter or spread until it’s soft enough to combine with the sugar. Nah. I just whack half a tub of Flora Light into a large saucepan, and melt it together with the right amount of brown sugar until it is combined perfectly.

When it has cooled down, I add the eggs and continue to put the ingredients together that way. It saves me at least 10 minutes of preparation time. It will revolutionise your cake-baking life, even if it makes Mary Berry faint in horror. And you know what? IT MAKES ABSOLUTELY NO DIFFERENCE TO THE TEXTURE OR TASTE OF THE CAKE AT ALL. 

I also can never be bothered to bake two small cakes to piece together. I use one big cake dish and then when the cake has cooled, I cut it carefully in half with a serrated bread knife. When it's covered with icing, NOBODY KNOWS....

So, here’s the recipe for Coffee Walnut Cake
50g walnut pieces (smoosh them up with a rolling pin to get ‘em small)
250g soft brown sugar
250g soft unsalted butter or Flora Light (plus some for greasing)
200g self-raising flour
3 large eggs
4 teaspoons instant coffee granules, melted into 1 tablespoon of boiling water.
Pinch of baking soda

Combine the ingredients and pour into a large round, well-greased dish. Cook for 40 minutes on 180 or until a knife inserted into the centre comes out clean.

It should be well-risen thanks to the self-raising flour. I know SF flour can make cakes a little dry, but with the extra butter/spread it should not be a problem. Because the cake will rise a lot, it will enable you to have enough leeway to cut it in half later on, when it has cooled, and to top-slice it ready for decorating.

For the buttercream frosting
500g icing sugar
200g soft unsalted butter
4 teaspoons instant coffee powder (again, melted in just 1 tablespoon boiling water)

Mix together until soft and a perfect consistency. When the cake has cooled, use a sharp, serrated bread knife to cut the cake in half carefully, and to cut off the top of the cake to create a smooth, flat base for icing. Set the top half aside in tin foil – you never know when you are going to need it!

Use some of the buttercream frosting inside the cake to create a scrumptious sandwich. The rest needs to be set aside to cover the cake.

For the decoration
One Lakeland gravity cake rod
Chocolate sprinkles
1 bag Maltesers (or any chocolate of your choosing)
Melted chocolate (warm but not hot)

Follow the instructions and stick the rod through the cake. Once it has been positioned into the cake, it is time to ice it.

Spread the buttercream frosting around the cake. Start at the top and work your way down the sides, letting gravity help your spreading and smoothing efforts. This, to me, was the most painstaking task of all and a few angry words were exchanged between me and the spatula. I am sure you will have better success than I did.

Be liberal in your application of the chocolate sprinkles around the cake. Then you’re ready for the Malteser mountain. Simply use a pastry brush to build up layers of sticky chocolate around the rod, and use as ‘glue’ for the Maltesers until they form a peak around the cake rod. Use chocolate to stick the empty packet to the top of the rod and voila! One gravity defying coffee walnut cake.

And yes, it was delicious and yes, I did eat most of the Maltesers off the cake when it had been put away. I tried to help myself but I considered that, at least, I would be helping DH to lose weight by gaining it myself.

Oh - here's the 2013 Chocolate Explosion cake. MMM.

Chocolate explosion cake 2013

Comfort pie

Growing up in the late 1970s and early 1980s, we did not have much money, so mum was always to be found busy in the kitchen, creating filling and delicious dishes for us out of whatever she had in the cupboard or fridge.

One such dish was what I came to call ‘comfort pie’, so-called because to me, it is the best word in tasty cooking on a tight budget – warm, comforting and delicious. And it was always something that whenever I was blue or sick, she would cook for me especially, as a treat. For example, when I once had an awful week at work and went round to her house to see her before I headed off to Bible study, she presented me with a bubbling casserole dish full of comfort pie, its potato ridges in stiff, browned peaks.

It has just three ingredients:
1 tin Corned Beef 250g
1 tin Baked beans
Mashed potato

The corned beef is to be diced up and put into the bottom of a casserole dish. Baked beans are then poured on top of the corned beef, followed by a mound of freshly-mashed potato. For an added taste punch, grate cheese and layer this between the beans and the potato for a dairy surprise.

Put it for 20 minutes in the oven at 180 degrees, and then it’s all ready.

It’s perfect for a budget meal – and can serve four people, together with some peas and carrots. It’s also adaptable enough to be cooked by people who do not have an oven – a recipe that I have shared with some of the people who come to our church’s food bank. Many of them have just a kettle and a microwave in their hostel rooms and do not have recourse to an oven or even a hob top, so this can be perfect for them, too, particularly as it only uses three ingredients, is filling, cheap and easy to make in a microwave.

Instead of having to boil and mash potatoes, they can use Smash – a perfect budget cupboard staple – to top the pie. In a microwave, the pie would take 15 minutes to heat up. Of course, it won’t get that crispy oven-baked texture on top of the mashed potato, but it still works. The best thing of all is that for four people, it can cost as little as 90p per person.

And for those Smash snobs – don’t be too proud to use Smash, or at least keep a tub in your cupboard in case of emergencies. I’ve used this sometimes when I’ve been too lazy to peel potatoes after I come home from work, and it bakes well in the oven. Add some salt, pepper and butter, and dust with paprika, and it creates a gloriously seasoned potato topping, or a base for home-made croquette potatoes, covered with egg and crispy breadcrumbs.

March of the Penguins

I LOVE Lakeland.

I often ask for presents from here because there are often good sales on items I'd like, and I can use them again and again to create wonderful food.

One such thing I treated myself to was a set of stacking star-shape cookie cutters, so that I could create a stack of stars that looked something like this. This photo is from Lakeland's own website as I have not yet decorated and stacked my own stars.

Credit: Lakeland. Star cookie cutters. Beautiful!

Another thing I like about Lakeland is that with certain items they also provide basic and easy-to-follow recipes. So the recipe that came with the star cookie cutters can be found here  or I have reproduced it below.

You will need:
300g unsalted butter, softened
300g caster sugar
2 small eggs, beaten
1 teaspoon vanilla extract - I found that this was not enough so used 2 teaspoons in my Penguin batch
a pinch of salt - I did not use salt; I used slightly salted Flora Light
600g plain flour, sifted - Sifting does not really matter much (sifting is a bit of a Women's Institute-style myth. It's the mixing that does it, not the sifting. However don't use self-raising flour, it makes the cookies too puffy and dry.

How To:
Reheat the oven to 180°C (350°F), gas 4.
Cream together the butter and sugar until light and creamy. Add the beaten eggs, vanilla and salt and mix well. Gradually add the flour and mix until incorporated. Bring together into a dough, divide into 2 balls, wrap and chill for 1 hour.
Roll the dough out on a lightly floured work surface to a thickness of 3-4mm. Dip cookie cutters in flour before each use. You need 2 cookies of each size. Arrange them on prepared baking trays.
Bake the cookies on the middle shelf of the preheated oven for about 12 minutes, or until firm and golden, swapping the trays over if necessary. Leave to cool for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

NOW for the PENGUINS. I do like penguins! I made some last year to adorn the 2014 Christmas Cake  - as can be seen below:

Which way to the South Pole? Penguin alert. Credit: SimoneySunday

Having purchased a cute little penguin cookie cutter from Biscuiteers in Notting Hill a year or so ago, I was keen to try to make iced penguin biscuits this year - but needed a good recipe. I toyed with the idea of gingerbread but I'd already made a gingerbread house and, I liked the basic nature of Lakeland's easy recipe.

So with a few tweaks - as I mentioned - I found it a little too low in flavour for my palate, I added extra vanilla flavouring and a teaspoon of cinnamon to make it a little more punchy. I also reduced the sugar element slightly as the icing itself will be sweet enough.

I used Fondant icing for the black and royal icing for the white, but I think next year I will try to learn liquid icing techniques as this took AGES to shape and cut the icing. I also used a small piping bag of red icing to fill in the beak, and some gold balls for the eyes.

And here are the end results - the march of the penguins.

Hallo mate! @SimoneySunday

Marching onward - the Penguin brigade @SimoneySunday

Tropical fruit cake

One of the (admittedly many) things in life that winds me up is the amount of fresh fruit and vegetables jettisoned routinely in this country.

According to campaign group LoveFoodHateWaste, ordinary households throw away almost 50 per cent of the total amount of food thrown away in the UK.

This approximates to a staggering 7m tonnes of food and drink a year, more than half of which is food and drink we could have eaten.

The group claims that wasting this food costs the average household £470 a year, rising to £700 for a family with children, the equivalent of around £60 a month.

As long ago as 2008, the Institute of Food Research highlighted the appalling waste of fresh fruit and vegetables.

Here are some statistics: 

• 359,000 tonnes of potato goes uneaten every year, including 177,400 tonnes of potatoes thrown away whole and untouched (49%). 
• There are 190,000 tonnes of apples thrown out each year, including 178,800 tonnes thrown away whole and untouched.
• The food that is bought and then thrown away uneaten in the greatest proportion is salad; in the UK 45% by weight of all purchased salad is thrown away (60% by cost). 
• 26% of fresh fruit is thrown away untouched. 

Source: IFR report 2008

With this in mind, I have sought to minimise any waste in my house, going to great lengths to, for example, blanch and freeze vegetables, pulp apples into jams, sauces and puree (which can be frozen) and use up any leftovers to create tasty dishes.

Wasting food costs the average household around £60 a month

Last night, I decided I had seen enough of my remaining top quarter of a pineapple, some sad grapes and sorry-looking figs loitering in my fridge. But instead of throwing them out, I turned them into a delicious Tropical Fruit Cake. A note: I always wash fruit before eating/cooking with it.

Tropical Fruit Cake. Photo credit: SimoneySunday

Ingredients
1/4 slightly less fresh pineapple, finely diced
2 slightly less fresh figs, peeled and then finely chopped
1/2 cup of Raisins (fresh and leftover from the Christmas pudding and Christmas Cake)
Grapes, chopped in half
2 tablespoons of spiced rum
3 cups self-raising flour
250g of Flora Light (slightly salted)
2 cups of Demerara sugar
3 medium eggs
1tbsp of ground ginger

How to
Pre-heat the oven to 180.
Whisk the butter and sugar together until it creates a smooth fluffy paste
Add the eggs and stir well
Add the fruit, rum and ginger and stir thoroughly
Slowly fold in the flour until the batter is mixed well
Put into a pre-greased baking tin (I used a 30cm loaf tin)
Bake on 160-180 (depending on your oven) for 30-40 mins or until a knife inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean*
Leave to cool for 15 minutes, then wrap in silver foil to keep it moist.
Tuck in with a nice cup of tea.

*bear in mind if your knife enters a chunk of pineapple, it will streak, so try stabbing it twice. Go on, it can be quite cathartic. I promise.

The result was a lovely, fruity, spicy cake, soft and moist and crumbly. You can also pretend it is healthy because of the fruit. Ahem. I might also try adding glace cherries next time for some additional lift.

If someone could also please recommend a good camera for food pics, I'd be grateful. I don't currently have a working camera and my Samsung 3S is not great at capturing photos of food or anything remotely close-up. Thanks!

A Lidl Christmas magic

Never underestimate the value of German confectionery at Christmas time!

Having scored this wonderful gingerbread house for FREE, simply because TSB Bank kindly took me to the Biscuiteers last Monday so I could ice and build my own gingerbread house, I needed to adorn the rest of the 'Christmas Snack Table' with some Christmassy goodies.

Biscuiteers Gingerbread House, iced by me @SimoneySunday

Lidl does a wonderful range of coated nuts, soft gingerbread cookies, chocolates, truffles and mini-stollens. The Ferrero Rocher and Pringles also came from Lidl - so it is not just selling brands you do not know, but brands you do know.

I bought a vast array of such goodies for approximately £10.00 on Saturday - including a whole frozen lobster ready for the Christmas Eve lobster bisque (a tradition in our household).

I cannot express how brilliant Lidl is for Christmas goodies - and they make lovely, cheap stocking fillers, too.

Easy Sausage Casserole

Nothing looks sadder than a couple of lonely carrots, half a green pepper or some slightly less crunchy celery left in the fridge. The temptation to ditch is great - but RESIST!

To avoid throwing out vegetables that are still good, even if they are not quite as fresh as they once were, consider turning them into a casserole or hot pot. This is a great way to use up leftover veg.

If you have a slow cooker, you can throw everything in at once and leave it to cook itself while you are out or at work. This can be very cost-effective. However, for people without one of these, creating a casserole can traditionally mean using up a lot of gas or electricity. I therefore created this 30-minute bake as good way of part-roasting the food before turning it into a casserole, so the flavouring is still strong and the vegetables are soft while the meat is well cooked within 25-30 minutes. It might not be traditional, but it is cheap, easy to make, and can be very filling.

Vegetarians can pack out the ingredients by adding two cups of lentils, which will bulk up the dinner so that it is filling. Simply soften the lentils first by boiling for a few minutes in water before adding them to the vegetables. Obviously the vegetable version costs less than the meat version, but for the meat-lovers, here's my recipe for a basic sausage casserole (serves four).

You will need: 
1 pack of sausages. I used Tesco's British Butcher's Cumberland Sausages for £1.50 but you can get cheaper versions. I often buy on a deal and freeze them; defrost them thoroughly before cooking.
2 Carrots
2 Parsnips (or Bell Peppers, Cabbage, Peas, etc)
4 Celery sticks (I buy a whole head/stalk of celery as it lasts longer than pre-cut packaged ones, and it goes further for less money)
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
1 brown onion
Some seasoning - basic/value stock cube, pepper, salt, oregano (I have a huge bag of this from the Greek relatives).
A dash or two of olive oil

How to:
Chop the onion roughly - leave it chunky - and put into a Pyrex or other oven dish with the olive oil. Clean and chop the celery, and add it to the onion.
Clean and cut the carrots and parsnips into thin dials and add to the celery and onion.
Chop up each sausage into half. Add these to the dish.
Add the seasoning.
Put into the oven for about 15 minutes on a 160 heat, so the meat starts to cook and the vegetables start to roast.
After 15 minutes, take out, add the tin of chopped tomatoes, and stir thoroughly. Add two-three tablespoons of water to the mixture, to make sure it is moist and covering all the other ingredients.
Put in for a further 10-15 minutes, depending on your oven, until the sausages are cooked through.

Serve, and enjoy!

Things go wrong... before they go right

In the halcyon days of summer '15, namely the couple of summery days that actually graced the UK this August, I decided to make some healthy salady accompaniments to dinner.

Having had at work a mango salad one day to go with (if you can believe this), a roast squash samosa and way too much rice, I thought I would replicate the salad with some light, poached salmon and vegetables for dinner at home.

I knew I had a mango in the fridge getting a little sorry for itself, I had plenty of spring onions and a brown onion leftover and I had some tomatoes and peppers that I needed to use up. Never throw anything away!

So all I had to buy was a cucumber.

I dutifully washed and diced all the vegetables and started to compose the salad.

Alas it was not to be. The mango was far too soft and it made the whole salad look as if it had been left out all day in the sunshine to melt.

This was the result - still colourful but pretty sorry for itself.

All by myseeelllllf, 

With just 20 mins until the hubby was due home I wanted to perfect it, but how? Sure it tasted okay, but it looked weird and it had a floppy texture.

And then I remembered that a friend of mine in Canada had made a salsa salad with peaches in it. Peaches - I had none of these.

However, I did have a couple of nectarines in the fridge.

So I put the offending salad into a little tub for me to take to work for lunch the next day, and began again with the leftovers - or leftovers of the leftovers that I had been using initially, and swapping the nectarines for the Mango.

The result: much more solid, much firmer.

Ingredients
One FIRM Mango (or 2 Nectarines)
1 brown or red onion, diced
1/2 cucumber, chopped finely
1 yellow pepper, diced
2 tomatoes, diced
Lemon juice (freshly squeezed or from a bottle)
One small chopped red chili pepper
1/2 teaspoon of dried parsley

How to: 
Wash everything carefully
Chop it all up, mix it up, chill and serve
Time: about 10 minutes to prepare

It really is a great way to combine a range of fruit and veg leftovers, perhaps bits that might be too small to use as side-dishes in their own right, so it cuts down on food waste.

As it is a slightly more 'exotic' kind of salad, it looks very swish when presented on the table along with whatever else you are serving, as well as being a healthy alternative to many accompaniments.

The Nectarines Saved the Day. Pic: SimoneySunday

It goes very well with fish, chilli, couscous or fishcakes and is very simple to make.

Utter Peanut Butter Nutter Cookies

Peanut Butter Cookies. Picture Credit: Simoney Sunday

Ever had that urge to eat some amazing, home-made cookies just before you settle down to watch a film at night, but realise with only 20 minutes to go that you don't have any? I get that feeling a lot!

Do not panic, and do not rush out to the local gas station to buy an overpriced pack of preservative-laden biscuits.

Check your food cupboard and fridge first. If you have one medium egg, one cup of white (granulated) sugar and one tub of peanut butter, you're in luck.

This is also gluten-free so is perfect for people who have an intolerance to gluten. However it might not be so good for people who are allergic to peanuts. Well, you cannot have it all. And they do look delicious, oui?

Ingredients
1 Egg (medium or large)
1 Jar of peanut butter (crunchy or smooth)
1 cup of white (granulated sugar)

How to
Mix the egg, peanut butter and sugar in a bowl until you form a paste. I particularly like crunchy peanut butter, but smooth will do.

Get a dessert spoon and use one scoop per cookie on a sheet of greaseproof paper (or a very lightly greased baking sheet). Using a fork, pat the cookies flat first one way, then the other to create a chequered effect (see picture).

All the above takes a maximum of five minutes.

Whack them into the oven at 190 degrees Celcius (or 180 for fan-assisted ovens. This will be gas mark four to five for conventional gas ovens.

Leave for six to eight mins - no more - and take them out. Leave them somewhere out of the reach of smaller people/animals and cool. It takes approximately 10 mins for them to cool enough for you to have a plate of delicious, crunchy on outside, chewy on the inside, cookies.

You could...
For an additional twist, add a spoonful or two of chocolate spread, or chocolate chips for an extra kick.

Rocky Road Easter Cake

Rocky Road Easter Cake. Photo: SimoneySunday

My hubby is not a great fan of chocolate eggs or bunnies. Nor does he rave over marzipan and dried fruit, which means making him Easter eggs and Simnel cakes, while ostensibly appreciated, is futile (I have to eat them myself).

Therefore as he does love eating chocolates and chocolate cakes that are stuffed full with bits, such as brownie squares, cookies and fridge squares, I decided this year to make him a Rocky Road Easter cake. The question was, how should this best be done to look professional enough as a gift?

I did have a round cake mould, plenty of chocolate and plenty of digestives. I always keep stacks of chocolate and digestive biscuits for baking, as well as marshmallows for entertaining the youth group. Sure enough I also had glacé cherries in my cupboard so I set about my fiendish plan.

Preparation time: 30m
Keeps: two weeks in a cool, dry and sealed environment.
Serves: 12 easily, 14 if you are stingy. 2 if you are dedicated to eating it every day for two weeks.

Ingredients
Chocolate (I used Sainsbury's Basics range of chocolate bars, three dark and three milk. This came to about £2.10 worth of chocolate)
1 bag large marshmallows
Half a tub of glace cherries
1 pack of Basics digestive biscuits
1 pack Sainsbury's white chocolate
Various leftover icing decorations from the previous Easter (they keep mostly forever)
A cake mould (ring looks cool but I am sure you could do this with a loaf tin)

How to
I melted all the milk and dark chocolate in a large saucepan on the lowest possible heat.
Once the chocolate was stirred and melted the pot was removed from the heat and I then mashed nearly all the digestives into it using the end of a rounded rolling pin.
Some biscuits fell into my mouth by accident. It was great.
Don't mash the digestives up too much - leave some fairly chunky to give texture and crunch to the finished product.
Cut each cherry into half and stir into the mix.
Cut the marshmallows up (if they are large) into quarters. I found that I had to keep bathing the knife in warm water as it was getting sticky, so I gave up, washed my hands and tore the marshmallows up myself. Some may have fallen into my mouth by accident. I plead the fifth.
Stir the marshmallows into the mix.

Once it is all stirred, spoon into your cake mould. I should have put greaseproof paper in first but I didn't.

Leave to set in the fridge overnight.

Now the next day, if you have sensibly used greaseproof, simply lift it out of the mould. If you didn't, then like me you will have to warm it up a tiny, tiny bit so it melts enough to slide out without being a mess. To do this i left it sitting in a bowl of warm water for five minutes.

Once it is out and on a plate, decorate with melted white chocolate. I drizzled this over using a honey stirrer, from a fair height, and then dotted last year's sugar icing decorations around it in a fairly even pattern, and left it to set.

For the finishing touches, I wrapped it in clear polythene. I had bought a huge roll of this years ago from Woolworths for sweets I was making to put into little teacups for beautiful, unusual birthday presents (I will hunt for pictures and write up the recipe soon) and I still have plenty of this left.

Ready for Easter Morning. Photo credit: Simoney Sunday

A tiny scroll of shiny gold ribbon, an Easter verse from the Bible and some colourful Easter paper cut-outs and voila! A professional looking Easter Rocky Road cake.

And it was delicious.

Cheat Treat!

Blackberry Tart. On a Budget, innit! Credit: Simoney Sunday

I wouldn't normally advocate buying prefabricated pastry cases, but not everyone has the time or the energy to be a domestic goddess - not to mention the fact that getting the pastry case absolutely perfect is a beggar. And it's always good to get something in your store cupboard, just in case.

Many big supermarkets stock pastry cases of various sizes and, when I happened to find a batch in a 'sin bin' - with a 'Use By' date of that very day, I could not help but consider 4 small cases at 89p a bargain.

The thing is, these can be frozen. And frozen they were, until I needed to use them to try to impress the female parental unit with a posh-looking dessert that didn't take me any time to prepare.

This was very, very simple although it looks fantastic. Or would have, if I could take pictures properly

Ingredients
Ice-cream (home made is best - see the recipe here - but this occasion Sainsbury's helped out)
Whipping cream
Blackberries (I normally get these for free by harvesting and freezing but these were from my friend's garden)
Cocoa Powder (I have a feeling this might have been WeightWatchers!)

How To
Whip up the cream (some people put a little icing sugar into it to sweeten it but we don't like things too sweet in our house)
Spoon it into pastry cases
Decorate with some washed and dried blackberries

Waft some cocoa powder over the side of the plate and scoop a ball of icecream
Decorate with some home-grown mint leaves if you're feeling extra (which I was. You should see mum's garden when the mint took over. That was a three-year battle)

And whoop! A professionally presented dessert that takes all of say, 5 minutes (depending on how quickly you can whip that cream).

Champagne tastes, cola budget. What can I say?