Halloween Chocolate Bark

If your children have been trick or treating, or you stocked up on goodies to hand out yourself, you might find you have an excess of chocolate and sweets left over come November. While it’s perfectly acceptable to still be eating it come January, with Christmas not that far off you might be looking for ways to use up this leftover chocolate and candy. 

Chocolate bark is a good option as it’s easy to make, and fun to do with kids, plus it makes fairly banal sweets or chocolates into something a bit more interesting.

Simply melt some chocolate, spread it over a piece of baking paper in a square cake tin or rectangular baking tray, sprinkle with sweets, chocolates (M&Ms and Smarties work well), popcorn, even broken biscuit pieces, and leave to set in the fridge. When set, break into slabs (you may need to carefully stab with a knife) and enjoy.

For mine I used a baking tray and 200g white chocolate and 100g milk chocolate. I melted both types of chocolate separately in the microwaved and coloured half the white chocolate purple and the other half orange. I swirled the three colours together in the tray and sprinkled over some M&S Hallow-Scream Munch Mix, £3.50 for 300g (I used about 100g). The mix contains mini pretzel pieces, chocolate covered pretzels, green and orange crispies (like little biscuit pieces in a candy coating), popcorn pieces covered in white chocolate and milk chocolate pretzel clusters - though I didn’t use the latter in my chocolate bark as the pieces were a lot larger than the others.

This could be enjoyed as part of a Halloween party or nibbled on while watching your favourite scary movie!

The recipe can be adapted easily for other times of the year such as Christmas, or Valentine’s Day as I did here (this is my other blog if you are interested in parenting posts)! 

Baked (Jacket) Potato Soup - for Leftover Baked Potatoes

I love eating jacket potatoes, especially in winter, but even in summer they can be a particularly nice lunch with sour cream and chives (or something similar), cooling tuna mayo or homemade coronation chicken.

Baked potatoes are also a great barbecue staple, cooked either on the coals or in the oven, as everyone can have their own and top it with whatever they like; they are great even just with butter. But it's easy to cook too many and have some baked potatoes left - here is a great recipe to use up leftover baked potatoes.

You can make a delicious soup with the potatoes that you can top with anything you like and freeze the soup for another day (or take it in a flask to eat at work).

If you want to make this soup from scratch, there's a quicker way than baking a potato in the oven for an hour or more, which you won't want to do on a hot day. Simply simmer a whole potato in a pan of milk for about 20-25 minutes until the potato is tender.

Mash the potato into the soup, or put the potato into a food processor with some of the milk and pulse, then return to the pan and stir in with the rest of the milk. Season to taste.

If you are using leftover potatoes, chop the potatoes and put into a pan of milk so the potatoes are just covered and bring the milk to simmering point. Remove from the heat allow to cool; put the potatoes and some of the milk into a food processor as before then return to the pan and stir through, and reheat if you are eating this now.

 

Serve the soup in bowls and top with whatever jacket potato toppings you liked - eg cooked diced bacon, sour cream and chive or a sprinkling of grated cheese.

Hot Cross Bun Chocolate Bread and Butter Pudding

I had some hot cross buns left over from Easter (in the freezer) and recalled seeing a recipe for bread and butter pudding using hot cross buns so decided to make it a few weeks back as we hadn’t had a pudding for ages, and I was being allowed sugar for 2 days a week (and avoiding it entirely the rest of the week).

I used this recipe from the BBC Good Food website but instead of the cubed marzipan I added chunks from a 100g bar of chocolate. It gave it a lovely flavour and it felt like a real treat!

 

You need:

300ml double cream

600ml milk

4 eggs

100g caster sugar

1.5 tsp vanilla essence

8 hot cross buns

40g soft butter

100g chocolate, broken into chunks

Preheat oven to 170C. Gently heat the milk and cream in a pan. In a separate bowl, whisk the eggs, sugar and vanilla, then gradually add the warm cream.
 

Slice the hot cross buns in half and butter them. Lay half in a shallow oven proof dish (or as many as you can get on the bottom of the dish), sprinkle over some chocolate and pour over half the cream.

Place the remaining halves of bun on top, pressing down gently as you do. Add the rest of the chocolate and pour over the rest of the cream.

 

Bake for 45-50 mins in the oven, then remove and allow to stand for 10 mins. Serve warm.

 

 

I'm sending this to We Should Cocoa, hosted by Choclette of Tin and Thyme.

 

 

 

 

Leftover Sausage Ragu with Spiralized Butternut Squash Noodles

Welcome to my second Spiralizer Saturday! As part of my January health kick I’m going to use my spiralizer for dinner once a week as a way to get myself eating more vegetables, fewer carbs and generally have a healthier meal.

If you have a recipe that can be made using a spiralizer please add it to the linkup at the end of this post.

 

I actually made this recipe a couple of weeks ago to use up some leftover cooked sausages from a new year’s buffet at my fiance’s mum’s house. She is vegetarian so gave us all the leftover sausages to take home! I wanted to find a recipe I could use them in and had the idea of chopping them up and making into a sort of ragu (a meat-based sauce), to serve over spaghetti for my fiancé and with butternut squash noodles for me (he won’t eat butternut squash but I was dying to try it in my spiralizer!). So here’s my recipe:

 

Sausage Ragu with Butternut Squash Noodles – an original recipe from Caroline Makes

 

Serves 2

 

 

Sausages: if standard size, 2-3 per person. If chipolata, you will probably want more. The sausages can be raw or cooked – see instructions below.

Fry Light or 1 tbsp oil

Half an onion, chopped

400g tin chopped tomatoes

Pinch of salt

½ tsp oregano

1 whole butternut squash

 

If you are using raw sausages, chop with scissors and fry them with the onion in a little oil until cooked. If using leftover cooked sausages, fry the onion as above then when the onion is translucent, add the chopped cooked sausage.

 

Put the tomatoes, salt, oregano and 100ml water in the pan and simmer until the sauce has reduced.

 

 

 

Meanwhile peel the butternut squash and cut the ends off so each end is flat. Place in the spiralizer and choose whether you want thin spaghetti style noodles or thicker, fettucine style – I went for the thicker ones for a change as I hadn’t done that before.

 

There are various ways you can cook spiralized veg - boil, or rather blanch, as they only take a couple of minutes; fry in Fry Light or similar, or oven bake. I already had the oven on as I was serving my fiancé's ragu with spaghetti and doing him garlic bread as well so laid out the butternut squash noodles on a baking tray, sprayed them with Fry Light and roasted them in the oven for about 15 minutes. They turned out really well.

Serve the ragu over the top and enjoy.
 

 

If you have a recipe that can be made using a spiralizer please add it to the linkup below.

 

 

Slow Cooker Ham and Potato Soup

Just before Christmas I made slow cooker ham in Cherry Coke which was delicious. I deliberately cooked too much ham so I would have some left for another recipe the next day; if you have leftover ham from Christmas this is a great way to use it up (and any leftover potato and veg you have as well).

 

The quantities are easily adjusted depending on how much leftovers you have to use and how many people you are serving so my recipe is more of a rough guide.

I used:
2 cups leftover cooked ham, chopped
1 pork stock cube (you could also use chicken or vegetable)
1 onion, chopped
1 carrot, chopped (I used a raw carrot but you could use leftover cooked veg)
1 cup leftover mashed potato, cooked (you could also use leftover boiled or roast potatoes, or raw potatoes cut into small cubes)
1 cup milk
1/2 cup sour cream (you could also use leftover single or double cream)

Place all the ingredients in your slow cooker apart from the milk and cream, and add enough water to cover the veg.

Cook on high for 3 hours or medium for 5-6 hours.

When ready, take about half the soup out of the slow cooker and blend until smooth in a food processor.

 Return to the soup and mix in so it still has some chunks of meat and veg. Add the milk and cream and serve. You can add more water if you want the soup to be thinner but I liked it as it was.

I'm sharing this with the Slow Cooker Challenge, hosted by Lucy aka Baking Queen 74 as the theme is Christmas.

I'm also sending this to the No Waste Food Challenge hosted by Jen's Food as this recipe uses all sorts of leftovers.

Marbled Chocolate Banana Bread

 

 

I’ve already described how I used up some soft bananas from a fruit box we were sent at work in this banoffee pie with a chocolate cornflake base. There were actually more bananas left over and I’ve always wanted to make banana bread but never got round to it (the fact that I don’t like banana also puts me off!). As I have mentioned before, once a month I spend a day in the office of a design agency that we work with to produce a particular internal project and it’s usually a very long day.

 

As I spend so much time with them, and a couple of them end up having to work late due to this project, I’ve gotten into the habit of taking cake. It seemed a good idea because I have a small team at work and people don’t want to eat cake all the time, so this way I had a new audience – one who wasn’t bored of cake. They were very appreciative so I’ve now made cake every time I’ve been to their office. This time was great fun – not long after I had arrived, I overheard a conversation between two of the team that they were hungry and didn’t have any food in the office. I turned around and innocently remarked “well I did bring cake” – the look on their faces was priceless!

 

I knew there would be enough hungry people in the office to eat the cake that I could make banana bread and it didn’t matter if I didn’t like it. As it was, it tasted really good – I didn’t want a whole slice as the banana flavour was quite strong but it was lovely and moist and the addition of chocolate was lovely. I took inspiration from this recipe but did make it differently.

 

Marbled Chocolate Banana Bread – an original recipe by Caroline Makes

 

Makes one 1-litre loaf cake

  

 

You need:

¾ cup caster sugar

2 ripe bananas

½ cup crème fraiche

2 eggs

2 cups self-raising flour

4 tbsp cocoa powder

 

Preheat oven to 180C.

Mash the bananas and cream with the sugar, then add the crème fraiche and eggs. Fold in the flour.

Separate the mixture into two bowls and add the cocoa powder to one bowl.

 

 

Grease a loaf tin and spoon in the chocolate banana cake mixture, then spoon the plain mixture on top. Use the spoon to swirl the two around – take a spoonful of the bottom layer and bring it up to the top, twisting as you do so. Repeat this along the length of the tin.

 

 

 

Bake in the pre-heated oven for 50-60 minutes, testing with a skewer to see if it is cooked through. Allow to cool in the tin and then turn out.

 

 

This cake slices really well and because there is no frosting, it’s something you can wrap up and take on a picnic or in your lunchbox for work. It was really moist and the chocolate flavour went perfectly with the banana and considering that I don’t even like banana, I would say this was a success!

 

As I used up old bananas I'm sending this to the No Waste Food Challenge, hosted this month by Foodie Quine on behalf of Elizabeth's Kitchen Diary.

 

Turkey Mince and Potato Wedge Hash

I created this recipe to use up some leftover cooked potato wedges which I didn't want to throw away. I also had some turkey mince in the fridge which needed using up so I decided to make the mince into meatballs. At the last minute I wasn't sure if that would be enough so I cut up a few sausages and threw them into the frying pan as well, along with some onion.

I then added some passata from a carton as well as salt and pepper and a pinch of chilli flakes.

I then added the cooked potato wedges to heat through, and sprinkled some grated cheese on top.

Serve with some salad or green veg.

This was really tasty and a good way to use up leftovers. I think you could also use leftover turkey from your Christmas dinner!

Ecuadorian Potato Cakes with Peanut Butter Sauce

Quite a strange flavour combination, I hear you say... and you would be right, but it does taste good!

I came across this recipe for the simple reason that I was googling recipes from countries participating in the World Cup and this was one of the first ones I found for Ecuador. It sounded interesting, so I thought why not..... I wasn't overly impressed by the potato cakes themselves but the flavour combination with the peanut butter was a lot better than I expected.

All quantities are rough as I was making plain mashed potato for my boyfriend at the same time and used half of it for these llapingachos, or Ecuadorian potato cakes. I adapted the recipe a little.


For the potato cakes:
around 3 large or 6 small white potatoes, enough for 2 people, boiled and mashed then allowed to cool
half an onion, diced
1 tbsp oil
1 egg yolk
1/2 cup grated cheese
 1/4 green pepper, diced

For the peanut sauce:
half an onion, thinly sliced
1 cup milk
1/4 cup smooth peanut butter
salt, pepper


Boil the potatoes and then mash. You need them to be cool enough to handle so either make these an hour or so before your meal or mash them the day before.

Start making the peanut butter sauce at the same time as the potato cakes- see below.

Fry the onion and green pepper in the oil then put in a large bowl with the mashed potato. Keep the frying pan on the stove as you will use it in a minute. Add the egg yolk and grated cheese and mix well. Using either a wooden spoon or your hands, take a large spoonful or handful of the mixture and press down into the frying pan. Cook for 5 minutes on both sides until browned.

To make the peanut sauce, place the sliced onion and milk in a small pan. Bring the milk to a simmer and simmer gently for ten minutes to infuse the milk with the onion flavour.

Remove from the heat and strain to remove the onion then stir in the peanut butter. Return to the heat and bring to the boil, stirring, until the mixture thickens, which will only take a couple of minutes.

Spoon the peanut sauce over the potato cakes to serve.

I'm sending this to Chris at Cooking Around the World who has an innovative blog challenge based on the World Cup. Ecuador is playing tonight hence the recipe!

The Trussell Trust and foodbanks

I try hard to use up leftovers and come up with frugal recipes, but I am in a very lucky position that I always have more than enough to eat. Sadly, food poverty is a problem even in this country, and this month's Credit Crunch Munch has asked us to draw attention to the issue.

The Trussell Trust works with local communities to combat poverty that believes everyone has a right to have food on their plate, dignity, skills, a chance to work and hope for the future. Their motto is "restoring dignity and revising hope". The charity is based in my hometown of Salisbury and its UK foodbanks have been going since 2004 though it is only over the past few years that I have become aware of their work. It was set up by Carol and Paddy Henderson and named after Carol's mother Betty Trussell, initially helping homeless children in Bulgaria. But then when they were contacted by a local Salisbury mother asking for help to feed their children, they started looking into the issue of food poverty in the UK and started a foodbank from their garden shed with the idea of providing three days' worth of emergency food to people in crisis.

I think this is really important to point out- the Trussell Trust doesn't just work with homeless people but also those who might need a hand just for a couple of days. For instance, people who are made redundant with little notice, or who are on a low income and receive a large bill. Or those like a friend of mine who benefited from the generosity of the Trussell Trust when her benefit payments were late.

Vicky blogs at Single Mother Ahoy and I have her permission to share a couple of her blog posts with you. In this post she explains why she initially thought the food banks were not for people like her, as she didn't really need it, but then was persuaded by her Home Start coordinator that she could benefit from some basic staples while she was waiting for her benefit payment, which had been delayed. She received nappies and chocolate as well as basic food items. I think Vicky makes the point really well that many of us could be in a situation where we need a little help every now and then, and that if we are lucky enough to not be one of those people, maybe we should consider donating to the foodbanks. Here's another blog post Vicky wrote on the Trussell Trust; I encourage you to check out her blog about the trials and tribulations of being a single mother, which is upbeat and interesting and also tackles some important issues.

Here are some facts about the Trussell Trust, taken from their website:
- 13 million people live below the poverty line in the UK
-In 2012-2013 foodbanks fed 346,992 nationwide.  
- Foodbanks also help prevent crime, housing loss, family breakdown and mental health problems 
- All food is donated by the public and sorted by volunteers. Frontline care professionals like doctors and social workers identify people in crisis and issue a voucher for a food box.
- Each food box contains a minimum of three days of nutritionally-balanced, non-perishable food.
                        
Here's how you can help:

Donate via this website or by phone or cheque either as a one-off or on a regular basis. The Archbishop of Canterbury is leading a campaign to encourage people to donate 10% of what they are spending this Christmas to the Trussell Trust.

If you are in Salisbury or the surrounding areas, you can also donate clothing to the Trussell Trust's charity shops. I will be in Salisbury over Christmas and will definitely stop by one of the shops.

You can also donate non-perishable food directly to your local foodbank; you can see a map here.

Fundraise for the Trussell Trust; you can see plenty of ideas here.

Volunteer- there are all sorts of ways you can participate. You can help out at a supermarket to collect food or work at the foodbank sorting the donations, or sell items on Ebay and Amazon to benefit the Trussell Trust. If you are aged 17-21 you can even volunteer overseas at a summer camp run by the Trussell Trust in Bulgaria!

Shoebox appeal - as mentioned above, the Trussell Trust also does a lot of work in Bulgaria and asks people to fill a shoebox with small gifts and drop it off to them in Salisbury, for them to distribute to children in Bulgaria. If you're not near Salisbury, you can donate money and they will put together a shoebox for you. The deadline for this year's appeal has now passed but it's definitely something I will keep an eye out for next year.

Reduce food waste
This isn't specifically something you can do to help the Trussell Trust but I can't really talk about food poverty while being wasteful myself. We all have a tendency to over indulge at this time of year so here are a few suggestions and things to think about.

- Do you really need all those tins of Celebrations and Quality Street and bowls of nuts and crisps on your table this Christmas, when some people struggle to afford the basics? How about for every £5 tin of Miniature Heroes or the like that you buy, donate the equivalent amount of money to the Trussell Trust?

- Do your best to minimise waste when you are cooking. Only buy what you need, but also think about what is most cost effective. For instance, buying a pack of chicken portions and freezing the rest, or buying something on 'buy one, get one free' and if it will go off before you can use it, team up with a friend or relative to split the items between you.

- Cooking a large meal in one go, such as a casserole or big pot of chilli, and then freezing the other portions saves both time and money and is much healthier to take out the freezer when it's late than microwaving a ready meal.

-Don't be afraid to use up leftovers. Some people are food snobs, to put it bluntly, and would rather bin any leftovers than put them into tupperware or the freezer. I have several recipes on my blog where I have used up leftovers (though they are not all labelled as such); I also work in an office that has microwaves for staff use so I frequently take leftovers from dinner into work for my lunch the next day. Check out Credit Crunch Munch, hosted by Helen at Fuss Free Flavours, for loads of fantastic ideas for thrifty meals that won't break the bank and often use leftovers; I also recommend this blog hop from Jen at Blue Kitchen Bakes to get ideas on using up leftovers from a roast dinner.

Thanks to Helen at Fuss Free Flavours for suggesting we turn our attention to the Trussell Trust for this month's Credit Crunch Munch challenge. I'm going to make a donation online to the Trussell Trust and visit one of their charity shops when I am in Salisbury over Christmas. I will also do my best to not waste any food over Christmas and remind other people that even if they are catering for a crowd, there's no need to buy twice as much food as they need and throw half of it away. What are you going to do?

Simple Thai Green Beef Curry

 

 

This is more a suggestion than a recipe but it's a good way to use up leftovers from a roast that might not occur to you. I had a joint of beef that I had cooked in the slow cooker a day or two earlier and there was a lot left over:

 

I decided to make a Thai green curry. You can make the curry paste from scratch and I will have a go one day, but in the meantime for a quick midweek dinner, I cheated and used a jar of Thai green curry paste. You can add whatever vegetables you like to this; green peppers are good, and I think butternut squash or green beans would work well, though I was making this for someone who didn't like any of those! So all I did was heat some Fry Light in a frying pan and add a tablespoon of the Thai green curry paste, then half a can of coconut milk and heat through.

Slice the beef, add to the pan and heat through.

Serve with rice

Jen from Blue Kitchen Bakes hosts an ongoing blog challenge asking "how do you use up leftovers from a roast?" so I am sending her this suggestion. You could actually use any leftover roast meat or even roast vegetables in this curry.

Chris at Cooking Around the World hosts a monthly blog challenge asking bakers and cooks to make something from a particular country each month. This month is Thailand so my Thai Green Beef Curry fits the bill.