Storecupboard Dinners - Cereal flapjack

Right ok, it's not exactly a 'dinner' but it is made from storecupboard leftovers, so I thought it would count  :)

You know those bits of cereals that get left at the bottom of a packet?  Bits of small stuff and dust?  Not enough to make a decent breakfast so it usually ends up getting thrown out.  Well, no more - make this instead.

Left-over Cereal Flapjack.

What you need:

• 6 oz Butter (or Marg you can cook with)
• 6 oz Golden Syrup
• 6 oz Sugar (brown, white, whatever you have)
• 12 oz Cereals, including porridge oats.
• 2 Tablespoons of flour (any will work)

What you do:

• Melt the butter, sugar & syrup over a low heat in a pan.

• Meanwhile, lightly crush your left over cereals and weigh them. You need 4-8oz ish...  (I used Cheerios, Strawberry Clusters and Cornflakes).

• Make up to 12oz with porridge oats.

• Remove the syrup mix from the heat when melted & stir in the cereals & oats, along with 2 tablespoons of flour.

• Mix well then pour into a greased baking tin.
• If your tin is too large, make a tinfoil 'wall' to stop the mix spreading during baking.

• Bake at gas 6 for 20-25 mins. Cut into pieces while still warm.

• Pile on a plate & watch it magically disappear!

Email me through your Storecupboard Dinner recipes and I will feature them in my blog, or if you prefer add a link to your own blog in the comment box.

Egg-free Cookies

Last time I made fruit cream cookies  (http://soozintheshed.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/tropical-cookies.html)  I got a little sad face staring back at me.  Marie, my DIL2B  (work that one out ;) )  is allergic to eggs and of course there was egg in my cookies.

So I promised to make her some egg free ones.  The mixture I use (with the egg) works quite well, so I thought all I needed to do was to swap the egg for something else that would bind the mix.  Checking out my cupboards I had a tin of condensed milk and a jar of syrup.

I decided on the syrup and added a couple blobs, mixing it in well.

Now, how much would they spread when cooking?  Not too much as it happens, but they did have to be a good golden brown otherwise they were a bit chewy.

I sandwiched them together with all three of these yummy icing pots, made with real fruit juice.

Want the recipe?

• 6oz golden caster sugar
• 8oz margarine
• 12oz self raising flour
• 4 tbsp golden syrup

Beat the sugar and butter together well, chuck in flour and syrup and mix well until fully blended.

Pile onto a greasproof paper lined tray in conker sized blobs, leaving room for a little spreading.

Bake at Gas 4 for around 20 mins, until golden brown.

Leave to cool on the tray, then transfer to a cooling rack.

Sandwich with fruity icing then dust with icing sugar.

As I sandwich the cookies I make this amount otherwise you only end up with about 9 portions. (No good in my sweet-toothed family)

Shona reckons they taste like flapjacks without the oats - must be the syrup.  They are rather sweet though, so not for the faint-hearted  :)

Tropical Cookies

Been to visit some friends today, and you cannot go empty handed can you?

I had picked up some of these yummy Magic Melting icing pots - the tropical one. It is made with real fruit juices and the flavours of mango just ping!

A basic cookie recipe:

8oz butter
5oz caster sugar
1 egg
vanilla extract
10oz plain flour
pinch of salt
Pot of Tropical Magic Melting Icing.

Method:

Cream butter & sugar till fluffy, seperate the egg and add just the YOLK and vanilla essence.  Sift in the flour and salt and stir until a dough forms.  Wrap in cling film and chill in fridge for an hour.

Heat oven to Gas 5, line two (or 3) baking trays with parchment.

Unwrap dough and roll out between two sheets of cling film as it is quite sticky.  Cut with a smallish cutter and place on a tray, it shouldn't spread too much but leave a little space.

Brush with egg WHITE and sprinkle with a little sugar.

Bake for 15-20 mins, leave to cool on the tray, then sandwich together with a generous blob of icing.

Dust with icing sugar.

Hide from anyone called Shona.

Cowgirl Cookie Jars.

Here is a cute little gift idea that I made for some of my friends for Christmas.  Cowgirl Cookie Jars.

First, find a suitable jar - I got these 550ml ones from Asda.

Sterilize the jars by washing well in very hot water, then drying in a hot oven.

I found the recipe HERE, but I fiddled a little with it to make it fit into the jar.

I used 'cups' as it is an American recipe, you can find measuring cups in a few supermarkets now, mine are quite old now but I find I use them a lot.

I mixed the plain flour (1 + 1/3 cups) with a teaspoon of baking powder and a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda in a bowl, then I put half of it into the bottom of a jar.  I then pressed it down quite firmly with the end of a rolling pin - it is necessary to do this otherwise the rest of the ingredients will not fit into the jar.

The next layer was 3/4 cup of porridge oats, I used the larger ones found in the baking aisle of the supermarket.  Again, press them down to compact them in.

Following that was a nice colourful layer of Smarties, at this time of year you can get pink ones in the Christmas Sweetie aisle, I used half a large tube.  When I put them in I used a spoon to push as many as I could towards the edge of the jar.

I topped these with a layer (half a bag) of white chocolate chips - again found in the baking aisle.  I pushed these to the side too, to give a decent looking layer.

Next came a layer of 1/2 a cup of soft brown sugar, this was quite easy to pack down and sunk into the gaps left by the sweeties  :)

Filling up the jar was the final ingredient which was 1/2 a cup of white sugar, when packed this came to the top of the jar perfectly.

Now, just for the remainder of the flour, it's tricky as obviously the jar is full, but there is a little recess in the lid of the jar, so if the flour was piled up like a little pyramid, the lid would push it down to fit the shape - that was the theory and luckily it worked!

Voila!  Cowgirl Cookie Jars, all ready to label and give away.

But of course........ they needed to be tested  :)

So, you empty the ingredients into a bowl (carefully as the flour is likely to spill out when you pop open the jar) and give them a good mix up.  Add a beaten egg and 1/2 cup of melted butter and mix very well.

Roll into balls about 1.5" big and place on a baking tray lined with greasproof paper.  You WILL need to leave plenty of room inbetween the balls as they spread quite a bit.  You should get about 24 balls out of this mixture.

Bake at gas mark 3 for around 15 mins, which should still leave them a little chewy.

Nom them down quickly before the rest of the family finds them  :)