Feeling dippy

Here's a great way to up your family's fruit quotient (note - marshmallows count as one of your five-a-day when served in this manner):

No double dipping, please!

White chocolate fondue

200g white chocolate, chopped or broken up

150ml double cream

50g unsalted butter, cut into pieces

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Place all ingredients in a bowl set over a pan of simmering water. Heat and stir gently until they have all melted and you have a smooth sauce.

Serve with pieces of fruit and marshmallows on cocktail sticks - or fondue forks if you are really sophisticated. 

From the Cookbook for Girls by Denise Smart 

Date night

I bought a couple of packets of luscious Medjool dates to get me through my self-imposed sugar ban over Christmas - but the Quality Street got the better of me and the dates got left on the shelf. So I made them into these toothsome crumble bars:

Dates, butter, sugar, oats, flour

Date Crumble Bars

175g plain flour
175g oats
175g butter
50g brown sugar

Filling:
175g dates, stoned and chopped
2 tablespoons water
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 tablespoon clear honey

Heat the oven to 190/gas 5. Put the ingredients for the filling in a pan and simmer gently until the dates are soft. Whizz the flour with the butter and about half the oats until it reaches the fine breadcrumbs stage. Stir in the sugar and remaining oats (for textural reasons). Put half this mixture into an 18cm square tin and pat it down. Spread the filling over it, then top with the rest of the flour mixture. Spread it into an even layer and pat it down. Bake for 35-40 minutes, then cut up while cooling in the pan and remove when cold - or you will be left with more crumble than bar.

Food on sticks

Admit it, you remember parties where the culinary climax was a half grapefruit covered in foil and studded with cocktail sticks containing a cube of cheese and a piece of tinned pineapple. Closely followed by sausages. I have made the cheese and pineapple hedgehog for my own children's parties and let me tell you that unless you get the right type of cheese it's a nightmare. Too crumbly, and the carefully cut cube disintegrates as you begin to thread it on the stick.

The French have a nifty way with a stale baguette and some sticks: Cut the bread into slices, thread them onto a skewer, grill one side, turn over, top with cheese (preferably goat's), grill and serve with a well-dressed salad.

But here, from a warmer continent altogether, is my favourite speared food:

Fragrantly spiced succulent chicken skewers

Chicken Tikka skewers

Serves 2:

2 chicken breasts
1½ - 2 tablespoons tikka curry paste
1 tablespoon lemon juice
2 tablespoons natural yogurt
1 garlic clove, crushed

Mix the paste, juice, yogurt and garlic together in a bowl. Cut the chicken into even size chunks and put it in the bowl, mixing it around well to get an even coating of the marinade. Leave it for an hour (minimum) or overnight. Thread onto skewers and cook under a hot grill, turning half-way through.

I like to mix things up and serve these with a flavoured couscous for maximum taste and minimum cooking time.

Give us this day...

I read recently that you can save about £365 a year by making your own bread. That's a lot of dough (sorry). Whether or not you want to save money or feel smug, I urge you to dust off your bread machine and give it a go. It only takes a few minutes to load the ingredients and press the start button - something I can achieve quite easily between breakfast-time arguments. Do it then, and you can be tucking into warm, fresh baked bread by lunchtime. I've been experimenting with different quantities of white and wholemeal flour, salt and sugar and this loaf seems to be universally well-received. It doesn't keep well, so I suggest slicing and bagging it up on the day of baking, then freezing it.

Which side is yours buttered on?

Light brown bread

1 teaspoon easy-blend yeast

150g wholemeal bread flour

350g white bread flour

2 teaspoons sugar

25g butter

1 teaspoon salt

350ml skimmed milk (or use half water, half milk)

Put everything in the machine in the order listed and you will have a large loaf in 4 hours. Perfect with chunky soup, cheese and pickle, or dipped into a boiled egg.

Jammy!

It's simply a matter of survival - when the temperature drops this low you must hurry home and eat steaming hot jam sponge pudding. This one cooks in the microwave in three and a half minutes - just enough time to get a bowl and spoon out and make a cup of tea to wash it down.

Is your mouth watering?

Steamed Jam Sponge

To feed a greedy two or a moderate 4:

Take an egg and weigh it - mine was 60g. Use that amount of butter, sugar and self raising flour, plus 2 tablespoons milk and about 5 tablespoons jam (I used Bonne Maman strawberry - hence the lumps - cheaper is better here)

Cream the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy. Beat the egg with the milk and add it slowly to the butter and sugar. Fold in the flour. Put the jam in the bottom of a pudding basin, pour the cake batter on top, cover with clingfilm and cook on high for 3 and a half minutes in the microwave. Let it stand for a couple of minutes before turning it out and serving with custard.

Pork Life

I've spent a lot of my life not liking pork. I think it was something to do with the sweet/savoury mental trauma of roast pig plus apple sauce. I used to save the apple sauce til last, being very, very careful not to contaminate it with gravy, and have it as a pre-pudding palate cleanser. Anyway, now that I'm a grown up I love it and can thoroughly recommend the following recipe (adapted from one of Nigella's) which is a quick and delicious combination of pork steaks with mustard, cream and apple juice...

Make a pig of yourself

Mustard Pork Steaks

2 pork steaks

2 teaspoons garlic oil

125ml apple juice

1 tablespoon grainy mustard

75ml double cream

Bash the steaks with a rolling pin. Heat the oil in a frying pan and cook the steaks over a medium-high heat for about 5 minutes a side, or until they have a nice brown crust. Remove them from the pan and keep them warm in the oven while you pour in the apple juice to de-glaze the pan. Let it bubble for a couple of minutes, then stir in the mustard and the cream, and cook for another couple of minutes. Pour over the steaks and eat without delay. Nigella suggests serving with gnocchi; I had mash.

Up-cycled fish

According to a recent report, we throw away 50% of the food we buy. Not in this house, where our fridge is the modern equivalent of the old-fashioned pig bucket, containing leftovers galore. While most families sat down to a succulent roast beast on Sunday, we polished off a variety of odds and ends in the war on waste - including a pair of cod fillets a mere 24 hours past their sell-by date. Only one was eaten, so two days later I up-cycled its twin into tasty fishcakes.

Plenty more fish in the sea

Fish cakes

Mashed potato

Fish, cooked

Spring onions

Sweetcorn

Parmesan, grated

Chopped parsley

Plain flour

While the potatoes are cooking, flake the fish, chop the spring onions and parsley and put them in a bowl with plenty of seasoning and the Parmesan. Mash the potatoes with a little butter and milk (not too sloppy), let them cool for a few minutes, then add them to the bowl and stir well. Shape into rounds, dust with flour and shallow fry in a splash of olive oil heated with a knob of butter. Serve with a poached or fried egg on top.

Be inventive - use tinned tuna/salmon, capers, any leftover veg (chopped smallish), any kind of hard cheese, dill instead of parsley, even ham or cooked bacon.