Ice Cream for Breakfast!

I have found writing a cooking book to be a little fattening - the combination of having to "test" recipes by eating the results and sitting on my bottom all day has had a spreading effect. 

Luckily I have found the perfect antidote - proofreading.  I was on what, to me at least, seemed a tight deadline so forgot to eat and burnt off extra calories by stomping about a lot and talking to myself.  

So having sent the proofs off yesterday I had a rather luxurious and celebratory (albeit unseasonal) breakfast this morning - homemade Blueberry Ice Cream (made using my easy no churn ice cream recipe) with granola. Blueberries and granola are both considered healthy choices, after all!

Because of this I then ate a modest lunch ...

~  Menu  ~

Italian Herb Cornish Gouda on Toast

A small bowl of dipping soup

Glass of Red

You may remember I wrote about Cornish Gouda earlier in the month - lovely stuff and as I mentioned the Italian Herb variety is particularly good toasted.  I had a modicum of spicy tomato and bean soup leftover from last night so used this to dip my cheese on toast.  All very satisfying. 

For more ideas for leftover soup, some quite interesting, see here.

News from the Future

My aforementioned book was published in March, 2013. Originally titled The Leftovers Handbook a second edition is now available and is called Creative Ways to Use Up Leftovers.  In it I give all the information, ideas, recipes, handy hints, cook’s treats, storage info, ideas of what goes with what that I can think of for over 450 possible leftovers. 

Read more here!

Brown Sugar Doo Dahs from Pastry Scraps

~  Menu  ~

Pastry!

Glass of Red

Clotted Cream Ice Cream and a Doo Dah

I made my real man a steak and kidney pie the other day, as one does, using bought in puff pastry (because it's only worth making your own in exceptional circumstances - if at all).  I bunged the rest of the packet and the trimmings in the fridge so was not that surprised to find them in there today.

I recently bought some Cornish Gouda to try - I do like a bit of cheese, me. There were several to choose from and I selected the Semi-Mature and the Italian herb varieties.  Both delish.  In fact I played a little with the herby cheese yesterday and find it to be not only a good nibble but also toasts very well.  I had it on toast but it would make a fine Dutch Pizza.

Today I made two little Cornish Gouda and Leek Pasties, 2 styles of pinwheels with the same filling and some Brown Sugar Pastry Doo Dahs.

I then ate almost all of them for lunch!!!

I have written more about the Gouda and the pasties recipe here ... 'Say Cheese! on Cornwall Community News.

For the pinwheels I wanted to compare the results of either slicing before cooking or cooking in the roll and then slicing.  I find I prefer the second method.

It is, however, the Brown Sugar Doo Dahs which pleased me most.  

All I did was ...

~   Collect all the scraps from the above items and munged them into a lump.

~   Flattened the lump and added a demi-handful of soft dark brown sugar.

~   Re-munged everything together to distribute the sugar.

~   Rolled into a ball, elongated it a bit and sliced it.
~   I baked the result with the pasties and pinwheels.

I ate one for lunch pudding with a modicum of homemade Clotted Cream Ice Cream the recipe for which is a doddle but I'm not going to tell you how to make it here!  

I'm not just being mean, I made it using my very easy no churn, no ice cream maker method which I have written about in my book Luscious Ice Creams without a Machine.  

It is a very easy method and can be varied to make all sorts of ices (100+ recipes in the book) but there is lots of useful ice-cream making info in it too which will help with making the above Clotted Cream Ice Cream

For more ideas for leftover pastry see 10 Interesting Ways to Use Leftover Pastry Scraps plus a Boring One

In other news ...

As you may know I went Up London last week for a publicity meeting about my forthcoming book, The Leftovers Handbook.  Now all sorts of things are starting to happen which explains, I hope, the slight hiatus in my blogging.  Sorry about that.

News from the Future ...

My book was published in March, 2013. A second edition is now available and is called Creative Ways to Use Up Leftovers.  In it I give all the information, ideas and recipes I can think of for over 450 possible leftovers. 

Read more here!