Every kitchen has a cupboard containing ingredients that are either rarely used, or of such a small quantity that you are left wondering “what could I possibly make out of these?”. Before diving for that phone, or computer to order in takeaways, have a look through the following list for ideas on how to use up those odds and ends that are lurking in your kitchen cupboards!
1. Delicious Fruit Cake Serves 4
1 kg mixed fruit
2 cups fruit juice
2 cups self raising flour
Preheat oven to 125C. Soak fruit in juice for 2 hours. Stir flour into soaked fruit and mix well. Put into large lined baking tin. Bake for 2 hours in the bottom of your oven on 130C. Remove and leave to cool. Put into container or wrap in foil. Keep for 2-3 days before cutting.
2. Easy Pineapple Cake
2 cups self raising flour
1 cup sugar
450g can crushed pineapple
Sift flour into a mixing bowl and combine with sugar. Add pineapple and mix well. Pour into a greased cake tin and bake at 180C for 40 minutes.
(For best results bake in a ring cake tin.)
3. Scones Makes 12
4 cups self raising flour
300ml cream
1 can lemonade
Sift self raising flour into a bowl, make a well and pour in cream and lemonade. Mix to make a firm dough, roll out, cut with a scone cutter and bake in a hot oven until golden brown.
4. Mango, Avocado and Bacon Salad Serves 4
2 large mangoes
2 avocadoes
8 rashers of cooked, crispy bacon
Cube Mangoes and avocados, cut bacon in largish chunks and mix together in a small bowl.
5. Potato Bake Serves 6
6 potatoes
300ml tub of cream
1 pkt French Onion Soup mix
Slice potatoes into 1cm thick slices, place into a baking dish. Combine cream and soup mix, pour over potatoes and bake in oven at 180C for 30 minutes.
6. Sweet and Spicy Chicken Serves 2
6 chicken legs
½ cup of orange marmalade
1-2 tsp chili powder
Preheat oven to 180C. Combine marmalade and chili powder in a plastic bag, add chicken legs and shake until evenly coated. Place chicken on foil on a baking tray and spoon any remaining marmalade/chili powder. Bake for 30 minutes or until done.
7. Baked Fish Serves 2
2 fresh white fish fillets
1 tsp butter
1 lemon
Coat fish with melted butter and then season with salt and pepper. Cut lemon and put slices on fish. Wrap fish in foil and cook in oven for 20 minutes at 180C.
8. Moroccan Salmon Serves 2
2 Salmon Steaks
Macadamia nut oil spray
Moroccan seasoning
Place Salmon on foil on a baking tray. Spray with cooking oil and coat thoroughly with Moroccan Seasoning. Bake at 160C for 15 minutes.
9. Apple Turnovers Serves 8
2 sheets of puff pastry
1 tin pie apple with cinnamon
2 tbs milk
Cut the pastry in quarters. Fill one side of the quarter with pie apple, and then fold into turnovers. Glaze with milk for a golden finish and bake in a hot oven for 10 minutes.
10. Mini Muffins Makes 12
1 cup self raising flour sifted
1 cup thickened cream, not whipped
3 tbs raw sugar
Combine all ingredients and mix well. Pour into mini muffin tray. Bake for 10 minutes at 180C.
Contributor: Maman, Typist: Catriona
#8 == yum!
i wanna try the salmon
no you dont
Excellent List, I’m impressed…can’t wait to try the chicken!
I make one like the potato bake, with sour cream, potatoes, onion soup…
awesome, perfect for lazy cooks like me.
thanks J but i can’t convert Celcius to Fahrenheit
^ If only there was a place online where you could do that :I
Yaji – right on!
I’m gonna give #1 a try sometime soon…defo !
http://www.onlineconversion.com will look after you.
Oh yes. I am slightly hungry now. Damn you list creator!!
-Andrea Carlena Beauman
Oooh, I can’t wait to try the salmon and the potato bake. Yummy! So, Jamie, your sister typed it, did your mom write it?? That is so cool, keep it in the family!!
Angelina – actually, it seems it was *my* sister who typed it
And the list couldn’t have been formulated by my mother, because lettuce soup is not included…one of the abiding culinary memories of my childhood !
I’m gunna try summa these!
Ohh now I have some easy recipes for food fridays at work.
Well now that we have a link to convert Metric and Celcius I can persue some of these recipes.
Great post! In fact I bet I have enough ingredients around the house right now to make a couple of them. I am going to go check it out.
and is a “rasher” of bacon considered a “strip” of bacon?
yesh
To convert Celcius to Farenhite (spelling, I know) the formula is nine fifths times Celcius degrees plus 32 or (9/5 x C) + 32
Brother – yep
kiwiboi: neither is the ‘Peanut Butter Sandwich Meatloaf’ or ‘Stone Soup’ – roflmao.
Stone soup is wonderful. The class at my school makes it every year and reads the book with it. They even did a play with the second graders last year. Too cute.
I think I need the recipe for Peanut Butter meatloaf. lol
Catriona – lol !! And I don’t even want to contemplate the strange combinations involving Vegemite
Speaking of sandwiches…here is another one of my “favourites” :
1. take 2 slices of bread that is bordering on stale;
2. cover each slice with slightly-off butter, preferably trowel it on to the same thickness of the bread;
3. pour on a teaspoon of Watties Tomato Sauce;
4. serve to your children as a wholesome surprise treat for morning play at school, or for lunch.
Hey…another 3-ingredient recipe !!
JwJwBean – no, you don’t want that. Seriously…you don’t !!
JwJwBean: Yeah the Stone Soup was something my little brother and sister enjoyed helping with (Jamie?) but the ‘Peanut Butter Sandwich Meatloaf’…now that would telling!
Kiwiboi…Please I’m at work and I now have coffee splatters all over my computer screen. Oh the memories
I have had meatloaf that was incased in mashed potatoes. Something my brother made from a kids cookbook when we were growing up. If peanut butter meatloaf is similar I think I might pass, but hey having the recipe to threaten my kids with… now come on what kind of mom would I be if I didn’t have food to threaten my kids with?
Catriona – LOL !!
Okay on a serious note. #5 is the tub of cream what we in the states call sour cream? I love potatoes any way I can get them. Sounds like something i have to make tonight.
JwJw – it’s cream like you would use to make whipped cream. Sour cream would work so long as it is not too thick.
JwJwBean…no thats real cream like you put on a dessert, makes a very rich creamy base for the potatoe. Same as the scones, real cream…which by the way are absolutely yummy, though they don’t keep long.
OMG I wanna try almost all of these ASAP!! Starting with the scones, of course … ah, I
HAHA – kiwiboi (#22) you can substitute tomato sauce for 1/20 inch (a suggestion) of jam for MY childhood memories!
Catriona: 24: I was the stone soup fan – I don’t remember Sarah being as keen as me – Maman probably just made it to stop me tantruming
Angelina: You are right – My mother made the choices, my sister did the typing, my brother used it to remind us all about some of our childhood food horrors
jfrater – heh, I also had the pleasure of the jam sandwiches. I guess I had repressed that memory
kiwiboi: hehe – when I see a jar of jam now I gag a little
jfrater – these horrors were not limited to we humans; there is also a bestial dimension to all of this.
Somewhere, there is an old-aged Labrador/Collie crossbreed called Woodstock who is probably watching his great-grandpups enjoying a fine cut of sirloin while he regales them of tales of his childhood when he was fed warm Weetbix 3 times a day
kiwiboi: hehe – I think Scruffy is somewhere doing the same
And, IIRC, a bunch of puppies that were secreted in the little shed out the back 
LOL !
..and the mouse, and the bird (in the shed or under the house.) And poor old scruffy won’t be telling any great-grandcats anything…poor wee thing has been dead for years guys!
…I’m not going to say anymore I’ve said enough, but talking of weetbix..did you ever get buttered weetbix for afternoon tea?
Catriona: hahaha – yes – I had buttered weetbix. No amount of butter was enough to stop you choking. Frankly, I think the tampax company has a lot to learn from Sanitarium! And don’t go there with Scruffy! He may have children we don’t know about who remember him and talk about him! (if you hadn’t noticed, I am still not over it!)
yumyumyum….. gosh, frickin starving now. thanks alot!
I know some people are against store bought cake mixes but with this recipe you cannot tell, I swear-
Applesauce Spice Cake
1 box spice cake mix
Replace all liquid (water and oil) with unsweetened apple sauce
Eggs called for on the box
Mix and bake according to the directions. If you want, serve warm with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
1 pound, Ground Sirloin (or meat of your choice)
1/4 pound Mushrooms (your choice)
The kicker??? That powdered cheese stuff you get with Mac and Cheese!!!!
Great stuff, easy to make, and if she’s not around to see you make it, She’ll be impressed!
I’m trying all of these!
buttered weetbix while Prisoner was on. BTW the butter was thicker than the bread and the jam was thinner than the bread – imagine that delight at lunchtime… Oh whats for lunch? WOW Butter with a spread of jam, and a drop of bread to help it go down!!
sarahj: hehehe – all we need now is Andrew to give his view and the Fraters have represented
Come on!! (Concerning # 10) There are 540421 little grains in 3 lbs of raw sugar. Adding this to the others that come out to 540423 ingredients.
How can you ever expect me to ever enjoy this web site again with such flaws?
That comment was special for you know who.
By the way I will definably try some of these.
When I go to the store I might for once remember a shopping list without writing it down.
But I will probably still write it down and bring it with me just in case.
haha absolutely
Gingerlee; that is an awesome cake, my mom used to make it. We also used to have Tomato Soup Cake, it was like a super-moist spice cake and actually has a can of Campbell’s in it. It would stain the plate orange and tasted divine…I will try and find the recipe, My mom recently gave me all of her collection….
For those poeple who can not do conversions try
typing this into google:
180 centigrade in fahrenheit
BTW: there are other conversions as well (e.g. xxx acres to dunam)
Damn it!! Now I have to find something in my kitchen so I can slay my hunger before I sleep…
csimmons: celsius x 9 / 5 + 32 = fahrenheit
thanks
Question: In #5 is ‘French Onion Soup mix’ a powder or a condensed liquid soup mix?
Question: Tell me what you think about me
I buy my own diamonds and I buy my own rings
The handiest way to do most converions is to use Googles built in conversion calculator.
For example, in google type in
180c in fahrenheit
and it will give you
180 degrees Celsius = 356 degrees Fahrenheit
Lots of conversions work, for example:
100 pounds in euro
or
16 stone in kilos
or
5 miles in centimeters
or
324,653 divided by 568.4
There’s absoloutley no reason to use your brain.
jfrater.
kiwiboi.
catriona.
sarahj.
Thank goodness I didn’t live at your house.
#7 and #8 should have the weight on the fillets/steaks
My wife totaly agrees with me re living at your house. Who would want to cook for 4 ungrateful children.
There seems to be a problem with #4. Either the picture is wrong, or the recipe is flawed and missing a 4th ingredient! The picture clearly shows Lettuce in the salad, which is undoubtedly an ingredient. If the recipe does not call for it, why is it in the picture? Perhaps you need a new pic, or a new #4.