Category Archives: Freezer Friendly

May31

Cheese & Bacon Muffin Bites

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I really can’t tell you how much I love this cheap, versatile and easy recipe. These cheese and bacon savoury muffins are flavoursome, light and fluffy and quick as can be to make. I have used this recipe for a variety of purposes, including: a sugar-free and filling morning tea for the kids’ lunch boxes, mini-muffin sized ones for church morning teas and regular muffin sized numbers to pull out of the freezer to eat with soup (they freshen up beautifully after a few minutes in the oven). Unlike lots of savoury muffins these aren’t heavy and scone-like, they’re puffy and light. If you’d like to add other things such as grated carrot and zucchini, this recipe can certainly handle it if you add a little more milk to your mixture (the mixture should be quite a wet mixture that’s not over-mixed). When I made the ones pictured, I had little bits of un-eaten cheese in the fridge (cast-offs of swiss cheese, parmesan etc…) and so I used them all up to total the cheese component. The end result was a yummy mix of cheese flavours that would have otherwise ended up in the bin. These work really well as plain cheese muffins too, just leave out the bacon.

  • 1 1/2 cups grated tasty cheese
  • 200g bacon, thinly sliced
  • 2 cups plain flour
  • 4 teasp baking powder
  • 1/4 teasp salt
  • 1/4 teasp dry mustard (if you don’t have dry, just use dijon or whatever you’ve got in the fridge)
  • freshly ground pepper to taste
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 cup milk
  • 1/4 cup sesame seeds (optional)
  • chopped herbs such as spring onion, dill or parsley (optional)
  1. Preheat the oven to 200 degrees and grease a 12 hole muffin pan using cooking spray
  2. Place grated cheese and bacon in a large bowl. Sift in flour (or not, if you couldn’t be bothered), baking powder, salt, mustard and pepper. Add herbs and sesame seeds if desired (or save the seeds to sprinkle on top).
  3. Lightly beat eggs and milk together in a jug. Make a well in the middle of the flour mixture and add the eggs and milk. Mix together gently using a knife with a cutting action so as not to over-mix.
  4. Place one heaped dessert spoon of mixture in each muffin hole and bake for 12-15 mins until muffins spring back when lightly touched. Makes 12.
May28

Hearty Chicken and Vegetable Soup

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Katrina put me onto this soup recipe a few weeks back and I thought I’d give it a go today. I tried it today because we’ve got a big week ahead (one of our kids is having their tonsils and adenoids out tomorrow), I wanted a meal to give away and I wanted to put the rest in the fridge for the number of lunches and dinners we’ll need quickly in the days to come. For all these reasons, I doubled the quantities and I really enjoyed the ease of this recipe – it only took around 20 minutes of peeling and chopping before sticking it on the stove to simmer. The ingredients list tells you to use chicken lovely legs, but today at my butcher, drumsticks were on special and lovely legs were not. I decided the saving in cost was worth the 5 extra minutes to remove the skin from each drumstick, and seeing as the recipe requires the removal of bones, I figured it didn’t matter that each leg was not shortened. The end result was yummy, full of good meat and healthy vegetables. Total cost, less than $8 and feeds 6-8. Thanks for the link, Katrina and thanks taste.com for the recipe and photo.

  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 leek, halved, washed, thinly sliced
  • 2 garlic cloves, crushed
  • 1 large carrot, peeled, diced
  • 2 sticks celery, diced
  • 2 small zucchini, diced
  • 1 swede or turnip, peeled, diced
  • 1 1/4 cups dry soup mix, rinsed
  • 8 cups chicken stock (I use powder cause it’s cheaper)
  • 1kg skinless chicken lovely legs (or drumsticks)
  1. Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add leek and garlic. Cook, stirring, for 2 minutes or until soft but not coloured. Add carrot, celery, zucchini and swede. Cook for 2 minutes. Stir in soup mix, stock, chicken and 1 cup cold water. Increase heat to high. Bring to the boil.
  2. Reduce heat to low. Simmer, partially covered, stirring occasionally, for 1 hour or until soup mix and vegetables are tender.
  3. Remove chicken legs from soup. Allow to cool slightly. Remove meat from bones. Roughly chop chicken meat and add to soup. Season with salt and pepper. Ladle soup into warmed bowls. Serve with bread if desired.
  • Packet dry soup mix is a combination of split peas and lentils. You can find it near the chickpeas in the supermarket.
May23

Pie Makers – an unlikely but helpful appliance

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A good friend put me onto the wonders of these things a few years ago, but it was only last year that I bought the one pictured above from K-mart for only $10. While it’s not the sort of appliance I use every day, it’s been such a handy thing for hospitality and family meals. With one of these you can turn left-over amounts of casserole, stroganoff and bolognese into yet another dinner, for only the cost of the ready-rolled puff pastry. If I’m trying to be a good mummy I will then serve each family member a pie with three steamed veg on the side – so it’s not too unhealthy. Pies that come out of these machines can be frozen and reheated later and if you keep a can of apples in your pantry, it’s really not too hard to whip up a dessert of hot apple pie for whoever you’re eating with. If you’re making pies for a crowd they can be kept warm in a low oven while the next ones are cooking in the pie maker, but you will find this process faster if you buy the Sunbeam machine that allows you to cook four at once (I couldn’t be bothered because the K-mart one was so cheap!). Finally, I like these machines for stretching meals out – one family size casserole all of a sudden feeds two families easily for not much extra cost, making homemade pies a great meal to give away.

May21

Bill Granger’s Blueberry Tea Cake

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We’ve had another birthday in our neck of the woods lately – that of a wonderful servant hearted sister in Christ – so I wanted to make her a birthday cake, and thought this one looked as if it would be something she’d like. I was really thrilled with the taste, the sheer size of it (makes enough to fill a 23 x 33cm baking tin) and the beautiful look of the finished product. I’m a bit of sucker for cream cheese icing and this recipe coped beautifully with my using the homebrand punnet of it for just $2. If you’re more pressed for time, or would like to further reduce the cost of this already affordable cake, Smiley Bill suggests an optional icing made simply from icing sugar, lemon zest and lemon juice. Total cost $8, serves 18.

  • 210ml sour cream
  • 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda
  • 180g butter, at room temperature
  • 330g caster sugar
  • 2 tsp finely grated lemon zest
  • 1tsp vanilla extract
  • 3 medium eggs
  • 250g blueberries (frozen is fine)
  • 375g plain flour
  • 1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1. Preheat the oven to 180C/Gas 4. Grease a baking tin and line with baking paper
2. Mix the soured cream and bicarbonate of soda and leave to sit for 5 minutes
3. Beat the butter and sugar together in a bowl until light and creamy. Add the lemon zest and vanilla and beat
4. One at a time, beat in the eggs, then mix in the soured cream mixture until evenly combined
4. Put the blueberries into another bowl and toss with a little of the flour. Sift the rest of the flour and baking powder over the cake mixture and fold in, until just combined. Gently fold through the blueberries
5. Spoon the mixture into the prepaed tin and bake for 45-50 mintues, until a skewer inserted into the entre comes out clean. Leave to cool slightly in the tine for 10 minutes, then turn out and cool on a wire rack.

Cream Cheese Icing

  • 250g cream cheese
  • 100g butter at room temp.
  • 1tsp grated lemon zest
  • 1tsp vanilla extract
  • 250g icing sugar, sifted

  1. To make the frosting, beat the cream cheese, butter, lemon zest, and vanilla in a bowl until light and fluffy, then mix in the sugar until smooth. Top the cooled cake with the frosting.
May18

Donna Hay’s Oven Baked Parmesan Risotto

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I first came across this recipe in Donna Hay’s Instant Entertaining and it’s now one of my favourites for large group catering, freezing for later or giving away when someone needs a meal. It’s such a hands-off recipe and is so versatile, allowing you to add whatever flavours you like. Tonight I’ve added chicken, sun-dried tomato and mushroom, though I’m keen to try it with ham, roast pumpkin and pine nut. The possibilities here are endless, so go with whatever you like or what needs using up in your fridge. For this variation, I added the sun-dried tomato strips to the stock and rice at the beginning so that they were nice and tender to eat and allowed about 50g of chicken per person. Total cost less than $10 and these quantities feed 12.

  • 3 cups arborio rice
  • 8 cups chicken stock (I use powdered, reconstituted with boiling water)
  • 2 cups finely grated parmesan cheese
  • 80g butter
  • salt and pepper
My additions
  • 500-600g chicken thigh fillets
  • 1 small jar sun-dried tomatoes (cut into strips)
  • half a bag of mushrooms, sliced
  • parsley and or shallots (if you have them)
  1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
  2. Place rice and stock (and sun-dried tomatoes) in a large roasting dish and stir to combine. Cover tightly with foil or a lid and bake for 45 mins or until most of the stock is absorbed.
  3. While the rice is cooking, cook up whatever add-in elements you like (in this case, fry the pieces of chicken and saute sliced mushrooms).
  4. Pull rice out of the oven, stir in the parmesan, butter and salt and pepper. Stir for 3-4 minutes until the risotto is thick and creamy. Add in extra elements and stir again. Add extra flavour with a handful of finely chopped parsley and spring onion. Serve with a side salad or top with steamed greens.
May15

Farmhouse Chicken Pie

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I just love this delicious recipe! It’s a regular in our house because it’s full of healthy vegetables and due to the chicken and pastry involved, the kids happily demolish it. Originally a Woman’s Weekly recipe, I adapt it a little to include carrots and whatever vegetables happen to be rapidly going off in my fridge. Feel free to use any cut of chicken you like. We tend to buy a barbecue chicken for lunch after church on Sundays, and then use what remains of it for chicken pie on Monday night. This recipe is not at all difficult and it’s a good one to give away because it’s all in just the one dish. It takes quite well to being frozen (if you freeze it before cooking the pastry), and so makes for an easy dinner after a big day. These pies can also be made in ramekins for good portion control and a dainty look or, at the other end of the spectrum, in disposable foil oven trays for camps or giveaway meals.

  • olive oil, enough to cook chicken in
  • 60g butter
  • 3 cups/400g chicken thigh or breast fillets, diced or a whole shredded BBQ chook
  • 1 clove garlic, crushed
  • 1-2 onions, diced
  • 1 can corn kernels, drained
  • 1 carrot, diced
  • 1 red or green capsicum, diced
  • 1/2 head broccoli, cut into tiny florets
  • 1 tablespoon fresh parsley, chopped (if you have it)
  • freshly ground black pepper and salt to taste
  • 1-2 sheets of frozen puff pastry, defrosted
  • 1/3 tablespoons plain flour
  • 1 3/4 cup chicken stock or white wine
  • 1/4 cup milk or 1 egg for wash on top of pastry

Heat butter in a large saucepan until melted, add the chicken pieces and saute for 2-3 minutes and remove from pan. Add to empty pan: garlic, onions, broccoli, and carrot and cook for approximately 5 minutes, or until vegetables have just started to soften. Add drained corn and diced capsicum, then quickly remove the vegetables from the pan and set aside in a bowl until required.

To make the sauce that binds it all together: Return pan to the heat, add the butter and flour and mix to form a paste.  Pour in the chicken stock gradually, whisking constantly to incorporate the roux. When sauce has thickened, add the chicken and vegetables to combine. Place this pie filling in the bottom of an oven proof dish big enough for 6.

Top the pie filling with puff pastry and brush the top with an egg or milk wash. Bake in a preheated 220°C oven for 10 minutes, or until pastry has risen and is golden in colour. Serve in the centre of the table with crusty fresh bread.

May13

White Chocolate Mudcake – any size you need!

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Originally given to me by my mother in law, I can’t tell you how much I love this handy recipe! The white chocolate mud cake that results is moist, not too rich and stores well for ages even if you don’t freeze it – though it does freeze very well. Here you’ll find the quantities for almost every kind of cake tin you might need to use, which is just terrific. Finally, the other great thing about this recipe is that it is just a melt and mix cake – no creaming butter and sugar. Even though white chocolate adds to the cost of the cake, the cost of this recipe is still quite reasonable, especially compared to store-bought cakes (and this one is much, much nicer). Today I’m using this versatile recipe for my daughter’s birthday cake – she’s turning 3 tomorrow!

  12 cmround 15 cmround 17 cm round

15 cm

square

17 cm

oblong

 20 cm round 22 cm round

19 cm

square

 15 cm round

23 cm

square

 28 cm round

30 cm

heart

28×34 

 30 cm round

28 cm

square

 30 cm square


Butter

 85g 125g 165g 250g 335g 375g 500g 625g 750g

White

Choc

 45g 75g 100g 150g 200g 225g 300g 375g 450g

Caster

Sugar

 2/3 cup 1 cup 1 1/3 cups 2 cups 2 2/3 cups 3 cups 4 cups 5 cups 6 cups

Milk

 1/3 cup 1/2 cup 1 cup 1 1/2 cups 2 cups 2 1/4 cups 3 cups 3 3/4 cups 4 1/2 cups

Plain

Flour

 1/2 cup 3/4 cup 1 cup 1 1/2 cups 2 cups 2 1/4 cups 3 cups 3 3/4 cups 4 1/2 cups

SR 

Flour

 2 tbs 1/3 cup 1/3 cup 1/2 cup 2/3 cups 3/4 cups 1 cup 1 1/4 cups 1 1/2 cups

Vanilla

 1/4 tsp 1/2 tsp 1/2 tsp 1 tsp 1 tsp 1 1/2 tsp 2 tsp 2 1/2 tsp 3 tsp
Eggs 1 1 1 2 3 3 4 5 6

Baking

Time

 1 hour 1 1/2 hours 1 3/4 hours 1 3/4 hours 2 hours 2 1/2 hours 3 hours 3 1/2 hours 4 hours
  1. Preheat oven to 170 degrees (160 degrees fan forced)
  2. Grease and line base and sides of cake tin with baking paper, bringing paper up 5cm above the side of the tin.
  3.  Combine chopped butter, chopped chocolate, sugar and milk in saucepan. Stir over low heat until chocolate is melted and sugar dissolved. Transfer the mixture to a large bowl and cool for 15 mins.
  4. Stir in sifted flours, vanilla and lightly beaten eggs. Pour mixture into prepared tin.
  5. Bake for time given on chart. Cover cake with foil half-way through cooking time if over-browning.
  6. Cake will develop a thick sugary crust during baking. Test with a skewer close to end of cooking time. Cool the cake in the tin. 

White Chocolate Ganache Icing

  • 1/2 cup cream
  • 300g white chocolate
  1. Bring cream to the boil in a small saucepan, pour cream over white chocolate in a small bowl, stirring until chocolate melts.
  2. Cover, refrigerate, stirring occasionally about 30 mins or until mixture is spreadable.
May11

Donna Hay’s Simmered Tomato & Basil Chicken

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I first tried this recipe when a lovely friend provided us with this meal after the birth of our daughter. I’ve adapted it a little and added beans for a little extra nutrition. This is a quick recipe to make and costs around $7. Serves 4+ and is really easy to adapt for bigger groups by allocating 100g of chicken per person (thanks for this maths tip, Cynth!). This recipe is also dairy, egg and gluten free if you go with white wine instead of stock.

  • 2 chicken thigh fillets or 1 large breast fillet (total 400g), thinly sliced
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 onion, thinly sliced
  • 400ml can crushed tomatoes
  • 60ml white wine or chicken stock
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 1/2 cup roughly chopped basil leaves
  • 1/2 cup pitted kalamata olives
  • handful fresh green beans, head and tailed
  • salt & pepper to taste
  • shaved parmesan cheese (to serve on top)
  1. Heat oil in a large frying pan over high heat. Add the onion and garlic and cook for 2 mins until soft.
  2. Add the chicken and cook until brown in colour. Add the tomatoes, wine/stock and sugar. Simmer over low heat for around 10 mins so chicken cooks all the way through.
  3. Add a handful of green beans and simmer a further 5 minutes.
  4. Just before serving, throw in the basil and olives. Season with salt & pepper.
  5. Serve on rice or mashed potato.
May10

Grandma Fragar’s Scones

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A few years ago my Mum gave me her mother’s scone recipe, and now it’s the only one I ever use. These scones are just so simple and easy to get right. There’s no rubbing butter and flour together and no surprising secret ingredient. The only thing I would say is your oven has to be nice and hot, so if yours tends to be on the cool side, maybe consider putting it up 5-10 degrees for this recipe. Scones are a wonderful option for large group catering because they make people feel special but aren’t too labour intensive. These ones won’t cost you more than a couple of dollars or much energy in the kitchen. This recipe makes 20.

  • 4 cups self raising flour
  • 2 dessertspoons icing sugar
  • pinch of salt
  • 2 heaped dessertspoons butter
  • 2 cups of milk

1. Preheat oven to 200 degrees

2. Place flour, sifted icing sugar and salt in a large mixing bowl. Mix well.

3. Melt butter in a heatproof jug in the microwave, top up the butter with milk to the 2 cups mark on the jug.

4. Make a well in the flour mixture, add the milk/butter mixture and gently combine using a butter knife. Combine using cutting actions through the middle and scraping the outside mixture to the centre. Don’t over mix, you want everything only just combined.

5. Tip the mixture onto a floured bench top and put more flour on the top of the mound of mixture. Pat the whole thing down until it’s about 4cm thick and evenly spread out.

6. Cut rounds using a floured scone cutter or an appropriate sized glass. Place each one on a biscuit tray lined with baking powder so that they are close together but not touching. Brush the top of each scone with a little milk.

7. Bake for around 10 mins until they’ve risen and are golden brown.

8. Serve with jam and cream.

May10

Chicken with Onion Sauce

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Once, before Steve and I were married he made this for me and some friends for dinner and it has become a winter staple in our family. To this day the recipe we use is from Steve’s Year 9 Food Technology project book, complete with hand-drawn pictures for presentation and all the processes highlighted in different colours. Originally a Woman’s Weekly recipe, it’s one of those recipes that would be considered very 80’s these days, but I kid you not- everyone always comes back for more. It uses chicken drumsticks which are so very affordable and all the other ingredients are standard pantry items. These quantities makes enough for 4 people, but I always double or triple it depending on numbers. To increase the nutritional value, I will often add some long green beans into the pot to simmer just at the end. This recipe can easily be cooked in a slow cooker. Just follow the steps exactly and replace the oven for the slow cooker. The slow cooker tends to give you a tender ‘shank’ type finish while the oven will keep the structure of each drumstick. With the measures provided this dish will set you back no more than $5. You can serve it on rice but our family likes it best on mash potato.

  • 1kg chicken drumsticks
  • 2 tablespoons oil
  • 1 brown onion, sliced
  • 400g can crushed tomatoes
  • 1 packet french onion soup mix
  • 1 tablespoon soy sauce
  • 1 cup water
  • 3 teaspoons cornflour
  • 1 tablespoon water, extra

1. Heat oil and half the butter in frying pan, add drumsticks and brown.

2. Drain fat from the pan, add remaining butter and sliced onion, cook until tender

3. Add the undrained crushed tomatoes, soup mix, soy sauce and water. Heat through.

4. Place chicken in oven-proof dish, pour the sauce over, cover and bake in a moderate oven for 34 mins.

5. Remove chicken, pour sauce into pan, stir in blended cornflour and extra water, stir until sauce boils and thickens. Pour over chicken.