Free Quote
Contact us today for your Free Quote
We all love a sweet treat now and then, but what happens when these perishable goods start to reach their expiry date? Surely binning our hard-earned baked goods would be a waste of food and your efforts. We can give you a few tips and tricks on how you can make your late night sweet cravings last longer.
1. Dry Leftover Cake – Cake Pops!
First things first, how could there be such a thing as leftover cake?! If you do happen to have leftover cake lying around in the kitchen and it’s starting to dry out and become crumbly, you can still save it by recreating it into a cake pop.
All you have to do is whip up a simple buttercream frosting by whisking unsalted butter and icing sugar together for 5 minutes.
Ingredients for buttercream:
150g unsalted butter
300g icing sugar
Mix as much buttercream in with the amount of leftover cake until it’s stiff enough to roll into balls. Dip these cake balls into melted chocolate, set for 1 hour and you’ve got yourself a cake pop!
2. We All Scream For Ice Cream (and Froyo)!
If you have leftover cream after decorating a cake or from last night’s pudding, you can simply add a few ingredients of sugar and vanilla extract to the mixture and pop it in the freezer. Jazz it up with extra toppings and flavours by throwing in a few nuts/dried fruit or chocolate and you’ve got yourself ice cream just as good as Ben and Jerrys! Here’s a simple recipe you can follow.
You can do the same for yogurt that is close to its expiry date to make froyo (frozen yogurt).
3. Bread, Bread And More Bread
Bread is a staple item that is guaranteed to be sitting on many kitchen counters across the UK. Little do we know, we waste around 900,000 tons of bread every year – in the UK alone! That is almost 1 million loaves EVERY DAY, leading to almost 44% of all bread produced being thrown away. This versatile product has so much potential to become another dish. Since the topic is about all things sweet, I have a few ideas to share with you to make that bread last longer. If possible, freeze your loaves before the expiry date.
- You can make French toast with household staple ingredients such as eggs, milk, sugar, butter and cinnamon (optional). We’ve found a great recipe here. You can even top it off with your homemade ice cream you made from tip no.2!
- Bread and butter pudding is a classic but does require a few extra ingredients. We think it’s worth it! Here is a recipe to check out.
4. Revive The Freshness And Flakiness Of Pastries
Sometimes we can get carried away buying a big box of pastries, because who can resist these utterly buttery flaky treats! Typically, these pastries only stay fresh for 2/3 days. However, these delectables can still be saved by freezing them on their last few days, and when you fancy a sweet treat for breakfast or with your morning coffee, just reheat in the oven. This simple hack adds a few more days to a short lifespan, and means they taste just as good and flakier than before!
Don’t be tempted to microwave them unless you want a soggy pastry…
5. Save those Bananas!
Did you know an estimated 1.4 million edible bananas are thrown away every year in Britain. This could be just as trivial as a minor bruise/black mark or because they’re ‘too dark’ to eat.
Black bananas aren’t the end of it. When they’re at this stage, they’re actually at its sweetest! Cut these up into slices and freeze them in a zip lock bag. We’ve got a few tips for what you can do with your deliciously sweet bananas:
Super simple vegan chocolate banana ice cream
All you need are 2 ingredients! Blitz 2-3 bananas with 2-3 teaspoons of cocoa powder and you’ve got yourself an awesome substitute for traditional ice cream.
Banana smoothies
This is the best chance to use up any other fruit you have available in your kitchen. My personal favourite is a banana and strawberry smoothie with a dash of almond milk and honey. Here are a few other recipes you can try.
Banana cake
Banana bread is the most searched recipe on BBC good food during COVID-19 lockdown 2020. I can understand why! Here’s a link to the famous recipe.
I hope these tips have given you an invaluable insight into how you can make your sweet treats last longer and to live more sustainably at home.
[mc4wp_form id=”414548″]
Share:
