Author Archives for Emily Davenport, Head of Dairy Diary

About Emily Davenport, Head of Dairy Diary

Head of Dairy Diary; I'm passionate about producing high quality products that our customers will cherish. I'm also a mum of three and I enjoy cooking, walking, gardening and painting with my family, as well as printmaking (when I find the time!)

Organise your kitchen in 3 easy steps

ORGANISE-YOUR-KITCHEN-MONTAGE

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Spruce up for spring:


organise your kitchen in 3 easy steps


(no DIY skills required!)


I know how you love to be organised – you use the Dairy Diary after all! So I thought I would share a few clever ways to organise your kitchen.

There’s nothing worse than wanting to whip up a few fairy cakes, then all your baking equipment topples out of the cupboard the moment you try to retrieve something. This can be remedied in just a few hours.

I spent a morning, and just a few pounds creating a much more user-friendly kitchen. I can’t wait to get cooking! (Or will I not want to disturb my beautifully arranged cupboards?!)

 1.    First declutter:

Before you begin to re-arrange things, first go through everything you have. If there is any crockery, kitchen equipment etc. that you haven’t used for over a year donate it or recycle it. Check use-by dates and throw out any foods past their date. Then think about putting items nearest to where you actually use them and swap the contents of a few cupboard/drawers around. Change the height of shelves to best fit what they contain.

 2.    Invest a few quid:

Spend a few pounds (in one of those bargain shops that only charge a £1) on baskets of various sizes and jars. Or keep any baskets, tins and jars from packaging – they can be much prettier than bought ones too.

 3.     Now organise:

 

Organise-your-under-sink-cupboard

Under the sink

Roll up cloths neatly and pop into a tray, use a bucket or box with a handle for cleaning equipment, use a plastic shower box with suckers to attach to the door for dishwasher tablets and pop any other bits and bobs into baskets.

 

Organise-your-baking-cupboard

Baking equipment and ‘Tupperware’

These work much better in a deep drawer if you have one. Sort into shapes, then sizes, and stack neatly inside one another. Line trays and larger thinner tins up on their side so that they are easy to access and don’t take up a lot of space. Do you same with sandwich box lids. Squeeze any drinks bottles into spaces you have left. Use a box or tray for cookie cutters and cake decorating equipment.

 

Organise-your-condiment-drawer

Food stuff

Sort into food types – cans and packets of convenience food; cooking sauces and ingredients; herbs and spices; oils and vinegars, baking ingredients; cereals etc. Pack into various trays, tins or baskets suitable for the shelf and food, then label (you can download free labels from here. http://blog.worldlabel.com/2013/kitchen-spice-jar-pantry-organizing-labels.html Pop measuring spoons with the ingredients that require them. They are much easier to find that at the bottom of the utensil drawer!

Organise-your-tin-can-cupboard

Organise-your-pasta-cupboard

 

Organise-your-cookbook-cupbard

Cookery books

Arrange by colour, type or size and pop into a cupboard or on a shelf. Place any loose recipes inside a file or stick into a book and keep take-away menus in a folder.

 

Organise-your-fridge-lists

Paperwork

If you end up with post and notes piled up on the work surface, invest a couple of pounds in a letter rack. File away items from it once a week so that it doesn’t overflow and keep a notebook in the front for shopping lists. Stick your weekly meal planner and current shopping list onto the fridge with a magnetic clip. You could also store a list of your favourite meals here for useful reference.

 

Now, make yourself a cuppa and chill out. You deserve it!

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Spinach Pancakes | Cinnamon Pancakes with Blueberry Sauce

Shrove Tuesday Pancake recipes

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Don’t forget that it’s Pancake Day tomorrow!

It is strange that I only ever cook pancakes once a year – every year vowing to cook them more often – as I love them, but it’s something I just never think to cook on other days.

I adore simple sugar and lemon pancakes, but this year I thought I would be a little more adventurous and try a savoury pancake followed with a sweet one.

These two Dairy Diary recipes should definitely hit the spot. 

 

Spinach-pancakes

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Spinach Pancakes

Makes 8 pancakes
Time 20 mins
Calories 280 per pancake
Fat 16g of which 7.6g is saturated
Suitable for vegetarians

Spinach 900g (2lb), stems removed, or 2 x 225g packets of frozen chopped spinach
Butter 25g (1oz)
Salted peanuts 50g (2oz), chopped
Paprika ½ tsp
Stilton cheese 50g (2oz)
Plain flour 4 tsp
Single cream 150ml (¼ pint)
Ready-made pancakes 8, warmed

1 Place spinach in a pan, sprinkle with salt (do not add any liquid) and cook, covered, for about 10 minutes. Drain well and chop.

2 Heat butter in a small pan, add peanuts and paprika and fry gently for 1 minute. Cut rind off Stilton and crumble most into pan. Stir in spinach, flour, cream and seasoning. Bring up to boil and cook for 2–3 minutes, stirring.

3 Divide filling between pancakes and serve with remaining Stilton crumbled over top.

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Cinnamon Pancakes with Blueberries recipe

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Cinnamon Pancakes with Blueberry Sauce

Serves 3
Time 20 mins
Calories 306 Fat 8g of which 2g is saturated
Suitable for vegetarians

For the Blueberry Sauce
Frozen blueberries 350g packet
Cornflour 1 tsp
Caster sugar 25g (1oz) or to taste
Fresh orange juice 2 tbsp

For the pancakes
Plain flour 110g (4oz)
Ground cinnamon ¼ tsp
Egg 1 medium
Milk 300ml (½ pint)
Sunflower oil 1 tbsp
Vanilla ice cream to serve

1 Tip blueberries into a pan and stir in all remaining sauce ingredients. Heat gently, stirring occasionally, until the juices have thickened and there is no taste of cornflour.

2 Sift flour and cinnamon into a bowl. Make a well in the centre, add egg, gradually whisk into flour, then whisk in milk.

3 Wipe a small non-stick frying pan with oil, and heat. Add a ladle of batter, swirl around the pan and cook until just set, then carefully turn – or toss if you’re brave! – and cook the other side. Continue with remaining batter to make 6 pancakes.

4 Serve pancakes with hot blueberry sauce and ice cream.

 

Take a Box of Eggs, Dairy CookbookAnd if you like egg recipes,
Take a Box of Eggs is still
available to buy now.

It’s only a bargain £7.49 too!

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Top Ten Feel-Good Tips for February

Feel-good-February

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Top Ten Feel-Good Tips for February

I am not a nutritionist, but in my job I do read a lot about food and I have a pretty good grasp of healthy eating.

When I look back at old photographs I can see the results of my lifestyle, particularly what I ate and drank, and I’m glad to say that now I understand nutrition better, I’ve never felt better. I’ve never been a naturally skinny person and have battled to control my weight from the age of ten.

As a young adult, I used to
always opt for ‘diet’ versions
of everything – something I
never do anymore. It just
resulted in my body craving
sugar and fat.

We often get requests from people asking us to add more nutritional information to recipes, particularly featuring the salt and sugar content. Whilst, I understand that everyone’s dietary needs are different, it’s important to look at the whole picture and view your consumption over a week, rather than meal by meal. We all know that eating a sticky toffee pudding with every meal is not a good idea, but one a week is fine. What’s most important is to think about getting an overall balanced diet, not eating too much and exercising regularly.

There are lots of little things that can make you feel great. Here’s my top ten (please note, this works for me, but is not for everyone, if you have specific medical issues, always check with your doctor).

  1. Eat from a small plate. Think about the plates our grandparents used, they were much smaller than most modern crockery. Fill half your plate with veggies or salad, a quarter with meat/fish/vege protein and the other quarter with carbohydrate.
  2. Snack on a few almonds and blueberries. These will fill the gap between meals and help avoid those blood sugar crashes that makes us reach for biscuits.
  3. Change to foods that release energy slowly – porridge for breakfast, wholemeal toast and veg soup for lunch and a meal with protein and carbohydrate for dinner.
  4. Enjoy a treat, but make sure it’s something you love (Dairymilk for me!) and only have it once or twice a week.
  5. Try to cook from scratch as much as possible. Processed foods contain so many hidden nasties.
  6. Dance! However you like – Zumba, disco, ballroom; revel in your favourite music and have a good old boogie.
  7. Drink 8 glasses of water a day – your skin will love you for it. Ice-cold water tastes much better, so keep a jugful in the fridge.
  8. Get as much fresh air as possible and walk, as fast as you can, as much as you can. It’ll make you feel great!
  9. Meet with friends, have a chat and a good laugh.
  10. Create. It could be a batch of cookies, a handmade card, a knitted scarf – whatever you enjoy doing. You’ll feel a huge sense of satisfaction.

And if you’re feeling in the mood for making that batch of cookies, here you are. This delicious recipe is perfect to share with family and friends.

 

Recipe: Honey Flapjack Cookies

Honey Flapjack Cookies 

Good Food, Fast Dairy CookbookThis recipe is taken from Good Food, Fast – a fabulous cookbook packed full of recipes that take 30 minutes or less.

It’s available now for just £7.00.

Buy Good Food, Fast cookbook

 

 

 

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Competition | Win £25 HTA Garden Gift Card

Win £25 HTA Garden Gift Card

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Win £25 HTA Garden Gift Card

Create a stunning spring display courtesy of the Dairy Diary.

Win the £25 HTA Garden Gift Card in our latest competition and you can choose from over 90,000 plants and products available at hundreds of garden outlets nationwide.

Anyone, anywhere in the UK can spend HTA Garden Gift Cards on pretty much anything to do with gardening.

Win £25 HTA Garden Gift Card

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Pretty in Pink – step-by-step guide to a wonderful late winter basket

Pretty-in-Pink

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I would love to be green-fingered. My attempts at gardening have varying success and our garden is prettily passable.

I do love planting up pots and baskets though as I can follow a failsafe method, which yields a beautiful display. I take much inspiration from our book, Seasonal Garden Ideas, as there are lots of step-by-step projects, which take only an hour or so to create but give stunning results.

 

This easy project takes less than an hour and gives instant impact.

Pretty in Pink Planted Basket

A step-by-step guide to a wonderful late winter basket

Make a pretty basket of pink hyacinths
special by adding hoops of pussy willow
twigs with the soft grey catkins just
bursting out – a lovely display that
should last for several weeks.

When to prepare the Pretty in Pink projectPussy willow twigs are available in early spring, either in hedgerows or from florists. Pot-grown hyacinths can be found in garden centres from January through to May or even later.

Planting up a basket takes about an hour.

Plants required

  • Ten to twelve pink Dutch hyacinths just coming into flower.
  • Six to eight pussy willow twigs each about 45cm (18in) long.

Equipment required

  • Rustic-weave basket.
  • Hanging-basket liner (plastic, hessian, felt or moulded paper).
  • Bulb compost to fill.
  • Several handfuls of moss to tuck around the base of the hyacinths.
  • Trowel.

Method

1 Place the liner you have chosen in the bottom of the basket, pricking holes through for drainage if needed. Fill the basket two-thirds full with bulb compost.

2 Carefully remove each hyacinth, one at a time, from their pots and plant in the basket, adding more compost and setting each one to the same depth as it was in its pot. Place them as close together as you can, so the heavy flowerheads will support each other, and firm in well.

3 Tuck moss loosely around the base of the hyacinths to cover the soil completely. Water lightly.

4 Wedge the bottom end of a pussy willow twig into the basket weave then bend it over to form a hoop. Tuck the tip of the twig securely into the basket, then repeat with the other twigs all round the basket, overlapping the twigs slightly as you go.

5 Position your basket in a sunny spot for best display. The furry grey catkins will eventually turn bright yellow as they open.

Tips
Take great care not to knock the pussy willow catkins off the twigs as you handle them – they are quite fragile. If the hyacinth stems start bending over, insert thin bamboo canes into the compost and tie the stems to them as discreetly as possible with soft string. Bring under shelter if heavy rain is threatened.

Note
Reuse your rustic basket for a summer display by planting with nasturtiums or begonias.

Aftercare
By its very nature this is a temporary display. When the hyacinth flowers have withered, stop watering and allow the foliage to turn brown. Then remove the bulbs from the basket, clean them carefully and store in a dry, dark place until autumn, when you can plant them out in the garden. Discard the pussy willow twigs when the catkins have flowered.

 

Seasonal Garden IdeasProject taken from
Seasonal Garden Ideas

Now available for just £3.99

BUY NOW

 

 

 

 

 

 

And don’t forget to enter our free prize draw to win a £25 national garden gift card.

Win a £35 National Garden Gift Card

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Ice Cream with Hot Chocolate Sauce

Ice Cream with Hot Chocolate Sauce

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Ice Cream with Hot Chocolate Sauce

Preparation time 10 minutes
Cooking time 5 minutes
Calories per portion 854 Kcal
Fat per portion 59g of which saturated 27.1g
Serves 2
Suitable for vegetarians

Dark chocolate 110g (4oz), broken into small pieces
Single cream 150ml (5fl oz)
Brandy 1–2 tbsp
Freshly squeezed orange juice 6 tbsp
Vanilla ice cream 6 scoops
Raspberry or strawberry conserve
2 rounded tsp, optional
Pecan nuts 50g (2oz), roughly chopped
Cherries and halved strawberries to decorate
Fan wafers to serve, optional

1 Put the chocolate, cream, brandy and orange juice into a small saucepan and stir over a medium heat until the chocolate melts and is smoothly blended, taking care not to overheat the sauce – it should be hot, but not boiling.

2 Put a scoop of ice cream into the bottom of two tall chilled sundae glasses or large wine glasses and then add the raspberry or strawberry conserve.

3 Add one or two more scoops of ice cream and then add half of the hot chocolate sauce. Top with the remaining ice cream and chocolate sauce, then sprinkle with pecans and decorate with cherries and strawberries. Add the fan wafers and serve.

Cook’s tip. 
Alternatively, arrange scoops of ice cream in the centre of large, individual plates and pour the chocolate sauce around.

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