Right. April's no waste food challenge is Fennel. Florence Fennel. It comes in my veg box, and I like it in small doses, but as I am the only one to eat it so it can often go to waste. I figured April is the month to discover how else I can cook with fennel. So do join in and share with us your recipes for using Fennel. 

Don't forget you can re-post old recipes just follow the few guidelines. 

Right, I know this is a little late but anywhooo! Here is a round up of all the entries to the no waste food challenge which for March was yogurt. Each month the idea is to collate recipes and blog posts that help us to use up food that often finds its way into our bin.

Is it Yoghurt or Yogurt? I was going with Yoghurt as I thought this was the UK spelling but having just checked the pots in my fridge everyone seems to be using Yogurt so I have switched accordingly!

Right let us start with savoury, move onto breakfast, then stop for some cake and finally show you how to make the most out of your yogurt by using it to make ice cream, more yogurt and cream cheese! What a resourceful and creative lot you are! 

Janice, writer of the lovely Farmersgirl Kitchen Blog, is kicking us off with a quick Baked Potato with Roasted Tomatoes and Yogurt. I'm really glad we have a savoury recipe to add in here and this is a healthy option too.

Our second entry is this Fruit Smoothie blogged by the fantastic named Tango Like Raindrop would make a lovely healthy brekafast or afternoon pick me up.

Janice has given us another quick snack or dessert with these very pretty and quick Yogurt Fruit Pots.

Hannah from the gorgeous Home Baked blog has sent in this Yogurt Berry Breakfast Cake. I would certainly not skip my breakfast if this was waiting for me! 

Tango also entered this Rasberry Lemon and Poppyseed Yogurt Cake which looks divine! Next time I have raspberries in the house they will be made into this cake. 

Clearly we all decided that yogurt and berries are the perfect cake combination! I was very late to my own party but finally got round to blogging these yogurt White Chocolate and Raspberry Cupcakes

Tango also submitted a really easy and simple Vanilla Frozen Yogurt. There are definitily no excuses for not using up your yogurt this way and you could certainly get creative with this recipe.

Make more yogurt!

One of my blog readers Bridget emailed me with instructions on how to make yogurt without a yogurt maker. I have yet to try it but love the idea. I discovered the other day how to make my own butter so I'm really interested to try this too. I will no hand you over to Bridget.
 
All yoghurt is alive and contains a bacillus so you need to have some natural yoghurt to start your own. There are lots of different types available, some state 'live' and others just say 'natural' - they'll all work, but I have found that the 'live' ones work best. 

You don't need to buy a commercial yoghurt maker.  I use an insulated zippered picnic bag lined with towels for the stage where you need to keep the yoghurt warm for 8-12 hours. You could also use an airing cupboard or an Aga.

You can use any type of milk but the lower the fat the runnier your yoghurt will turn out.  You also don't need to use milk powder if you don't have any - again, the yoghurt will just be less thick. It's not an exact science but easy to try out.

What you need:
1 pint of full fat milk
3 tbsp of natural yogurt
4 tbsp full fat milk powder (optional)

Method:

1. Whisk the milk and milk powder together in a saucepan.  It may not whisk completely smoothly at this point but that's fine - it will become smooth in the next stage.
   
2. Place the pan over a medium heat and warm the milk stirring until the temperature reaches boiling point, then remove from the heat.  
   
3. Leave to cool to blood temperature (Test this by dripping small drops of milk onto your inside forearm until you can't really feel it because it's the same temperature as you are).
   
4. Whisk in the 3 tablespoons of natural yoghurt and blend it well.  Don't add this when the milk is hot or it will kill the bacillus.
   
5. Pour the mixture into a very clean (fresh from the dishwasher is good), pre warmed glass container (old jam jar or Kilner type jar works). 
   
6. Leave in a warm place for  8-12 hours (I leave it overnight).
   
7. Put in the fridge to chill.  
   

This will keep for several days. With thanks to Bridget Newlyn for emailing this to me.  

Hannah from Home Baked has then shown us how to make Cream Cheese out of our home made or leftover yogurt. 

Hannah then goes one step further to make this beautiful  Floral Cream Cheese with Chives, this is just so pretty, I wouldn't want to eat it! It would be lovely to make this cream cheese for a picnic of buffet.

Thank you to all of you for submitting your recipes. I really love the creativity that this challenge inspires and I will no longer be at a loss for using up my yogurt and can't wait to try making my own yogurt and cheese. I hope that others of you have found this round up useful.

I thought I would share with you how I wrapped my Easter gifts. First up I made a gift basket of the bunnies and chicks.

Secondly I wanted to give away sets of the biscuits so I boxed up a few sets. I recycled a Graze box for this purpose. The boxes are perfect for this as the come printed with lovely nature scenes on them. For the coconut lid I just added some grass wrapping paper I had. I stuck the biscuits with a little bit of left over icing. I then covered the box in clingfilm.

The leftover biscuits were wrapped and dotted around the flat. Some even hanging from my lemon tree.

I love making home made chocolates and have decided to make gifts for my family this year instead of buying Easter eggs. The rose chocolates are half dark and white chocolate and the hearts have a white chocolate and raspberry fondant in them.

First you need to decide what type of chocolates you are making. There are lots of different kits and equipment available. You can buy silicone moulds in all shapes and sizes. I got given a few as gifts and bought some more from here. I have been really impressed with both of the moulds I have. Maison Cupcake has just made some Easter chocolates with her kids using a kit from Lakeland which looks fantastic.

Secondly you need to decide if you are making plain chocolates or chocolates with a fondant. If you are making a fondant think about what flavours you want. I suggest having a search on the web for fondant recipe suggestions. I have a board on pinterest where I have collected a few. Make up your fondant in advance. I have included my random recipe for white chocolate and raspberry fondant.

Thirdly use good quality chocolate with a high cocoa content. In order to get the chocolate shiny and to make sure it doesn't bloom (create those cloudy white patches), you need to temper the chocolate. There are several ways of doing this as outlined in this useful Guardian article. I used the microwave option and this seemed to work fine.
 

If using a fondant make this up first. This can be done a day or morning before hand. 

I n order to introduce my fondant recipe I have a bit of a confession. I had another kitchen disaster the other day. Whilst making the icing for my raspberry and white chocolate cupcakes, I made a bit of a mistake. I realised that I didn't have any icing sugar for my butter icing. It was 5pm on a Sunday and most the shops were closed. Someone on twitter suggested I just grind up some normal granulated sugar. Brilliant I thought! So I gave it a go but I didn't have the right tools and my sugar didn't really grind down to a powder. But I decided to carry on anyway and ended up with some weird buttery granulated mess not fit for my lovely cupcakes. So I had to pop out and get icing sugar and was left with this strange but sweet concoction. In the end I decided to see what melting it would do and I ended up with white chocolate and raspberry gloop, which I decided to make  into truffles! Here is the recipe for my failed icing. I have reduced the quantities as you won't need much and will probably still have spare. 

You may want to use a proper fondant recipe from somewhere else but these do taste nice! You could just gently melt some white chocolate and add a flavouring such as strawberry or raspberry. Or try adding some orange zest to dark chocolate. Experiment away!.

For the white chocolate and raspberry fondant.40g softened butter
100g icing sugar
1 tablespoon of milk
5 raspberries (or more depending on how strong you want the flavour to be)
20g white chocolate chips

1. Very gently heat all the ingredients in a pan until melted smooth and thick.
   
2. Place in a plastic container to cool and then keep in the fridge until you want to use it.
   

Now for the chocolates.
Break up your good quality chocolate into a microwavable bowl. I always cook with dark chocolate. If cooking with milk or white chocolate it melts and can burn quicker, so be careful. Place the bowl in the microwave and put it on a very low heat. Be patient and don't try to do something else at the same time!  Even though the chocolate may not look melted it can be.  Keep checking the chocolate with your finger, gently touch one of the chocolate pieces to see if it is melted.  When some of the chocolate has melted, and the other pieces are very soft but not entirely melted, take the chocolate out of the microwave and stir until it is all melted and smooth. 

Now carefully fill each mould half way. Make sure you gently tap and wiggle the filled mould to make sure any air and bubbles escape. Place it in the fridge until set for about 30 minutes. Test the chocolate is set before adding your fondant or second layer of different coloured chocolate.

If you are adding fondant add a small blob into the centre of the mould. Chill whilst you re melt or prepare your second layer of chocolate. Now carefully fill the rest of the mould with chocolate and chill.

I made about 45 chocolates using 200g dark chocolate and 100g white chocolate.

When the chocolates are completly set gently remove the from the mould. They are now ready to be packaged and given away.