The life that we all find ourselves in and keeps dragging on has taught me to be grateful for what I have.

And it turns out I have a cupboard (or maybe cupboards, fridges and a storeroom) full of food.

Nearly everything kitchen staple you can think of, along with ones you may not except. 

It’s time for me to use up what I have on hand, cook with what’s in the cupboard and limit my trips to the supermarket.

If I look, I can find things like mini marshmallows, prawn paste, six different types of beans and a few boxes of gluten-free cornflakes.

For the first recipe of using up what I have on hand, I’m making a pumpkin pie, but I’m using up the gluten-free cornflakes and making a GF pie crust before I do that.

Gluten-Free cornflake pie crust. 

This recipe makes 2 * 23cm pie shells.

Ingredients

1  * 450gram box of Gluten-free cornflakes

120 grams butter

2 tablespoons of honey

75 grams of sugar*

1 teaspoon of xanthan gum

Method

In the food processor, pulverise the GF cornflakes until they are a fine crumb. Pulse in 1 teaspoon of Xanthan gum.   

Heat the butter, honey and sugar in a saucepan until the sugar has dissolved and the mixture is bubbling.   

Place the pulverised cornflakes in a heat-proof bowl. Stir in the butter, honey sugar mixture.   

Line your pie shell.

This mixture will be a little crumbly, but it will hold together fantastically when you add the filling and bake!

See you in the kitchen!

* Note: in the spirit of using up what I have in the cupboard, the sugar in this recipe was from the storage of my handmade lollies.

I’ve just dug kilos and kilos of purple potatoes out of the kitchen garden.

Now I have to cook them in as many ways as I can think of.

I’m going to start with gnocchi, purple potato gnocchi, that is.

Gnocchi is easier than you think to make.

Best of all, it can be made ahead of when you would like to eat it.

I like to eat my gnocchi triple cooked – blanched in boiling water to cook through, pan-fried in butter, then finished off under the grill.

Ingredients

1-kilogram purple gem potatoes - cleaned

1 egg

250 grams plain flour

1 pinch of salt

Method

1.    Place potatoes in a saucepan of cold water. Bring to the boil, then simmer until cooked.

2.    Strain the potatoes. You could peel when still hot but move straight onto step 3.

3.    Place the potatoes in a mouli and process the potatoes straight onto the bench into a mound. You may need to do this in steps, as the weight of one kilo of cooked potatoes may be too heavy to hold.

4.    Make a well in the centre of your mound and shift over the flour. Add the egg and a pinch of salt to taste.

5.    Using your hands, gently bring the dough together until just combined and the dough is slightly springy. Divide the dough into 4.

6.    Roll each piece of dough into a long cigar shape. Cut into 3 cm lengths, using a pastry scraper or knife. Roll each piece on a gnocchi pad or press with a fork to create sauce groves in your gnocchi.

7.    Line an oven tray with a clean tea towel. Put this aside until you cook your gnocchi.

8.    Bring a large pot of salted boiling water to the boil. Add the gnocchi and return to the boil. The gnocchi will be cooked when it floats to the top of the water.

9.    Remove the gnocchi from the water using a slotted spoon and place it on your clean tea towel-lined tray.

At this point, you can add your cooked gnocchi to your chosen sauce. I like my gnocchi finished in butter, with garlic and thyme. 

… I mean make musk sticks.

I don’t call musk sticks, musk sticks as they come in all the flavours including, but not limited to, musk. To me, they are Jacican sticks. 

Lately, I’ve made musk, peppermint, bubble gum and lime flavours. Experimenting with Lemon, Lime and bitter, as well as Gin and Tonic flavours.

Like you like your Jacican sticks with no artificial colours or flavours, they now come in natural raspberry!

Because lately, we all have time, here’s the recipe for you to make at home if you need something to do. This is a great recipe to do with the kids.

Musk stick recipe

Ingredients

640 grams of icing sugar

1 teaspoon of glucose

1 teaspoon of gelatine

75 ml of water

1 ml of musk flavouring

1 ml of pink food colouring

Remember you can make any colour or flavour of musk sticks you want!

Method

In a small saucepan combine glucose, gelatine and water. Gently heat until glucose and gelatine have dissolved. Mix slowly to combine.

Shift icing sugar into a large bowl. Pour in water mixer in three parts, mixing between each addition.

Add flavour and colouring. Mix well combine.

Using a 5 mm star nozzle, fill a piping bag with your mixture. Pipe onto baking-paper lined trays. Leave in a dry place to dry out and harden up. This could take anywhere from a couple of hours to a couple of days. It will depend on the weather – the warmer it is, the quicker they will dry.

If you can't be bothered to make your own Musk Sticks, there may be Jacican sticks for sale in my shop. You will have to be quick, they normally sell out! 

I grew up on a dairy farm in the Gippsland outside the town of Loch. As a young girl, I would read the cookbooks that mum kept in the bottom kitchen drawer. As there was always flour, butter, milk, and eggs in the house, I was continuously searching for new recipes for baking.

As a girl, I would make spend my weekend baking puff pastry to make tarts, creating new versions of candies and baking all the colour rainbow cakes. Not much has changed; I’m still searching for recipes that I can cook using what I have on hand or growing in the kitchen garden.

Now that I am grownup, I can cook what I want, using any type of milk. How happy was I when Gippsland Jersey started producing buttermilk? I now use that in everything I bake.   

But I am going to start you off with a simple buttermilk recipe, pancakes.

We all need to know how to make pancakes from scratch. This recipe will be with you forever.

This recipe will make a dozen 10 cm fluffy pancakes

Buttermilk Pancakes recipe

• 2 cups of Oak & Swan stone ground wholemeal flour
• 2 teaspoons of baking powder
• 2 eggs
• 2 cups of GJ buttermilk
• 2 tablespoons of GJ butter

Method

If you haven’t noticed its same measurement of all the ingredients in this recipe, hence it is easy to remember forever; 1 part to 1 part to 1 part to 1 part.

1. Into a bowl, sift together flour and baking powder.
2. Make a hole in the middle of the flour and crack in the eggs. Pour over the buttermilk.
3. Beat together until smooth.
4. Heat a little of the butter until foaming in a frying pan. Add two spoonful of pancake batter. Swirl around into a round shape.
5. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes until firm enough to flip. Then cook for 1 to 2 minutes.
6. Serve warm

I had mine with topped with berries I saved frozen from the summer, warmed homemade berry jam and whipped Gippsland Jersey Crème Fraiche. #yum