Meals on a budget – sticky toffee pudding

Morrisons' M Savers goodies

I was approached a few weeks ago to take part in the Morrisons M Savers Recipe Challenge. The supermarket launched its new range of affordable products in January, which replaces the old Morrisons Value range, and includes 400 products, from grocery items, such as tinned foods and flour to make budget meals, to kitchen utensils. To mark the event, the company decided it would be fun to challenge a number of  frugal living bloggers – including Penny Ritson and Karen Bryan of Help Me To Save to cook up low cost recipes using M Saver ingredients.

I agreed to take part, although as I have a few dietary requirements nowadays (I found out last year that I can’t tolerate aliums – (onions, garlic & leeks – it’s a family thing as my grandmother was the same) I thought they might find me a bit of a tricky customer. These days I have to be quite careful what I eat. Cleverly they decided to get me to make a sticky toffee pudding – quite safe, well apart from the likely impact on my waistline…

I’ve never made a sticky toffee pud before, so I prayed I wouldn’t make a hash of it. It was exciting when the package arrived from Morrisons on Saturday including some of the ingredients – self raising flour (just 52p for 1.5kg which isn’t bad), sultanas (in place of dates), skimmed milk (1 litre for 49p) and custard – and a number of their new M Saver kitchen utensils, such as a spatula and stirrers. There was also a £5 Morrisons voucher to cover any ingredients which I needed which weren’t in their range.

Making the pudding was surprisingly simple.  I measured out 200g of the sultanas and mixed them with 250ml of lightly brewed black tea, placed the mixture into a saucepan and brought to the boil, cooking for around 4 minutes and lastly mixing in half a teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda before taking off the heat. Next I creamed together 175g of golden caster sugar and 85g of butter until soft. Then I added a beaten egg, 175g of the M Saver’s self-raising flour and a teaspoon of cinnamon, gradually beating this into the creamed butter and sugar. After that, I added the sultanas and tea mixture, mixed it all up and added it to a baking tin. The M Saver’s spatulas came in handy for this. They’re only £1 but they’re surprisingly good quality and made from wood from sustainable forests.

I placed the baking tin in a warmed oven (180 degrees C) and cooked it for about 35 minutes. My friend Andrea was round for dinner that evening – our first dinner guest since we’ve moved home. I was also cooking a roast dinner for us so I just popped it in at the same time, which made the oven heat go a bit further. Funnily enough, when I told her I was cooking sticky toffee pudding, she told me that it was her favourite dessert. No pressure!

Initially I was a bit worried, as although it came out looking beautifully brown and had risen, when I went to take it out, I realised it hadn’t cooked completely in the middle. Oops. I think I’d been a bit greedy and put too much mixture in too small a tin. But I ploughed on regardless and later, after we’d had our dinner and everybody had room for dessert, I made the sauce to go with it.

Again, this wasn’t exactly slimming either, but at least it was between three people – me, Andrea and my husband Doug. Over a low heat I warmed 100g of butter with 100g of soft brown sugar, 150ml of skimmed milk and a dash of double cream to give it a boost. The sauce was really tasty with a good toffee favour to it. And my concerns about the pudding itself disappeared once we all tucked into it because it was really delicious. It worked well with the sultanas and the sponge was soft and tasty – and the . There was also a tin of M Saver’s custard leftover in my box of goodies, but we all felt a bit too fat from our meal to have custard as well, so I am going to try this out later with a different dessert.

All in all, adding in the extra ingredients, accounting for the amounts used (and counting in the amount the M Saver’s ingredients would have cost if I’d paid for them) - the meal cost just over £3 to make, which isn’t bad for such a tasty dessert. We also had plenty leftover as we couldn’t eat it all, so I think it would probably have fed about five people altogether. Not bad for around 60p per person. Our nearest Morrisons is in Welwyn Garden City, but if I was in the area I would definitely give their M Saver’s range a go again for any budget recipe I might make in the future.

Have you tried any of the M Saver’s range? If so, I’d be interested to hear what you think of the products.
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