by Thrifty Lesley | May 11, 2025 | All Recipes, Cakes and Bakes, Less than 500 calories
This banana bread comes together very quickly and isn’t complicated to make. It’s super delicious still warm from the oven so the chocolate pieces are still melted, ooh, yum!. Add pecans to it too if you like! It will keep for 7-10 days, so is great for...
by Thrifty Lesley | Apr 26, 2024 | All Recipes, Cakes and Bakes
Chocolate Muffins Recipe Mike was ‘needing some chocolate’ yesterday, so I decided to make some chocolate muffins. Haven’t made any kind of muffins for yonks. They are super easy in that it is just a bit of stirring, and not too much of that either...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jul 17, 2022 | All Recipes, Dinners, Stretch A Chicken
Pizza is one off the worlds favourite foods for at least 1000 years, loved, and made, by millions. Pizza toppings can make a meal from little things leftover in the fridge, or as here, from chicken left after a roast. Homemade Pizza Dough Mix the pizza base...
by Thrifty Lesley | Nov 27, 2021 | All Recipes, Cakes and Bakes, Less than 500 calories, Meal Plan 12, Meal Plan 14, Meal Plan 2, Meal Plan 9
Post originally published October 2013, refreshed and updated November 2021 These little biscuits are fun to make, especially if you make tiny hearts or teeny squares. Spice them up with cinnamon or mixed spice at Christmas time. Or see the variations for masses of...
by Thrifty Lesley | Sep 24, 2021 | All Recipes, Bready Things, Breakfast, Cakes and Bakes, Less than 500 calories, Meal Plan 2, Meal Plan 4
This post was first written in October 2013. Re-written and refreshedin September 2021. If you take 250g flour, some yeast and water, you can add many, many different things to it and get a lovely loaf, with 4 portions, to use for any meal, as an anytime snack or...
by Thrifty Lesley | Sep 16, 2021 | All Recipes, Cakes and Bakes, Less than 500 calories, Meal Plan 1, Meal Plan 11, Meal Plan 3, Meal Plan 7, Meal Plan 8
This post was first written in June 2013 and updated in June 2021. A very, very variable recipe, for oaty biscuits. Much, much too moreish – and although they are only 1p a biscuit, could make it not frugal as they get scoffed too quickly 🙂 especially warm and...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jun 21, 2021 | All Recipes, Cakes and Bakes, Less than 500 calories, Meal Plan 1
A lovely, slicing, easy to make fruit loaf. Use any dried fruit you have. Cuts into 12 slices at 8p a slice First published in June 2013, updated June 2021 How To Make an Easy Fruit Loaf Line a 2lb loaf tin and heat the oven Stir all the dry ingredients together. In a...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jun 19, 2021 | All Recipes, Dinners, Meal Plan 1
This post was first written in June 2013 and updated in June 2021 I love this recipe, chickpeas in a tomato sauce. It can be spiced in any way you like, with whatever you have, and served with fresh cooked, fluffy nan. It won’t be as authentic if you use...
by Thrifty Lesley | Apr 8, 2021 | All Recipes, Dinners, Poaching A Whole Chicken
I really fancied a BBQ pizza one day and wondered what I would need to use for toppings. Having made some vegan BBQ sauce that was really successful a while previously, I wanted to use that and decided to use it as the base sauce instead of a tomato one. Well, wow, it...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jan 4, 2021 | All Recipes, Cakes and Bakes, Less than 500 calories
I like a banana bread, but today, I was looking at my fruit bowl and wondered if other fruit could be used in place of the bananas. How about apple bread I thought? Ooh, or spiced apple bread? How can I make apple bread healthy? To make the apple bread healthy, I...
by Thrifty Lesley | May 12, 2020 | All Recipes, Cakes and Bakes
I’ve updated this post a bit to make it look better. But the images come from the time when I did this experiment, in 2013, and they aren’t very good. I’ll try and repeat everything and take better pictures. Chocolate Fudge Cake, made with or without...
by Thrifty Lesley | Apr 4, 2019 | All Recipes, Bready Things, Dinners, Less than 500 calories, Lunches
Following on from the last post about a savoury loaf cake, I experimented today and came up with this vegan version. My silicone mini loaf tins arrived today. I said yesterday that I wouldn’t use all 12, but that’s exactly what I did do today! I’m really pleased with...
by Thrifty Lesley | Apr 3, 2019 | All Recipes, Bready Things, Dinners, Lunches
The U3A cookery group came round today. We have such fun, exploring recipes, stirring, tasting, baking and talking about flavours, options and possibilities. Not to mention the large amount of laughter and gossiping that goes on! This month, we made Peanut Butter...
by Thrifty Lesley | Jan 3, 2019 | All Recipes, Bready Things, Breakfast, Cakes and Bakes, Less than 500 calories
This rather wonderful sugar free chocolate, cranberry and walnut tea bread started life as an extremely simple ordinary bread loaf. This sugar free chocolate variation has been on my HUGE list of things to try for a while, and one sleepless night, I mixed it up and...
