LEFT OVER CHRISTMAS CRANBERRIES...

For some reason I had a bag of cranberries left over after the Christmas period. I wasn't really sure what to do with them until I came across a recipe for cranberry and cream cheese muffins in January's Good Food magazine. I thought I'd make a little adjustment to the recipe so now they're:

Cranberry, clementine and cream cheese cakes

This recipe used up all the cranberries I had left over, about 300g which left me with a nice extra batch of cranberry sauce which went well with some pork pie for lunch.

100g full fat soft cheese

400g caster sugar

300g cranberries

200g plain flour

50ml clementine juice

2tsp baking powder

2 eggs

75ml sunflower or vegetable oil

1tsp vanilla extract

First off, you have to make your cranberry and clementine sauce. Heat the cranberries in a pan with 100g of the sugar and the clementine juice over a medium heat. It should take about 20 mins for you to achieve that sort of syrupy, jammy texture you're looking for. The skins of the cranberries should split, but mash any of the more stubborn ones with the back of a wooden spoon. Take off the heat and allow to cool completely. You'll need about 200g for the cakes and the rest, spoon into a sterilised jar.

Preheat the over to 180 degrees.

Beat together the cream cheese with 25g of the sugar and set to one side.

Sift the flour into a bowl and add the remaining sugar and baking powder. Add the eggs, oil vanilla and cranberry mixure and gently stir together. It doesn't matter if the mixture is lumpy. Divide it up between muffins cases, the mixture should do about 15-16 cakes. Make a small dip in the centre and pop in a tea spoon of the cream cheese mixture. Bake for 25 minutes or until golden.