Blogger Cook Off Challenge : The Results

When the PR for the the Leeds Building Society’s Kick My Habits campaign got in contact about a blogger cook off challenge with a budget of £10, I knew this would be something that Steve would love to do. The Kick My Habits research found out that the average Briton spends £17.34 per week on evenings out…shocking, right? 

We were given £10 and challenged to create a fun meal in. It could be any number of courses but sticking to the £10 budget – by saving that £7.34 per week, people would have £382 of savings by the end of the year – just for forfeiting evenings out.

Not wanting to stick a theme of any kind, we wanted to prove that a budget can be utilised no matter what food you want to prepare. For this, we chose three of our favourite meals: a starter, a main and a dessert to prove that anything can be done on a budget. Some of the courses used items already in our cupboard but we didn’t factor these into the budget as they are cupboard essentials that most people have (homemade breadcrumbs, plain flour, sea salt, soy sauce and Chinese 5 spice). All ingredients were bought at Tesco and were generally the value brands.

If you would like recipes for any of these, please do let me know.

BAKED CAMEMBERT & CRANBERRY SAUCE

From the budget:

Camembert £1.65

1 egg £0.15

Cranberry sauce £0.50

From the cupboard:

Plain flour

Homemade breadcrumbs

SIMPLE CHOW MEIN

From the budget:

Chicken Breast £2.94

Spring Onions £0.75

Pack of white noodles £1

Pack of prawn crackers £0.75

From the cupboard:

5 Spice

Soy Sauce

Sea Salt

Dipping Sauce

CHERRY CRUMBLE

From the budget:

Fruit Filling £1,19

Crumble Mix £0.39

Okay, so perhaps this isn’t the healthiest way of doing a crumble…but on a budget and wanting to indulge? Treat yourself!

If my calculations are correct, we spent £9.32 – bringing us in 68p under budget. We did use a couple of shortcuts here and there – such as ready made crumble mix and tinned fruit rather than fresh but I still think we did incredibly well. If you love Chinese food, Indian food, Mexican food or just a good old bowl of crumble… you can easily do it on a budget.