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How many times have you made something out of leftover rice, chapati, boiled potatoes, and chicken? It is called sustainable cooking minimises food wastage and allows you to experiment with food and come up with interesting recipes. It also reduces cooking time and makes it easy for you to serve a hot piping meal in no time. However, this is not the case with savouries only, you can make desserts with leftovers too.
Video Credit: Chef Ranveer Brar/ YouTube
A few desserts even have a history of being born from leftovers. While the experience of most people has been such that leftover desserts taste stale the next day, you can still transform them into something delightful that will leave your taste buds surprised and tantalised. Here are a few options that you must take note of.
French Toast
First made in Rome in reportedly 300 AD (no, its birthplace is not France), French toasts were prepared with leftover bread cooked with eggs, strawberries, heavy cream, and butter. Start by cutting the sides of bread slices and cutting each into four pieces.
In a saucepan, add water and strawberries. Let it simmer until the berries release their juices. While this happens, beat sugar, cream, and vanilla extract together. Add eggs and whisk them with the beater. Spread the combination on bread and cook until both sides are brown and crispy.
Biscuit Pudding
Biscuit pudding is nothing but a sweet delight comprising leftover cookies or biscuits assembled with fresh ingredients. This dish is super easy to make and requires hardly any effort to serve on the platter. Start by dipping cookies or biscuits in milk. It will soften them.
Beat the cookies a little for a little rough texture. Add the biscuits to a glass and layer them with freshly sliced bananas, berries, mangoes, and other fruits. Add homemade custard on top of fruits and repeat the process with cookies. For garnishing, add more fresh fruits on the top and enjoy deliciousness in every bite.
Trifle
Trifle is an English dessert that came into existence after someone soaked sponge cake in alcohol centuries ago. Today, this dish is available in every high-end restaurant or cafe. To make this at home, whisk eggs yolks, milk, salt, and sugar to make custard. Add vanilla essence to it to elevate its flavours.
Take your leftover cake and arrange it on a baking dish. Drizzle the alcohol of your choice and spread jam. Continue with this alternatively and top the last layer with custard. Refrigerate the trifle for a couple of hours so that the custard sets. Add whipped cream on the top and serve.
Shahi Tukda
The origins of shahi tukda are not clear, but the dish seems to have been born in Hyderabad or North India in the Mughal era. It is made with leftover bread and sugar syrup. This recipe is so easy that you can make it at home as well.
Start by slicing off the sides of bread slices and cutting them into four rectangles. Deep dry each slice in ghee and dip into leftover sugar syrup. Arrange syrup-dipped toasts on a plate and top them with sweetened milk, rose water, saffron, and crushed dry fruits.
Almond Croissants
Reportedly, almond croissants came into existence when bakeries in France wanted to make something creative out of unsold pastries. For this, you need to start by creating a sugar syrup made with water, sugar, vanilla extract, and rum extract.
In another bowl, combine almond flour, brown sugar, eggs, all-purpose flour, salted butter, salt, and almond extract. Your filling is ready. Cut store-bought croissants in half, brush them with sugar syrup, add the filling inside and bake for 15-18 minutes. Let the dessert cool off and enjoy.
