In its wake, Christmas leaves the inevitable leftovers to create new and inventive meals.

The Good Food website has lots of tasty ideas to get you started. The recipe below is a great way to use up leftover marzipan and mincemeat. According to the Love Food Hate Waste campaign, at Christmas the British throw away the equivalent of two million turkeys, five million Christmas puddings and 74 million mince pies. These are fairly depressing figures and we all need to do our bit to cut down on the massive amount of Christmas food waste.

I think it starts with making a realistic list of what’s required; there are special calculators for this on the internet if you need a hand. We seem to go into panic mode just because the shops close for one to two days and stock up as if the end of the world is nigh.

Having fewer ingredients hopefully in turn leads to fewer leftovers. And any leftovers we do have, raw or cooked, get creative with them, don’t just bin them.

Christmas Brownies

Makes 12-16

220g/7¾oz butter

110g/4oz golden syrup

350g/12oz caster sugar

¾ teaspoon grated nutmeg

¾ teaspoon ground ginger

325g/11¼oz 70% chocolate

5 eggs

85g/3oz plain flour

200g mincemeat

100g/3½oz marzipan, grated

Line a 23cm/9inch square brownie tin with greaseproof paper.

Preheat oven to gas mark 5 / 190°C/ Fan 170°C

Melt the butter, golden syrup, sugar and spices in a saucepan until smooth.

Remove from the heat and stir in the chocolate. Ensure it is all melted.

Mix in the eggs followed by the flour. Stir in the mincemeat.

Pour into the tin. Sprinkle the marzipan evenly over the top of the raw mixture.

Bake for approximately 40 minutes - it will be a tiny bit wobbly and wet crumbs will cling to a skewer when inserted in the middle.

Leave to cool completely before cutting into 12 or 16 depending on how hungry you are!

More recipes at www.earshamstreetcafe.co.uk