This week I’ve been cooking for the garden birds. They’re so greedy at the moment and really seem to love the fat based treats. I have a great little book called ‘Cooking for Birds’ full of very easy recipes to make tasty and nutritious birdy titbits.
I loosely based this on one of their suet mixtures but instead used a jar of saved up fat from oven roasts & sausage cooking. I melted the fat in a pan then took it off the heat to cool before mixing in the following ingredients until it was about the consistency of flapjack:
Crunchy Nut Cornflakes A Weetabix biscuit Coconut Peanut Butter Sultanas An over-ripe banana Stale breadcrumbs A handful of mixed bird seed A tablespoon of sugar (or honey)You can use any kind of stale bread product (muffins, bagels etc.) but it’s best whizzed up into breadcrumbs to help the mixture bind. Most breakfast cereals or stale cake will work too, crumble them up a bit though. Any past it’s best fruit is good or dried fruit if you can spare it. Then I pressed the mixture into chinese takeaway plastic tubs and popped them in the freezer for about 20mins before chopping into chunks and scattering about the garden and on the feeders.
I also had a couple of pine cones that I’d collected earlier in the year which I tied some string to and then pushed some of the cooled mixture tightly between the hard ‘leaves’. All ready to hang from the bushes. The tit birds in particular are loving these.
I’ve had so many hungry visitors already this morning – noisy blackbirds, starlings, goldfinches, chaffinches, robin, all kinds of tits, a little bouncing dunnock – it’s been lovely. In our front garden we have a bird cherry tree and we were treated to a flock of red wings visiting. I don’t expect the berries will be there for long!
What little treats do you give to your garden birds?
It was young Mr.E’s turn to bake for Friday Cake Club today – his second ever cake and very 
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