Pastry staples to always have in your dessert kitchen

As we continue with this blog my friends you will notice that I will prepare and mix many things in advance and have them to hand when  needed. Also I very rarely waste any food and will use the by products of dish to create another.
Today I'm going to give you some ideas on the things that I need to have in my pastry kitchen in order to save time later on.

Vanilla Sugar
Never discard Vanilla pods when a recipe requires using them for infusing, you can keep the pods and pat them dry. Place them into your sugar container and you will have vanilla sugar on hand. Just keep adding pods as and when you can.

Fruit Pulp
When making fruit syrups, sauces and coulis, you will only need the juice. The pulp leftover in the sieve can be used for all sorts of cakes and bakes. You can either keep in an air tight container in the fridge or you can freeze in 500g portions. In the fridge it will only last for about a week but frozen it can last for a month.

Mixed Spice
Often called for in fruit dishes and cake recipes. I make my own mixed spice as I have all the individual spices in my cupboard. However most shops sell mixed spice in the baking section.
This is a very basic recipe that is a good all rounder
2tbsp cinnamon, 2tbps allspice, 2tbsp nutmeg, 3tsp mace, 2tsp cloves, 2tsp coriander, 2tsp ginger,
2tsp caraway, 1tsp mace

Any bread products that you have should be dried out and processed to make breadcrumbs. To dry out bread you can either use the residual heat from your oven when can or just leave to dry in a single layer on top of your cooker.
I also make sweet crumbs from crossiants, bricohe bread and should you have any pound cake/plain sponge leftover!!!!
Dried bread crumbs can be kept for at least 3mths in airtight containers or you can bag in 500g portions and freeze

Dark Chocolate Sauce
150g 70% dark chocolate broken into pieces
6tbsp golden syrup
warm over a moderate heat, stirring until the chocolate has melted

Caramel Sauce
250g caster sugar
50g butter
142ml double cream
On a moderate heat caramelize the sugar with about 4tbsp of water til you get slightly dark caramel, remove from heat stir in the butter and the cream

Sugar Syrup
250ml water
250g caster sugar
heat the sugar and water on a moderate heat until the sugar has dissolved, allow to cook further until the mix has reduced by 1/4 and is slightly thickened. Cool and keep refrigerated for about fortnight.

And finally you'll want to make sure that you always have a good back up of canned, preserved and dried fruits as well as a variety of  nuts in your pantry.