Dried fruits are always a great go to for when pepping up your cooking

You get a sweet sourness that works with desserts and savoury dishes. When you them in alcohol or citrus juice they take on the flavours and plump up beautifully. When I was growing up fig rolls were a staple biscuit in my grandparent’s house. A sticky filling wrapped in sweet pastry – they weren’t the most interesting of confections but they did have a certain charm. Dried figs are much more intense than their fresh original and take up aromatic spices and citrus particularly well. I would never dream of making a Christmas pudding without a generous amount of figs in the mix. In the recipe here I’ve recreated a version of fig rolls. The fig is cooked with sugar, orange zest and juice, rum and spice until thick and syrupy. Some finely chopped walnuts bring the whole thing together and you treat them like sausage roll in rolling the pastry around the filling, slicing and baking. They’re a perfect warming treat to have with a hot cup of tea or coffee on a grey day.

Dried cherries are one of my favourite dried fruits. They have a lip puckering tang that works well rich meats like duck or venison equally as well as they do with chocolate. A Tiffin cake is a no bake variety that uses biscuits as the main component. Butter, sugar and syrup bring the whole thing together with some dried cherries, raisins and melted chocolate is poured on top. Its quite rich and decadent but sure we need a bit of spoiling now and again.

For years I’ve been making an apricot, celery and walnut stuffing recipe from the classic Cordon Bleu cookery books. It’s a fool proof, delicious recipe with the tangy apricots cutting through the rice sausage meat. Lamb tagine is a middle eastern dish and here it’s a one pot wonder made with shoulder meat, rice, spices, onions, dried apricots and stock. Its finished off with spinach and coriander. Bags of flavour and not much washing up – a win/win situation.

Have a look in your cupboard and get all your dried fruit out. The Tiffin cake can be made before hand and then frozen as can the fig rolls (unbaked) getting you ahead for the festive period and having a culinary spring clean all in one go.