A Christmas compote recipe for topping your yoghurt

When my folks come around later this week, we're going to have a traditional Christmas dinner - nut roast, roast spuds, sprouts, the works. But for Mr Flicking the Vs' family, it's less of an old school affair - we just have a load of different bits and pieces on the table, bit of bread and salad, everyone gets involved buffet style.

I've already made the cake for dessert ahead of time, and so I thought I'd get stuck into making the savoury stuff as well for good measure. First up, I thought I'd make some palm heart pies. I've made and frozen them to good effect before, and the theme for this Christmas is very much 'make stuff you can't mess up'. 

Only I sort of did mess it up. I went out in the terrible weather yesterday to go and pick up some yoghurt for the sauce that goes in the pies. When I got back home, I thumbed straight to the recipe, only to find that there wasn't any yoghurt required. 

Still, the yoghurt-less pies turned out rather lovely. First, get one red onion fried off, then add a few sundried tomatoes, and a tin of palm hearts, chopped up. Then stir in 1tbsp of flour, cook it off for a bit, 250mls of non-dairy milk goes in next, and you have your pie filling. Cut out some circles of ready made puff pastry for the mini pies, fill them, and stick them in the oven for 20 minutes at 200C.

Due to the wonders of ready made puff pastry (Jus-Rol, you're jus the best), the pies turned out none too bad.

So the pies worked out well, but now due to my shopping list foul up, I had a huge whacking great tub of yoghurt to use, and I don't even like yoghurt, really. What to do with it? Christmas cake it up. Add raisins, mixed spice, and make it taste all festive.

I had a bowl of yoghurt for breakfast, with a big dollop of Christmas compote on top, and wondered why I don't eat yoghurt more often.

Christmas compote for yoghurt

Ingredients
One bramley apple, peeled and grated
One small carrot, peeled and grated
30g of raisins and dried cranberries, or similar
Five glace cherries, quartered
The zest and juice of one small orange
1tbsp of light brown sugar (or more to taste)
One clove
Pinch of allspice, cinnamon, ground ginger
Small handful of chopped nuts

How you do it
Put all the ingredients into a saucepan and warm over a low heat for 30 minutes or so (don't worry about stirring it all the time, just the last five minutes or so - before that, just the odd stir is just the job.)
Once all the liquid has cooked off, and the compote is shiny and thick, take the clove out. Then, stick a load on your yoghurt, add some nuts and maple syrup and go feel impressed with yourself.