Eat The Week with Iceland – Sweet Potato Croquette and American Cheesecake Recipes

Iceland has partnered up with Simon Rimmer and Channel 4 to present Eat The Week, a cookery show that makes meal times fun with delicious and exciting recipes.

I am always looking for different ways of making meals enjoyable for everyone, so I have been following the programme for ideas and food hacks.

In the 10^th Episode of #EatTheWeek ‘Different Taste’, aired today, Simon has made a selection of delicious dishes that suit multiple generations, including sweet fifteens, creamy American cheesecake, cheesy Juicy Lucy burgers and aromatic Korean meatloaf, cheesy mozzarella chicken, smoky pork chops and croquet monsieur, sweet potato croquettes and zingy Red Thai prawn curry.

I am already a big fan of Iceland and their convenient and tasty frozen products, #PowerOfFrozen. My freezer is full of Iceland essentials, such as their frozen fruit, frozen vegetables and frozen meat. They are perfect as a way of saving time when cooking, especially when you need to cater for the whole family and don’t have a lot of time.

I also love the fact that frozen products reduce waste as you only need to take out of the freezer the exact amount you are going to use. Whenever we are planning our meals for the week, we always look for nutritious and tasty recipes, which are going to be a hit with all of us.

From the recipes of the latest Eat the Week show, I decided to recreate sweet potato croquettes and American cheesecake, with the help of Iceland’s handy frozen products.

Sweet Potato Croquettes

Ingredients

• 700g cooked sweet potato flesh
• 2 dried apricot – finely chopped
• 2 dates – finely chopped
• 2 spring onions – finely chopped
• 2 tbsp. pine nuts – toasted
• 1 clove of garlic – crushed
• 3g chilli flakes
• 15g total of flat leaf parsley, mint, dill – finely chopped
• 1 egg – beaten
• About 100g breadcrumbs

Flour Mix

• 150g flour
• 5g smoked paprika
• 5g celery salt
• 5g white pepper

Dip

• 400g Greek yogurt
• 1 lemon – zest and juice
• 50ml mint jelly
• 1 clove garlic – crushed
• 24 mint leaves – chopped

Method

1. Mash the sweet potatoes until smooth, add everything else (the dough should be moist but not sticky – adjust breadcrumbs to make it so)
2. Roll into 40g balls, then into cigar shape. Roll in flour mix, chill 2 hours.
3. Deep fry for 5-6 minutes. Drain on kitchen paper.
4. Dip – simply combine all the ingredients together.
5. Serve the sweet potato croquettes with the dip.

Food Hack:

Instead of getting fresh sweet potato, which I would need to bake and mash, I bought Iceland sweet potato mash, which is a mixture of mashed sweet potatoes and mashed potatoes. It comes seasoned, so it simply needs to be cooked in the microwave for 5 minutes, before adding the rest of the croquette ingredients.

Little man helped me with the recipe and really enjoyed mixing the ingredients and rolling the mixture into balls.

The sweet potato croquettes were definitely a success with the whole family, together with the dip. They were served with a mixed leaves salad with grated beetroot and cherry tomatoes.

American Cheesecake Recipe

Ingredients

Base

• 200g cream crackers
• 100g brown sugar
• 125g butter – melted

Filling

• 500g full fat cream cheese
• 500g ricotta cheese
• 6 eggs
• 150g caster sugar
• 2 vanilla pods – seeds removed

Fruit

• 450g assorted soft fruit – raspberries, blueberries, strawberries etc
• 1 orange – zest and juice
• 100g icing sugar
• 15ml rose water

 Method

1. Base – crush the biscuits and sugar and add the butter. Press into a 230mm spring form tin.
2. In a food processor, put the filling ingredients in and pulse until smooth.
3. Spoon into the base and cook at 160C for about 1 hour until springy to the touch but still a little wobbly in the centre. Leave to cool.
4. Fruit – put the fruit, orange, sugar, rosewater in a bowl. Cover and chill for 1 hour.
5. Serve a good wedge of cheesecake with fruit and cream.

Food Hack

Frozen berries are great in this American cheesecake recipe. I used Crop’s a juicy berry mix of red fruits: raspberry, blackberry, redcurrant and blackcurrant, frozen for freshness.

You simply need to defrost the berries by removing the fruits from the packaging and spreading out onto a large plate or tray. The berries can then be used in the recipe, instead of fresh berries, saving money and reducing waste.

What is your favourite food hack?

To view the recipes from Eat The Week, please check: http://groceries.iceland.co.uk/eat-the-week

This post has been written in collaboration with Iceland, however the opinions expressed are honest and my own.