Toad in the Hole Trudie Style

Ooooooh Yorkshire pudding is possibly one of my favourite things to ea,t and so in my humble opinion, no roast dinner is complete without a whole load of baked batter. Throw in a few sausages (and in this case some leeks) and you have heaven on a plate.

My version of toad in the hole uses vegetarian toad. I use sos-mix sausages in particular. I prefer these to Quorn sausages and I always have a packet of sos-mix in the cupboard. For all of you who don't know, sos-mix is a sort of vegetable protein sausage powder (it’s much nicer than it sounds). You just add water, let it stand for a few minutes and then form into sausages and fry. It's great for making patties or meat balls too and it's so easy to add herbs or onions to sos-mix for an extra treat.

I also like to add veggies to my toad in the hole. This time I added leek (as I've got some to use up from the allotment), but you could add anything. In fact I got the idea from a vegetarian recipe book which suggested baby vegetables. Onion, sweetcorn, carrots, broccoli and green beans all work particularly well.

Ok so here's my recipe. It's enough for us for two meals when served with veg and potatoes (we had mash yesterday).

2 eggs
3/4 cup of plain flour (sorry the batteries out on my scales so I’m using measuring cups – I can’t remember the weight in ounces).
300 ml milk (I used soya milk)
pinch of salt
oil
6 sausages
1 leek

Make the batter but whisking the eggs, flour, salt and milk together. Proper cooks will tell you to make a well in the flour whisk the egg in and then the milk, but I don't bother. I just measure the milk in the measuring jug, add the other ingredients to that and then whisk.

You can use this straight away, but I tend to leave it to rest for a few hours in the fridge (cover it up first though). Basically I had some time to make this while N was occupied so I did.

When you're ready to make dinner, turn the oven on and preheat to 200 degrees/gas mark 6. Put a bit of oil in the bottom of an oven proof dish (I used a large oval ceramic dish) and out in the oven to get nice and hot.

While the oven's heating up make up the sausages and fry (actually I did this earlier in the day too). To make 6 sausages feed 3 people twice cut each sausage into 3 pieces to look like more in the dish. Wash and chop your veg that you're adding.

When the oil has had time to heat up give the batter a little bit more of a mix and pour into the hot oily dish. Then scatter your sausages and veg over.

Bake for about 40 minutes. I cut the bits I'm saving wrap in tin foil and freeze when cool.

Photos to follow.