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Better festive entertaining

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Bring a busy time right back down to size, with cooking tips and food-protecting know-how from Glad®. Bring a busy time right back down to size, with cooking tips and food-protecting know-how from Glad.

There’s baking to be made, friends to entertain (you’ve been meaning to catch up for ages), end-of-the-year school events and finally, Christmas Day. It’s going to be busy but with a little planning, the right tools and some magic prep-ahead, it’s going to be a whole lot of fun as well.

Got a barbecue, brunch or morning tea coming up?

Compoundbutters are easy ways to turn the simple into something so much more. Glad® Cling Wrap make it a cinch to form logs of flavoured butter to be refrigerated or frozen ahead of time. For savoury dishes, combine softened butter with your favourite herbs or condiments. Add some soft goat's cheese if you want to take things up a notch. Shape into logs on to lengths of baking paper or cling wrap and roll up, keeping the shape even as you go. Chill and slice into rounds at serving time to melt over steaks, fish and roasted vegetables, sweetcorn, baked potatoes or kumara. Use fresh-herbed butters within a week, or freeze. See recipes here.

Sweet butters work well too – serve them with loaves, scones, muffins, waffles and pancakes or make logs of cookie dough ahead of time for end-of-year morning teas. Chill or freeze, slice and bake.

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Looking for an easy but thoughtful gift idea? Using Glad® Cook & Bake Paper, make baking paper-covered logs of brandy butter, each end tied bonbon-style with festive ribbon. Store in the fridge.

Feeding a crowd?

It's Glad® Roaster Pans to the rescue. Use them to marinate, cook and reheat — on the barbecue or in the oven. They're sturdy enough to hold meat up to 4.8kg, there's no kitchen mess and no tiresome scrubbing later of sticky, baked-on juices. Save your platters and bring the limited-edition printed roasters straight to the table. Tip: When testing your meat or turkey, use care with a sharp knife or utensil to ensure you do not puncture the foil. Set your roaster on a metal baking sheet and remove both to add stability when taking a heavy roast from the oven. This easy roast turkey with bacon, apple and cranberry stuffing is going to be a winner on Christmas Day.

Prep-ahead salads

Wash and thoroughly dry your salad leaves the day before your guests are due. Wrap loosely in paper towels and store them in Glad® Snap Lock® Reseal Bags in your vegetable crisper. If space is tight in the drawer and you are worried they could get ruined, put them in a Glad® Matchware Container that has been lined with paper towels and seal with the lid.

If you need to buy your lettuce days before your event, wrap the whole thing in a lightly (not soaked) damp paper towel, then in Glad® Cling Wrap. After a full week, your well-protected lettuce will still retain 99 per cent of its moisture.

Finely shred cabbage for coleslaw the day before. Pop it into its own resealable bag. Make the dressing up to three days ahead and keep it refrigerated in a covered container. With the prep taken care of, you can toss the slaw together in less than five minutes a few hours before serving it. Cover and refrigerate it and you're ready to go. See fennel and orange slaw recipe.

Festive baking hints

Heat-resistant, non-stick Glad® Cook & Bake Paper means your biscuits, slices and super-sticky brownies will not only be easy to remove from your (still clean) oven trays and pans but the paper will help stop your baked goods from darkening too much on the bottom.

  • To ensure your baking paper won't slide off the tray as you carry it to the oven and to stop it flapping up and down during fan-forced baking, put a dab of dough on each corner of the tray and adhere the paper to them.
  • Run out of cupcake cases? Cut squares of Glad® Cook & Bake Paper, press them into a greased cupcake or muffin tin, then use a small jar to press them in place. Fill with batter and bake.
  • Put cakes on squares of baking paper before icing to catch the drizzles. Discard when finished.
  • If you have multiple events and know there's lots of baking to do, measure and cut baking paper into a stack of rectangles to fit your oven trays.
  • Homemade pastry and dough placed between two sheets of Glad® Cook & Bake Paper is easy to roll and it won't stick.
  • Use three layers of Glad® Cook & Bake Paper to line the tin when making your Christmas cake. Talking of which, it's time to bake yours now. Go easy on yourself with this no-cream-butter version.

Everyone loves chicken

Roast an extra chicken when you are making dinner, pull the meat off the bones when it's still warm (it's much easier to do then) and, squeezing out as much air as possible, freeze in flattish parcels in Glad® Freezer Bag or Glad® Snap Lock® Reseal Bags. Use later in fillings for party sandwiches, pies or quesadillas.

Freeze-ahead sauces

Make pesto for bruschetta, or for a crowd-pleasing pasta, and freeze ahead in smallish flat portions in Glad® Snap Lock® Reseal Bags, again squeezing out as much air from the bag as possible. Small portions are faster to freeze and easier to store. Ditto: cranberry sauce for Christmas Day, (see photo below) meat sauce for lasagne, meat and bean chilli sauce for nachos, homemade barbecue sauce. You get the idea! Cool the sauce completely before freezing.

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If freezing sauces in a container of your own, use Glad® Cling Wrap to protect food. Press it down on to the surface so no air can get in between the plastic and the sauce.

Easy-to-remove frozen desserts

Use BPA-free Glad® Cling Wrap to line your container, folding it over the top to seal when making a frozen dessert. Spray your container with cooking spray first to make it easier to turn out onto a plate at serving time. See this recipe for quick-to-prep summer ice cream pudding.

For more great cooking, recipes and food storage tips, see the Better Living website. Visit Glad® on Facebook.

There's baking to be made[c1], friends to entertain (you've been meaning to catch up for ages), end-of-the-year school events and finally, Christmas Day. It's going to be busy but [c2]with a little planning, the right tools and some magic prep-ahead, it's going to be a whole lot of fun as well.

[c1]This doesn't make sense

[c2]Does this need a comma?

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