Save on trips to the shops during a chocolate craving, with the most dangerous chocolate cake recipe in the world! It’s called Five Minute Chocolate Mug Cake.

Ingredients:
4 tbsp flour
4 tbsp sugar
2 tbsp cocoa
1 egg
3 tbsp milk
3 tbsp oil
3 tbsp chocolate chips (optional)
Small splash of vanilla extract

Method:
Add dry ingredients to a large coffee mug, and mix well. Add the egg and mix thoroughly. Pour in the milk and oil and mix well. Add the chocolate chips, if using them, and vanilla extract and mix again. Put your mug in the microwave and cook for three minutes at 1000 watts. The cake will rise over the top of the mug, but don't be alarmed! Allow to cool a little, and tip onto a plate if desired. This can serve two if you want to feel slightly more virtuous.

And why is this the most dangerous chocolate cake recipe in the world? Because we are now only five minutes away from chocolate cake at any time of the day or night!

I am saving around $100 a month on my grocery bills, thanks to a few simple changes to our family meals. I wanted to reduce our food bill and after some thought came up with the idea of making two nights per week a '$2 Dinner Night'. For example, one night we will have something like toasted baked bean sandwiches or stuffed baked potatoes; the other I use up all the leftover vegetables in the fridge to make a self-crusting quiche. This reduces the amount of food we waste and the kids love it. Even the simplest meals can be delicious and filling and the savings we are making from our twice-weekly $2 dinners are well worth it!

As part of my $21 Challenge to use all the food in the pantry, I have set up a 'use up soon' basket containing items getting close to their use-by date. This way, I will remember to use things before I have to throw them out.

This hint was a saviour during our last $21 Challenge.

The girls were looking for lunch and complained there was nothing to eat, so I found a large plastic platter and put the following treats on it:

A leftover BBQ sausage, thinly sliced

Two slices of leftover bread, buttered and cut into quarters

A diced kiwifruit

Four strawberries

A small piece of cheese, diced

1/4 tin corn kernels in a lettuce leaf

A muffin, cut in quarters

Four leftover chicken nuggets, cut in halves

A dob of cream cheese with a little corn relish mixed in

Four cucumber slices

Four cherry tomatoes

One Vita Wheat, halved

I gave the girls and myself a saucer each, plus a cocktail fork and everything was eaten and enjoyed. Now we often have 'platter parties' for meals and snacks. A novel way to serve up a meal when you have 'nothing' to eat!

I have discovered that reversing my old way of shopping is much easier on my pension! Previously I always used to menu plan first, then go to the shops and walk up and down the aisles getting the things on my list (plus plenty that wasn't)! However once we retired I soon realised this was no longer working. I was spending more than we could afford at the supermarket and greengrocer. I needed to find a better way - and I found one!

These days, I do my menu planning and shopping the other way round. I go to the supermarket once a week and buy whatever is marked down. For example, this week I found Wagyu sausages down from $6.95 to $3 for six. That's enough to make three meals for the two of us! I also bought 4kg of chicken breasts marked down to $5.99 a kilo. I can mince some for lasagne, chop some for curries, cut strips for sate or just poach some for sandwiches. Either way I will get at least at least 20 meals for the $45 I spent!

The same goes for the greengrocer. Instead of planning what I was going to buy in advance I now only buy what he has outside in boxes on special. I pick out the best deals, then come home and menu plan around what I have bought. I am finding this so much better on the wallet and would encourage anyone to give it a go!

For a super, low-cost, personal and heartfelt gift, why not give someone a Happy Bag? All you need is a plastic 'loot bag' such as those given away at children's birthday parties, and fill with the following:

*An eraser - so that you can make your mistakes disappear.

*Five cents - so you can never say that you're broke.

*A marble - in case someone says you've lost yours.

*A rubber band - to stretch yourself beyond your limits.

*A piece of string - to tie yourself together when things fall apart.

*A bear hug (cut out teddy bear picture or motif) - to remind you that someone cares.

Imagine getting 14 meals out of a single cooked chicken! It's my biggest food saving and this is how I do it.

Buy a whole chicken (on special of course)! Get a large pot. Place chicken in it and add chunky chopped carrot, onion, celery and mixed herbs (I grow my own so save more money here)!

Boil until the meat is starting to fall off the bone (I have a wood heater so I cook on that, saving gas in winter) Take the meat and vegetables out, reserving the liquid. Serve some of the meat and all the vegetables with mashed potato and white sauce.

With leftover meat, make up some chicken sandwiches and freeze them for quick lunches. Use the rest in curries or whatever other suitable recipes you have.

Back to the liquid. Add a little more water, chop up whatever soup vegetables you have or add lots of lentils, a dash of paprika and salt and slowly simmer to make a few meals of wonderful thick soup. This way, I feed two of us 14 meals out of the one chicken! Not only is it cheap, it is good for you and has helped the purse strings through many tight times over the years.

I have discovered that regularly checking the balance of my everyday bank account and putting just a few cents away into savings each time adds up to some big savings. How it works is this - I check the balance of my everyday account online and then transfer every amount under a dollar showing on that balance, to my savings account. For example, if my everyday balance showed $300.45, I would transfer that 45c to my savings account.

If I transfer 5c every day, then I save $18.25 per year. But if I have as much as 99c to transfer each time, I save $361.35! The more often I log on, the more I save. It works on the same principle as the Money Tin Challenge - except that I had let this spare change slip down the back of the virtual couch for too many years - not any more!

I have turned my love of a good bargain into something far more valuable! Whenever I am tempted to buy something I could possibly do without, I first calculate how much we would save by paying that money into our mortgage instead. For example, I recently saw a new dress on sale for $49.99 - a bargain, right? However, I paid a quick visit to a mortgage calculator website and discovered that if I didn't buy the dress and put that money onto our mortgage instead, it would take a whole month off the loan term and save us $334.39c in interest. In other words, my 'bargain' dress would really cost me over $300!

Looking at my purchases this way has become a really easy and effective way to curb my spending habit. Now I carry a piece of paper in my wallet with various prices on and I can see how much I would really be spending. It's amazing how much stronger my willpower becomes when I check my piece of paper before buying something and find out what its real cost is!

This super basic mince recipe saves me up to $100 a month on takeaways, thanks to the convenience of having meals already 'half made'.

All you need are:
2kg minced beef
2 cups of red lentils
2 tbsp of vegetable stock powder, or four vegetable stock cubes
1 tsp dried garlic granules
1 dsp dried onion flakes
4 cups of water.

Place all the ingredients into a crockpot and cook on high for two hours, stirring every 30 minutes. It should be thick, aromatic and an unattractive brown colour (don't let this worry you!).

One batch costs just $13 to make and is enough to serve as a base for seven meals for our family (two children and two adults). This saves heaps of money and time too. I usually freeze the mince in margarine tubs, as that seems to be the right amount for one meal for our family.

The meals I made are:

1. Piemaker pies.
   Allow one heaped tablespoon of basic mince per pie. Pour the mince into a small saucepan and add a large spoonful of gravy powder, or a dessertspoon of cornflour and some Vegemite for colour. Heat and stir until thickened. Spoon into pastry cases and cook in the piemaker.

2. Mexican enchiladas.
   I use Mountain Bread or make my own crepes. Lay the bread or crepes in u-shapes in a large baking dish. Mix the mince with an equal amount of tinned or home-made refried beans. Spread the mixture in a sausage shape down the middle of each crepe, fold each side of the crepe over, sprinkle with grated cheese and bake at 180C until the cheese is melted and bubbly. Serve on a bed of rice, topped with natural yoghurt and some salsa.

3. Stuffed capsicums.
   Halve enough capsicums for half or one per person. Spoon the mince straight into the capsicums, top with some mashed potato, pumpkin or sweet potato. Sprinkle with cheese and bake for 40 mins at 180C. Kids love these as the capsicum sweetens when baked.

4. Baked spuds with topping.
   Allow one potato of appropriate size per person. Cook in the microwave according to manufacturer's instructions. Split a cross in the top and pile filling into the opening. Top with natural yoghurt or sour cream and chopped, sauteed bacon. Allow one large tablespoon of filling per potato. Mix the filling with one tin of baked beans and heat in a small saucepan before pouring on to the potatoes.

5. Spring rolls.
   Mix about four tablespoons of mince mixture with a packet of cooked and cooled Two Minute Noodles, some shredded carrot, and 1/2 teaspoon Chinese five spice. Using filo pastry sheets or spring roll wrappers, fold a small handful of filling into each spring roll. Spray liberally with cooking spray and bake at 180C for 20-30 mins.

6. Greek pasta bake (Pastito).
   Heat a container of mince mixture with a 400g tin of peeled tomatoes. Cook enough macaroni for your family and drain well. Mix with the meat mixture and spoon into a large baking dish and top with your favourite white sauce or cheese sauce. Sprinkle on some grated cheese and bake for 40 minutes at 200C.

7. Shepherds pie.
   Add any vegetables of your choice to the mince mixture. Place into a baking dish and top with mashed potato, pumpkin or sweet potato then bake until heated and the potato browns.