How to make bird cake

Sarah the warden at The Waters' Edge gave me this recipe for bird cake, which I thought you might find useful if you want to help the birds in your garden out while it's still pretty cold. The snow might be melting here in Barton, but I think the birds would still appreciate a little extra help, and it's fun to make this cake too, so why not do something good today. If you don't get birds in your back garden, or if you don't have a garden atall, you can always give the cake mixture to the wild birds in the Waters' Edge park.

The recipe has come from an RSPCA factsheet, so if you want more ideas I am sure there will be some on their website.

There are lots of different ingredients you can put into making bird cake, but bird cake must always have suet or lard in it to make it set. If you are using suet, meat suet is better than vegetable suet. Ok, so first problem there folks, the shop didn't have any lard, so I used 'I can't believe it's not butter'. Sarah says that's ok, but it won't set. But I figured the birds probably wouldn't complain too much.

Ingredients: Here are some of the many ingredients you can use to make bird cake:

• Wild bird seed

• Raisins and other dried fruit

• Fruit (e.g. grapes, apples etc - cut up into small pieces)

• Oatmeal

• Breadcrumbs

• Bacon rind

• Cheese

• Peanuts

• Unwanted Mince pies left over from Christmas

Containers: You can put bird cake mixture into lots of different containers to hang in the garden. Here are some suggestions:

• Yoghurt pot

• Coconut shell

• Old food container

• Old orange/grapefruit halves

• Plastic drinking cup

• Pine cones

• Half a tennis ball

What to do

1. Put all the ingredients into a bowl and mix them together.

2. Pour the melted suet/lard or butter/margarine if you can't get that over the mix and stir well. (Half the bowl should be ingredients and the other half should be the melted lard etc

3. Now the bird cake is ready to be poured into your chosen container.

4. Put the container with the cake inside into the fridge overnight to set. It will be ready to put out for the birds the next day.

5. The containers should not be re-used and will need disposing of carefully when they are empty.

The ingredients: I used 1.5 kg of butter, 2 left over Mince Pies, 2 Apples (English of course), mixed dried fruit, mixed nuts, oats, bread and wild bird seed.

First I put all the fat on to melt over a low heat.

In the meantime I crushed the nuts with a rolling pin until they were in small pieces.

Chopped up the apples into small chunks.

Crushed the old Mince Pies.

Broke up the bread into small bits.

Added the seed, dried fruit, oats and made sure it all added up to 1.5kg.

Mixed it all together.

Poured in the melted fat and stirred well.

Then dished out into various pots and containers.

And eh Voila, the next day the birds now have a feast to enjoy. If only they now spot it!