To give you an incentive to share your best (possibly only . . . ) recipes and tips with us we’re giving you the chance to earn points and win prizes. We can’t tell you exactly what they are because it depends what we can manage to wangle out of our various sponsors but we can assure you they will be fabulous. Or pretty nice anyway . .

Here’s how you earn them:

• A useful cooking tip or food-related link (the emphasis being on the word useful. i.e. relevant and helpful to students). 2 points See new rule about maximum number of entries!
  
• A pic of a recipe you’ve made from the website or one of the Beyond Baked Beans cookery books. 5 points

• An original recipe. That doesn’t mean something that’s never EVER been thought of before (few cookery writers manage that) but at the very least something you’ve put your personal spin on. 5-10 points depending how detailed the recipe is

• An original article of between 500-800 words on some aspect of cooking or eating (we’re keen to foster your career as a budding food writer) Could be something you discovered on your travels. Could be how to survive in a student kitchen. Whatever. Up to you. 15 points

• A recipe video. 20 points. We like videos. See the ones that are already uploaded on our Facebook page for inspiration

The sort of prizes your reward points earn:
25 points - a free Beyond Baked Beans book of your choice
50 points - a good bit of kitchen kit or gadget
100 points - (and this is the big one to save up your points for) A video camera so you can immortalise your culinary creations. We're working with Flips (see above) but can't currently manage to persuade them to give us a batch at a knockdown price so it might have to be a Busbi or something similar.

We’ll also award 10 extra points for the
Tip of the Month
Pic of the month
Recipe of the month
Video of the month

The Current Rules (we say current because these are being modified all the time as you find ingenious ways round them!)

• We can only accept entries from students studying at British universities and UK-based fans of our Facebook page, I'm afraid (simply because of the logistics of sending prizes abroad). We welcome entries from those of you who are still at school too.

• No more than five entries in any one category per month - i.e. a maximum of 5 tips or links, 5 pix, 5 recipes, 5 articles and 5 videos from any one person. (We're still struggling to get this right. Initially we got inundated with tips then when we introduced a maximum 5 entries of any kind rule they suddenly dried up as you clearly realised you might blow your allowance in one post! Hence the new rule.)

• Tips, recipes or videos you've submitted as a competition entry don't count (can't have you winning two lots of prizes . . . )

• And we can't enter into discussions about our decisions (i.e. the judges' decision is final). But we will keep the points system under review and maybe introduce new categories as the mood takes us. This is a work in progress and we're happy to take on board feedback to make it work better.

The scheme started Monday, September 1st so get writing, snapping and cooking . . .

Send all submissions to me at fiona@beyondbakedbeans.com or, better still, upload them directly onto the Beyond Baked Beans student cooking page on Facebook.

If you've enjoyed this article why not visit the Beyond Baked Beans page on Facebook where you can contribute your own tips and recipes.