Muesli & Fruit Bars

These make an excellent snack and are not messy or sticky so can be eaten anywhere!

Ingredients

• 100g plain muesli (ie no added fruit or chocolate, and as little sugar as possible)
• 100g plain flour
• 50 – 100g sugar (depending on how sweet you want the bars to be)
• 150g chopped dried fruit eg raisins, dates, bananas, apples, cranberries…
• 75ml milk
• 75ml apple juice

Method

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C and line or grease a small, square baking tin.
2. Mix together the muesli, chopped fruit, sugar and flour.
3. Add the milk and apple juice, and mix to a thick batter.
4. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for about 20 mins.
5. Allow to cool before cutting into squares or bars.

 

 

Carrot Cake

This is a very easy to make cake, really tasty and moist so it keeps well for a few days, wrapped in foil.

Ingredients

• 350g plain flour
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 180g brown sugar and/or honey or maple syrup
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 350g carrots (about 4 large ones), grated
• 3 eggs
• 75ml milk
• 200ml sunflower oil
• handful of chopped walnuts (optional)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180°C.
2. Mix everything together in a bowl. You can vary the amount of sugar, depending on the sweetness of the carrots, or replace some of it with either honey or maple syrup.
3. Pour into a greased and lined cake (loose-bottomed if round) or loaf tin.
4. Bake for about 45 – 55mins until dark brown on top.
5. Cool before slicing.

 

Dried Fruit

This isn’t a recipe, it’s just an idea for dessert or snacking (and, incidentally, explains how this website got its name):

Almost every day, my ds gets a “dessert” after either lunch or dinner, and this usually consists of a selection of dried fruit. I started doing this after reading that babies often get constipated when they start on solids for the first time, and you can avoid this by giving them a dried apricot every day. I did exactly this, and can report that we’ve never had any problems at all in the nappy department!

Anyway, the daily apricot eventually expanded to include all of the following:

• raisins
• cranberries
• mangoes
• apple rings
• pineapple
• banana pieces
• pears
• figs

You can basically offer any dried fruit that the baby can pick up and eat by itself. I buy organic, unsweetened dried fruit and it has proved to be an excellent “dessert” in the winter months when fresh fruit is hard to come by (I refuse to buy expensive and, usually, flavourless imported stuff out of season).

 

Grilled Polenta Fingers

This turned out to be a real hit, and not only with ds. I usually make a trayful and we have it for lunch for a couple of days.

Ingredients

• a small onion, finely chopped
• clove of garlic, crushed
• approx. 50g fresh or frozen spinach
• approx. 25g parmesan, grated
• approx. 25g cheddar, grated
• 80g polenta
• butter or oil for frying
• freshly ground black pepper

Method

1. Heat oil or butter in frying pan and fry onion until softened.
2. Add garlic and spinach and fry for a few minutes
3. Remove from heat and set aside
4. Cook polenta according to instructions (it should be thick rather than thin)
5. Stir in the onion and spinach mixture, the cheeses and pepper.
6. Line a small baking tin (mine is about 25 x 22cm) with baking parchement and lightly grease the sides with oil or butter
7. Pour the polenta mixture in and spread it out evenly
8. Leave to cool completely (I usually leave it in the fridge overnight and then continue the next day when I need it)
9. When cool, turn it out and cut into thick fingers or slices.
10. Arrange on a baking sheet, brush with a little olive oil and grill under a hot grill for about 5 mins on each side until light brown and crisp
11. Serve when slightly cooled down

These also taste great cold or heated up for a moment in the microwave.

Variation

• only using strong, mature cheddar
• finely sliced broccoli, mushrooms and onions
• leaving out the garlic, but adding a spoonful of whole grain mustard and some dried mixed herbs

 

Sandwiches Part 1

Part 1 because I’m sure there will be more coming, but for the moment, here are some ideas of what to put in them:

• cream cheese and thinly sliced cucumber (always a winner, this one)
• mushroom pate (see Toast post (!) for more details on this)
• cheese (slices)
• cheese (slices) and ham (this is also nice lightly toasted so that the cheese melts and helps stick everything together)

Acutally, that’s about it for us and sandwiches so far. The problem is that ds tends to pull apart the bread to see what’s in it (and to generally play around with it a bit), so whatever goes into our sandwiches has to have one overriding quality, and that is STICKINESS.

I usually use sliced bread (like for making toast), white or brown, but sometimes I’ll use normal loaf. Ds seems to like both equally well. I cut into triangles or small-sized sandwiches, easy for him to hold and take bites out of. The bigger the sandwich, the less chance there is of it staying together.

 

Toast

Yes, yes, of course you know how to make toast, I haven’t gone completely mad. Here are just a few ideas of what to put on it and how to serve it up, you know, for inspiration.

• cream cheese – an absolute favourite, even when teething and not wanting to eat anything else
• marmite and butter – for the ultimate savoury kick
• mushroom pate – we get a particularly tasty one from alnatura, so I’ve never actually tried making my own, but if I ever do, I’ll post the recipe here
• jam and butter - interestingly, ds has shown that he does have preferences when it comes to jam, sour cherry being the favourite
• fruit spreads - again, we were able to get a selection from alnatura, but basically is was just lightly cooked and pureed fruit, the apple and banana being the tastiest (also fab on pancakes!)
• avocado  – yes, really. Make sure it’s very ripe and then spread away. Also very nice in combination with cream cheese.

We cut the toast into triangles – perfect to hold, and not too much at once.
And we use both white and brown sliced bread, though we all prefer the white.