Category Archives: Feeding The Family Recipes

Wholemeal Blueberry Muffins Recipe

Posted in Feeding The Family Recipes, Finger Food Recipes, Life With Little Ones, Recipes by

Had a sudden craving for Blueberry Muffins on Saturday morning, just about managed to avoid that section in the supermarket and figured I’d make a family-friendly recipe – with fresh fruits, not too sugary and wholemeal for extra bonus points.

Adelyn loved them so much she had two and then didn’t have enough appetite for lunch – oops!

Adapted from a recipe of Gordon Ramsey’s to take out a bit of the sugar 🙂

Makes 9 Toddler-Sized portions (i.e. cupcake-sized) and 6 Grown-Up Muffins!

2 very ripe large bananas

300g wholemeal flour

1½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

Pinch of fine sea salt

80g light muscovado or brown sugar

284ml carton buttermilk

1 large egg, lightly beaten

75g light olive oil (or melted butter)

200g blueberries, rinsed and drained

1 tbsp demerara sugar

Preheat your oven to 180C and depending on how you want to prioritise your bake, either line with 9x cupcake cases (for your wee ones) or 6x muffin cases (for the elders) – you’ll be baking in two batches to ensure even cooking.

Peel and lightly mash the bananas in a bowl – put aside for now.

Combine the dry ingredients in your mixing bowl, so the flour, baking powder, bicarb, salt and sugar.

Make a well in the middle of the mixing bowl and add the wet ingredients – the buttermilk, egg, olive oil and bananas. Fold together quickly and stop when combined – don’t overmix.

Tip in the blueberries and give the mix a couple of gentle stirs to combine.

Spoon the mixture into your prepared cases.

For the Toddler Portion, bake for 15-18mins till golden, risen and dry when poked in the centre with a toothpick.

For the Grown-Up portion – bake for 20mins till golden etc.

Carefully transfer to a wire rack to cool a bit – at least until cool enough to eat!

Autumnal Apple & Sultana Muffins

Posted in Feeding The Family Recipes, Finger Food Recipes, Life With Little Ones, Recipes by

Every Autumn, one of the houses on our block walk with Coco puts a bucket outside of their front drive with an invitation to help oneself to bags of their windfall Bramley Apples – what a lovely way to share with neighbours. And by lovely I mean lovely for my family, courtesy of the kindness of these neighbours because we get crumbles and baked goods out of their apples for free ^.^

Even after I made an 8 portions Apple Crumble (!!) I still had 3 apples leftover, and since Adelyn keeps very seriously saying “MUFFIN” at me, I figured I’d whip together some Apple & Sultana muffins (inspired by the BBC’s) as an Autumnal variation on our usual Banana muffins!

Enjoy the warm, homey smells of freshly baked cinnamon, appley goodness.

  • 200g self-raising flour
  • 1 tsp baking powder
  • 1 tsp cinnamon
  • 50g wholemeal flour
  • 100g golden caster sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 125ml milk
  • 4 tbsp sunflower oil
  • 2 apples, peeled and grated (I used Bramley). Give a little squeeze so it’s not TOO juicy
  • 100g sultanas

Preheat your oven to 180C (160C Fan) and line a 12-muffin tin with muffin cases.

In a big bowl, combine the dry ingredients; the self-raising flour, baking powder, cinnamon, wholemeal flour and sugar – give it a good mix together.

In a jug (or another bowl), beat the milk, eggs and oil together. Add this to the dry ingredients bowl and mix well.

Stir in the grated apple and sultanas and give it one last good stir.

Carefully spoon the mix into your prepared muffin cases and bake for 25 minutes until golden on top.

Spinach Puffs Recipe

Posted in Feeding The Family Recipes, Finger Food Recipes, Recipes, Review by

OK so when you give this to your little ones to eat, you’d better have the hoover ready. My husband seemed to delight in sharing a video with me of the mess she had made as I commuted home, and then realised that he was the only one around to handle the clean up. He was later seen wafting our beloved child in the garden, shortly followed by her high chair in a bid to de-flake.

After getting lots of inspiration from the thoughtfully compiled set of Ella’s Kitchen recipe books – it suddenly dawned on me whilst going through The Big Baking Book aka The Yellow One of the series – that combining puff pastry and yummy fillings would solve the two issues I’ve been having with sending Adelyn off to the childminder’s with her packed lunch; 1) homemade and 2) easy-to-feed-herself portioned food.

I get mildly anxious about ensuring Adelyn gets enough iron in her diet so this recipe has been somewhat of a Godsend given her reluctance to eat bolognese (like seriously, how can anyone fail to enjoy spaghetti bolognese??) The Big Baking Book helpfully reassures me that “spinach is rich in iron and calcium, making it perfect for superhero-style bones and brains.”

And look at these crispy beauts! Note: I made a change to the original recipe and made my puffs smaller.

Ingredients:

150g spinach

125g ricotta cheese

50g Parmesan, grated

Good pinch of freshly grated nutmeg

250g ready-made puff pastry (I use ready rolled)

1 egg, beaten for glazing

Sesame seeds (I only had black at home!)

  • Preheat the oven to 200C and line your baking sheet with parchment.
  • In a sizeable saucepan (must have a lid too), pop your spinach in and drizzle with 1 tablespoon of water. Cover and heat the spinach gently for 5 minutes till wilted. Tip the spinach into a sieve or colander and press out the juice as you don’t want soggy filling! Then roughly chop.
  • Drain off any liquid from the tub of ricotta and place in a large bowl along with the Parmesan and nutmeg. Mix together. Then add the chopped spinach and mix till evenly combined.
  • Assuming you’ve bought the ready-rolled sheet of puff pastry as I do, roll it out and leave on the parchment. Cut in half widthways and lengthways and then quarter those rectangles too so you have 16 rectangles.
  • Divide the filling amongst 8 of the rectangles and you’ll have something that looks like this:

IMG_0922

  • Brush the edges lightly with the beaten egg. Cover with the remaining 8 rectangles and press the edges down with a fork or finger.
  • Carefully place your puffs on to the prepared baking sheet. Cut a little cross in the top of the pastry and then glaze with the remaining egg and sprinkle with sesame seeds. Bake in the oven for 20-25minutes until wonderfully puffed up and golden!
  • Delicious served warm (but can be eaten cold). Store in an airtight container for up to 24 hours.