Baby Led Weaning

BLW: Lois’ Cheesy Balls

Posted on by Amykate

One of the best things we did to prep for this baby was sign up to an NCT course – we learned a lot of facts about labour and birth that were truly horrific and perfect for dinner time conversation but the best part was meeting a group of lovely lovely people who are all going through the same thing at the same time, we now have a group who we can vent to or ask advice of when the baby is being a little… darling!

Lois is one of the mums from our NCT group, pretty sure she invented these, there are lots of similar recipes floating around but these take the best bits and put them all together and they are amazing, you end up with these tasty bites that, although rather strongly flavoured, the baby really seems to love! They are the right size for him, you can make them in bulk, they are easy, they freeze, you can stick a couple in a Tupperware and take them out with you. Plus they’re vegetable based so practically good for you!

I have tweaked slightly, here is my recipe.

Ingredients
1 large broccoli head OR 1 cauliflower
1 slice of bread or pitta bread (whole meal if you’re being very healthy), grated or blitzed into breadcrumbs
Grated Cheese – I’m use mature or medium
1-2 eggs depending on the runnyness of the mixture
Pepper
Small onion diced
Clove of garlic or garlic powder

Method
– Steam the veg till tender, then let it dry off whilst you get the rest ready so the mixture isn’t too wet later on
– Mash / blend the veg to a textured pureé
– Mix everything together into a glorious sticky mess
– Put small balls onto a lightly greased baking tray (a couple of sprays of olive oil)
– Bake till golden at about 180 – roughly 12-15 mins depending on oven
Grown up version
– I find the onion too strong so I would saute it first, but the baby likes it so I haven’t tried this yet
– I also plan to try bacon with the cauliflower ones at some point

BLW – Pancakes

Posted on by Amykate

Ok, I admit – I forgot about Shrove Tuesday! And you know that nipping to the shops when you have a baby and it’s coming up to a meal time and you haven’t started on supper and you’ve not had a shower yet is oh so super convenient so all I can say is, thank you past Amy for making sure there was SR flour, Eggs and milk in the house!

Ingredients
– 100g Self Raising flour
– 100ml milk
– 1 egg
– oil or butter for frying
– Anything else you fancy

Base Recipe
– Put 100ml milk in a jug
– Put jug on scales and add 100g Self Raising flour
– crack in an egg and beat up (I used my hand blender that I have for making baby purees)
– You can either cook now or add other things at this stage – see below
– Heat a frying pan with spry olive oil in (or butter etc. what ever you have around)
– Cook 3 or 4 dollops into the pan for 40 seconds (ish), flip and cook for another 40 seconds
– Continue until you’ve used all the mixture or the baby screams the house down because supper in taking too long – the mixture can stand for a while, in fact it helps if it does – something to do with gluten.
– Serve – they can be hot in the middle so be careful

Savoury cheese
– Add finely chopped onions
– Add grated cheese – I preferred stronger cheese to be honest, about 30g but it’s not a science
– Grown up version – serve with soured cream and some chives

Blueberry
– Add 30g ish of frozen blueberries, did I defrost to start with? No, should i have done? Maybe
– Warning – your baby will look horrendous after eating blueberries! But they love it

Banana and Raisins
– Roughly mash a banana and add to the mixture
– add raisins
– a healthy pinch of cinnamon and stir
– Grown up version – I had mine with maple syrup, yum!

Pizza Toast

Posted on by Amykate

Pizza Toast

Another quick baby meal made from store cupboard things and what ever you have lurking in the fridge.

IMG_3682

Harlyn loves cocktail sausages so we always have them in, it’s amazing what you can add them to!

– Turn on the grill
– Make toast
– Spread with tomatoe puree – not too thick
– Add pizza toppings, I used chopped peppers and a sliced cocktail sausage but once again this is a “what ever is in the fridge” meal
– Cover with cheese – grated or sliced
– Grill for, oo, 3 and a half minutes – you want the cheese melted enough to hold everything together but you don’t want the toast to burn
– Slice into squares or fingers,
– Let cool and enjoy!

Baked Egg, or Fridge Surprise – Baby Version

Posted on by Amykate

The “What the feck do I feed the baby for tea?” feeling hit around 4pm today, we’ve had a busy week and there were no left overs in the fridge for once. We had been swimming today so he needed something more than just toast but I wasn’t up for a full scale cooking or cleaning event.

When I don’t know what to cook for the grown ups I cook “fridge surprise” which is usually pasta with a sauce made up of what ever is the in the fridge – or sometimes it’s a stir fry or when things are really barren in there, it’s hat old classic – an omelette. As we’re doing baby led weaning and the baby has what we have, it waas time for baby fridge surprise!

And so the Crust-less-quiche / omelette / fridge surprise fusion was born. And the baby liked it 🙂

Harlyn eating baked egg
Harlyn eating baked egg

Ingredients:
– An Egg
– Cheese
– What ever else you have around, I used a slice of wafer thin ham as I wanted to up his protein for today (it was a carby lunch!)
– Pepper
– Dash of milk – not sure if this actually helped, it just felt right

EDIT: I did this again without the milk and it was fine! I added green pepper this time – that worked well, he wasn’t too sure to start with but got into it!

Method:
– Spray some cooking oil into a ramekin, or grease with butter. I didn’t do either of these things and it still worked
– Crack an egg into the ramekin and beat up a bit
– Add cheese – lumps or grated, I had some little bags of cheese cubes so threw them in
– Add ground pepper
– Tear up a slice of ham and add
– I added a dash of milk at this point, probably wont next time
– stir it all up a bit
– Microwave for about a minute and check, it may need a little more – babies should have solid eggs
– Turn out onto a plate, let cool, cut into “fingers” or chunks.

Variations:
– Add what ever the hell you have in the fridge tothe egg mixturn before cooking, torn or cut into suitable sized chunks