Three super easy pasta sauce recipes for baby led weaning

I have taken a baby led weaning approach to weaning with my two, mainly because they refused to take anything from a spoon and it was the only way to get food into them. These three pasta sauce recipes have been huge hits in our household. I make them with macaroni pasta, which babies can scoop up in their fingers and feed themselves with, and later progress to eating themselves with a spoon. If you are spoon feeding your baby then of course you can also use these recipes, and just mix in tiny pasta shapes. They would probably work just as well as a puree too for younger ones.

I make these sauces and freeze them in small portion sized pots (yoghurt pots are ideal).

Green pasta. This is the absolute favourite meal in our house. It is a very simplified version of an Annabel Karmel recipe and makes about 5 portions. This one is very messy, long sleeved bibs and a bath to follow are recommended. It has a lot of cheese in it, so it's good for babies that are not keen on milk.

1 bag of spinach
2 tablespoons of soft cheese (I've used Philadelphia, the supermarket versions and Dairylea all work well)
A large handful of grated cheese
Splash of milk

Wilt the spinach in a large saucepan. Drain the excess liquid and return to saucepan. Add the soft cheese, grated cheese and milk. Return to the heat for a short while until the cheese has melted a little, then blend. You may need to add more milk to produce a smooth texture.

This is one meal that I tend to make for the little ones only. It is incredibly rich with all that cheese!

Red pasta. My own recipe! We eat mainly vegetarian food, which is why I have added lentils. This makes about 8 or 9 portions.

1 can of chopped tomatoes
Water
Large handful red lentils
Teaspoon of herbs (I use Italian Herb Seasoning)

Place the chopped tomatoes in a large saucepan. Rinse out the can with water and add more water to the saucepan, I find that about two thirds of the can is a good amount. Add in the lentils and the herbs, bring to the boil and then simmer for about 20 minutes, or until it has thickened. Blend.

You could increase the vegetable content of the sauce by adding some extra vegetables, perhaps add some pureed carrots or sweet potato. I eat this too, although it is rather bland so may require some salt for adult tastes. I serve with plenty of grated cheese.

Red pasta again Mummy? Yum!

Yellow pasta. Also known as cheese sauce. I'm sure that everyone has a tried and tested recipe for cheese sauce, this is the one that I use, or you can find a more exact one here. This makes about 5 portions.

A lump of butter (about 15g)
Small tablespoon of flour
200ml milk
Large handful of grated cheese

Melt the butter then add the flour and mix together. Add the milk gradually and stir until thickened. When thickened add in the cheese and stir.

This is a really good recipe to make for the whole family. I've also made it with extra hidden vegetables blended in - parsnip or cauliflower work well.

I think that my children would eat these three recipes in rotation if I let them!

This post has been written for the Baby Led Weaning Carnival hosted at Circus Queen, where Adele is building up some really good resources for parents interested in and trying out baby led weaning.

Button Moon Birthday Cake

I have a tip when making Birthday cakes for very little ones. Instead of saying "What would you like for your Birthday cake darling?" instead use a statement like "How would you like an 'x' Birthday cake?" where 'x' is something that you want to or can easily make. I'm not sure up to what age you can get away with this, but it certainly worked very well with Harry, and he was thrilled with his Button Moon cake. In terms of cakes, you really can't get much simpler. A plain Victoria sandwich cake with yellow butter icing and four chocolate buttons in the centre!

Easy lemon drizzle cake

I hadn't made this cake before, in fact I had to go out and purchase a loaf tin to bake it in (with hindsight, a lemon juicer would also have been a useful purchase).I found the recipe on BBC Good Food, and I chose it because it didn't have too many ingredients and it looked quite easy to make. It is rather yummy, if I say so myself.

Ingredients:

• 225g unsalted butter, softened
• 225g caster sugar
• 4 eggs
• finely grated zest 1 lemon
• 225g self-raising flour

Drizzle:

• juice 11⁄2 lemon
• 85g caster sugar

Method:

1. Heat oven to 180C/fan 160C/gas 4. Beat together 225g softened unsalted butter and 225g caster sugar until pale and creamy, then add 4 eggs, one at a time, slowly mixing through. Sift in 225g flour, then add the finely grated zest of 1 lemon and mix until well combined. Line a loaf tin (8 x 21cm) with greaseproof paper, then spoon in the mixture and level the top with a spoon.
2. Bake for 45-50 mins until a thin skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. While the cake is cooling in its tin, mix together the juice of 1 1/2 lemons and 85g caster sugar to make the drizzle. Prick the warm cake all over with a skewer or fork, then pour over the drizzle - the juice will sink in and the sugar will form a lovely, crisp topping. Leave in the tin until completely cool, then remove and serve. Will keep in an airtight container for 3-4 days, or freeze for up to 1 month.

To avoid waste, I only used one lemon - the zest for the cake and the juice for the drizzle. To make up for less lemon juice in the drizzle I used just 50g sugar which made the cake plenty lemony enough for us.

Sleep Deprivation Fridge Cake recipe

For when you really need some energy to get you through the afternoon, this 'cake' is easy and quick to make around the demands of your insomniac baby and/or toddler. It does really need a couple of hours to set solid in the fridge, but that is not essential, you can just eat it with a spoon.

In a large bowl:
Tip in 225g or so of digestive biscuits and bash them up into quite small pieces with a rolling pin
Mix in a 100g bag of Maltesers

In a saucepan melt together:
Approx. 250g of your favourite chocolate (although cheap stuff works just as well). Or you could try a few Mars bars which sounds rather tasty
100g butter
2 tbsps caster sugar
2 tbsps golden syrup
2 tbsps cocoa powder

If you like, there is room to add in various other ingredients - nuts, dried fruit, mini marshmallows, more chocolate pieces...

Mix it all up together, press firmly into a suitably lined cake tin to a depth of about 2cm, and leave in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Can you say sugar rush?

Keep a close eye on it, as it has a habit of disappearing while it cools. If sharing with a toddler, place toddler securely in high chair and apply a bib, keeping baby wipes handy.

More gingerbread men and Button Moon

So I've still been too lazy to make gingerbread dough from scratch. But we were in Sainsbury's at the weekend and spotted this ready made dough. We've had the cookie dough from there before and it was very nice, so we thought we'd give it a go.

As long as it was taken out of the fridge to warm up it was pretty easy to roll out, and also very smooth. When I make biscuits I always end up with bits stuck to the rolling pin, but it didn't happen with this dough. It was very firm though, so quite difficult to mould other than rolling. We decided to make Button Moon themed gingerbread. We cut out lots of circles and used a drinking straw to make the holes in the middle for Button Moon.

Below is one of the trays ready to go into the oven. The pack says that it makes 8 gingerbread men, obviously this is dependent upon the size of your cutter but I would think that it would make a few more than that. Perhaps they expect people that are too lazy to make the dough from scratch to also be too lazy to re-roll the leftovers from around the edges to make more biscuits! We made a spaceship and Mr Spoon's house, as well as Mr Spoon, Mrs Spoon, Tina Teaspoon and a few extra moons.

Harry was a lot more interested in the smarties than decorating the biscuits, but I think that we made a pretty good effort, this is just half of them! And they tasted nice too.

Just realised that this sounds like a big advert for the dough. They didn't pay me, honestly!



Decorate your own gingerbreadman kit

I had a friend visiting for lunch today, so I let Harry choose some biscuits. He went for a decorate your own gingerbreadman kit, which was tucked in at the side of the shelf in the supermarket. I've not bought one of these before, I must admit that I'm a bit snobby and see them as cheating (not that I've ever made gingerbreadmen with Harry, another one for the to do list). However I didn't have time to make any biscuits and I thought it might be a good incentive to get him home without stopping at the (waterlogged) playground on the way back.

I was pleasantly surprised. The icing was in a handy tube which he was able to squeeze out himself (although it was a rather garish shade of yellow which did cause some fingertip and worktop staining) and there were plenty of sweets. He quickly got the hang of what to do, and the biscuits themselves were rather yummy.

If anyone has a link to a tried and tested gingerbreadman recipe, I would love to give it a go!

Easy Madeira Cake

I woke up the other morning with a craving for Maderia cake, so I had to get one in the oven. Here is my easy recipe, handed down from my Mum. I use a cup measure from my breadmaker, but a small mug would do it.

Ingredients:
4 oz margarine
1 cup caster sugar
2 cups self raising flour
2 eggs
1 tablespoon milk

Method:
Mix all the ingredients together. Place in a 7" lined tin and bake at 180 degrees (lower for fan assisted ovens) for just under an hour. I mix by hand, if you use an electric mixer it will probably rise a bit better.

Delicious when still warm. The best bit is the crust!

You can make the cake more fun by dividing the mixture into several parts before putting into the tin. Mix a few drops of food colouring into each part, then layer the coloured mixtures into the tin. Rainbow cake! Or you can make the mixture in two halves, and in one half replace some of the flour with cocoa powder. Layer the two mixtures together in the tin to make marble cake.

Making and icing biscuits

I've been making biscuits with Harry since he was about a year old. We've been on a bit of a hiatus lately as my old scales broke, but shiny new ones arrived today so we set to making some, just to test out the scales of course.

The biscuit recipe that I use is a simple shortbread recipe:

50g caster sugar
175g plain flour
125g butter
1tsp milk if required

Stir together the flour and sugar. Add the butter in cubes and rub between the fingers until it resembles breadcrumbs. Squash together until you have a dough, add the milk if it's still a bit dry. Roll out, cut out the biscuits and place on baking tray. Bake at 180 degrees (lower for a fan oven) for about 14 minutes.

Then when they have cooled they are ready to decorate. My icing recipe:

Several tablespoons of icing sugar
A few drops of food colouring (colour chosen by toddler)
Enough water to make it quite runny

Mix it all up together, adding water and icing sugar alternately until you reach the desired consistency. Quite runny is best as it is easier to spoon over the biscuits.

Place the biscuits on a tray, hand the toddler the bowl of icing and a spoon, a plate of decorations, and let them at it. Try and persuade them to put some of the decorations onto the biscuits rather than into their mouth.

Enjoy!