Sneaky Cupcakes

At the Children’s Book Swap Event that I attended last week, I sold a number of Fruit and Veggie Cupcakes and had a couple of requests for recipes, so here over the next few days are a few of my tried and tested methods for making what I like to describe as sneaky cakes - where you can shove in a whole lot of goodness in without the kids knowing about it. It's also not a bad idea to consider individual cupcakes for kids birthdays. You can still decorate them to theme, but you normally end up with a lot less left overs and waste.

Each recipe makes around 12, but you will get variations on that depending on how big your cake cases are and the consistency of each cake mix. You can make all of these cakes without an egg if you want them to be completely free of animal products. However, two things tend to happen if you're not using egg and you have decide if you can live with it. Either you have a smaller, crumblier cake, or you have a denser cake that is harder to get our of it's wrapper.

Standard Content

115g of plain flour

115g of sugar

75ml of oil

1/2 teaspoon of baking powder

Butternut Squash and Ginger

Use golden caster sugar and sunflower/rapeseed oil for this recipe.

Take 120g of thinly sliced Butternut Squash and a large finger sized amount of root ginger, very finely sliced. Lay on a baking tray with a touch of oil and bake at 190C for around 30 mins, with a loose foil cover, until soft (turn your oven down 180C) Add to a blender or mash until a chunky salsa like texture (you can puree to smooth but this can make your mix a little on the sloppy side.

In a bowl add the sugar, oil and squash mix, and 1 egg if you are using. Beat together to avoid curdling then slowly shift in the flour and baking powder, making a figure eight shape until combined. Take a tablespoon and put heaped amounts into cake cases. These cakes are perfect with a soft creamy icing (see below), but he you choose not to ice, add a little sprinkling of ground ginger to the tops of your cakes at this stage.

Bake in the oven for 15mins, turn out on to wire rack to cool.

Simple Dairy Free Icing.

Using a Vegan or Dairy Free Spread is an incredibly easy way to make a simple soft icing for most cakes. Spread is a lot smoother than hard butter and you don't have to spend as much time beating out the lumps. Measurements are always a bit hit and miss and will depend on the texture you want. I normally start off with a heaped spoon of spread and two heaped spoons of icing sugar, with a small squeeze of lemon, and go from there.

Tomorrow: Apple and Courgette Cakes

MITCH SPINACH …The Veggie Superhero!

There's a certain transition period that loads of kids go through between the post weaning/early toddler phase where they will eat just about anything, and the starting to talk, starting to say 'no' to certain things period. This is of course very natural; boundaries are pushed, authorities asserted and habits formed, but you may very well despair if your child suddenly starts to push their peas aside, cast out their carrots and turn their noses up at turnip. After all, you know it's good for them and if you're hard up, like many of us are at the moment, you don't really want them wasting food.

There is very little reasoning with a toddler and the temptation to wait until your child grows up a bit before you try and push the veg agenda is one that most of us will probably give into. However this is very much a catch 22 situation, wait 'til they're older and yes you can explain the importance of vegetables and a healthy diet, but by that stage they can be stubborn little buggers and all to quick to explain in their own genius logic why they don't do green.

But we will try nonetheless. And there are plenty of resources out there to help. A recent example being Mitch Spinach, the brainchild of children's authors Hillary Feerick and Jeff Hillenbrand, in collaboration with family physician and best selling author Joel Fuhrman, M.D. The series is designed specifically with the idea of creating a positive message in regards to a healthy eating and an aspirational hero who practices what he preaches and the books relate to everyday situations such as school meals, albeit with a superhero twist. There are also some great illustrations by Andrea Vitali.

The books are available through the Mitch Spinach Website and Amazon.com (no UK outlet yet as far as I can see), however even if you're not ordering books, I urge you to check out the website, which is a great source of information and very child friendly, with loads of games, activities, food facts and some amazing recipes, including Super Smoothies and a healthier take on chocolate cake.

http://www.mitchspinach.com/

Baby led weaning

Baby led weaning was the technique we used for getting our son onto solid food. Actually, that's not strictly true, we did try a little bit of single fruit puree and porridge at around 4½ to 5 months when it became clear that breast feeding alone was no longer enough to sustain him (we checked with our health visitor and she said this was okay, I'd suggest anyone who is considering early weaning does the same). However, at around the 5½ to 6 months we started to introduce finger foods and have done this exclusively since, in lieu of the more traditional spoon feeding method.

How has it worked out for us? Well pretty great on the whole. We started off with lumps of steamed veg, done for longer than you would for adults (I like mine near raw anyway) and then introduced breads, pulses, berries and other finger foods over time. Shugs has an amazing appetite for a baby, there is very little he doesn't like or won't try and I think much of has to do with this. We've never pushed food on him and in many ways we've let him decide what he likes and dislikes. The lack of mixed purees meant that he was tasting all ingredients individually and hopefully this has led to a strong pallet. We were also able to gauge developmental milestones by his success in eating certain things, for example blueberries were originally mushed with his chubby hands, but since developing the pincer grip, he carefully picks them up one by one. And I don't know if this is related, but he was very quick to learn to use his sippy cup and leave the bottle behind.

Mind you it hasn't all been a picnic (boom tish). Baby led weaning can be very messy and if you intend to go for it you really need to prepare yourself for stuff getting all over the place (if you have carpets, invest in a splatter mat) It is also quite time consuming, as the baby eats at their own pace, rather than the pace of the person holding the spoon, meaning if you're in a hurry you may have to make other arrangements.

But other than that I've got few complaints. My son's 13 months and his pace is picking up. As such we now eat meals together at the table as a family and we'll be introducing the steady bowl and cutlery very soon (he's okay with a loaded spoon once in a while, but it's time we made it a more regular thing). The best thing though has got to be the fact that we can take him pretty much anywhere and he'll eat. Friends, relatives, mother and toddlers, restaurants and cafes, you name it, he'll sit there contently eating his food and drinking his milk.

Every baby is different, so I'm not saying this will work for everyone, but it certainly did for us, so if you're interested in more information check out http://www.babyledweaning.com