Baby Led Weaning

Growing healthy babies with healthy appetites

Posts Tagged ‘snack’

It’s Pancake Day! My Old Grandmother’s Recipe for Scottish (Scotch) Pancakes

Tuesday, February 21st, 2012

We love pancakes in this house, ESPECIALLY if we remember to open the windows before DH gets to work on the griddle. Scottish pancakes have more in common with American ones than French crepes; fat, thick little things that are perfect for little babies to get their carbohydrate fix on. I’ve never been completely clear as to what the English call them… used to be drop scones, now everyone probably follows the Yanks on this.

Here’s the recipe, as per my auld grannie mother’s instructions… i have NO IDEA about conversions I’m afraid.

4oz Self Raising Flour
Pinch of salt
2oz Caster Sugar
1 Egg (I don’t bother about the size, I bet my Grandma used medium but they are fine with a large. Just don’t stress over much if the kids lose some down the side of the bowl if it’s a large, the recipe can handle less egg).
4 tablespoons-ish of milk

I do this in a food processor/mixer/whatnot but it’s really just a batter so a whisk will be fine, if tiring.

Mix dry ingredients a bit, then egg and then the milk, gradually. Ta-Dah!

Honest, that’s it. It’ll be a nice drippy, dropping batter. At this point, the women in my family leave it for an hour. All of them apart from me, who never has time. But I am told it improves the batter, so do it if you can.

If you have a flat griddle or frying pan, get it out and grease it a bit. Nowadays people seem to use veg oil or whatever but I actually still save up my old butter wrappers and rub them on the surface. A teensy bit of oil, like, MINISCULE rubbed in as well will stop the milk in the butter from burning too much.

Slap on heat, wait until it’s preeetty hot, almost smoking, then test a drop of batter in the middle. You want bubbles appearing on the top fairly quickly, that’s when you know it’s at the right temp. Plus, you’ll see how brown it is on the bottom, some like golden, some like darker. My DH likes burned.

Discard tester into the mouth of waiting child.

Then go for it. Drop a loaded dessert spoon-ish of batter onto the pan, three or four at a time. Wait for bubbles, then turn. Repeat, repeat, repeat, fiddling about with temp occasionally, and carefully rubbing a bit more butter on (remember that thing is HOT) and serve with raspberry jam, butter, cream, those sorts of things.

Also, can I just say if you are thinking of doing crepes… Delia’s recipe is Far Too Eggy. Avoid. There, I have done you a good turn.

PS Hey I’ll tell you what we used to do when we were kids, with the end of the batter and the griddle switched off. Me and my little sister would do our initials with the last drips off the spatula and for some reason they were always the tastiest…

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Bunny's Studenty Toasty Pizza

Wednesday, December 27th, 2006

This recipe has reminded me of the fact that when I was at university I thought it was genuinely witty that we had a sign above the toaster in our student flat that bore the legend 'Make Toast, Not War'… <Aitch wipes tears of  thirtysomething mirth from eyes>.

Thought you might like this uber easy recipe (using the word loosely!). It
requires no doughmaking, ideal for lazy types like me. This is how we used to
make pizza at uni when we'd spent all our food money on beer
;-)

 
Toast Pizza (aka
Cheese on toast with vegetables)
 
1 slice of
bread
Tomato
puree
Cheese of
choice
 
Lightly toast your
bread so the bottom won't be soggy. Spread a thin layer of tomato puree over the
top (you can make it yourself, but we use Organic Tomato Puree from Waitrose –
no added salt, hurrah). Cover with cheese – The Weeble is partial to mozzarella
and cheddar. Bung under the grill until the cheese is melted and bubbling. ALLOW
TO COOL! Molten cheese has thermonuclear properties!
 
If you are like me
and a bit slapdash with the cheese, you'll probably have burnt crusts, so cut
those off. Cut your “pizza” into strips (for bubbas; leave whole for older
children and mummies) and serve! Weebs really likes this, especially the way the
mozzarella can be made to stretch for miles when cool and
rubbery.
 
It occurs to me that
if you substitute another veg puree for the tomato, that would use up some of
that leftover puree we all seem to have… and also sneak in some vegetables
should you need to do so!
 
We're going to try
it again tomorrow with some small bits of cooked chicken embedded in the
cheese.”

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Some Bloke Called Andrew's Carrot Muffins

Wednesday, December 27th, 2006

Probably noooot really called Andrew, in fact, but this email wasn't signed so Andrew is the only nominative detail I can glean from our correspondence. For the record, I think that if you want to make your own buttermilk you just mix equal amounts of natural yoghurt and semi-skimmed milk. I think

Says 'Andrew':

“I reckon you could swop carrot for courgette, pepper, onion, etc, though probably fry them a bit first.

Also use any different cheese and herbs, and I'm sure normal milk would work, if you can't get buttermilk.

1 carrot, grated
15 stalks parsley, chopped
60g cheddar, grated
220g self-raising flour
1 egg
3/4 cup buttermilk (about 150ml, I think?)
1/2 cup vegetable oil

1. Preheat oven to 180c.
2. Mix carrot, parsley, cheese and flour.
3. In another bowl, whisk egg, buttermilk and oil.
4. Add this to dry ingredients and mix.
5. Spoon into muffin cases (makes 12) and bake for 20-25 mins.”

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Frozen Yoghurt Lollies

Friday, November 10th, 2006

Having got over my irrational fear of frozen yoghurt, I decided to try out some home made lollies. Basically I mixed some natural yoghurt and mashed banana and froze it. I used our ice cube tray but ours has quite large sections i.e. about 2 ½ times normal cubes. I created handles by inserting the small spoon end of the spoon you get with Calpol – I know you know the spoon I mean.

 

Boomer really enjoyed these – she takes large bites and sooks the lolly. The spoon is great to grab and she plays with it once she has finished the lolly.

 

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Mawbroon's Home-made Oatcakes.

Thursday, August 31st, 2006

Now, I don't actually know Mawbroon in person as I met her on Mumsnet, but my spider senses suggest to me that she might be Scottish…

Here is her recipe, but I intend to quiz her further on the nature of the oatmeal. Pinhead? Porridge Oats? Not sure at this stage, will report back.
Anyway, here goes.


8oz oatmeal

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 dessertspoonful of melted fat, (the recipe suggests butter or lard but Mawbroon's natural inclination is to rebelliousness so she uses olive oil)


hot water

a good pinch of salt would be nice but unfortunately it is frowned upon because of the babies' kidneys and all that blah blah blah.



Mix all the dry ingredients together with a well in the middle and pour
in the fat. Blend in enough hot water to make a stiff paste then knead
and roll out as thinly as possible. Cut into triangles and bake on a
floured tin at 200 degrees until the ends curl up and the cakes are
crisp. Alternatively, bake them on a hot girdle or frying pan.



Now, that's what the recipe says, but what Mawbroon does is take little blobs of the
mix and flattens them into fat little oatcakes. So, they are rustic
looking and not thin enough to curl up when cooked. Apparently little
helpers can help because the mix cools very quickly even though you use
hot water.


Update. Mawbroon says:

“I just use “normal” oatmeal but pinhead would do as well. Porridge oats
could probably be used at a push after a blitz in the food processor,
but I've never tried it, so don't blame me if you try it and the
oatcakes are vile.




I don't know about the availability of oatmeal in England for anyone
reading who lives there. My sister lives in London and stocks up every
time she comes home (to Scotland) for a visit because she claims not to
be able to buy it down south. I would have thought that with the fad
for whole foods at the moment that it would be readily available, but
I'll take her word for it. I do know that Lakeland sell the Alfords
stuff.




Also I forgot to say that the cooking time is somewhere between 20 – 30 mins.”


Hurrah, I was right, she is a Jock. And good to have a cooking time on a recipe, I always find…

Post Script.

I
made them. They are flipping deeee-licious and really easy. I used
medium oatmeal, as my pinhead oatmeal actually seemed to be less finely
ground than the medium when I pulled it from the cupboard. Mistakenly,
I had thought it would be small, not unlike the head of a pin, but no.
Go figure. Also, for the record it's a straight no on the porridge
oats, apparently if you try this recipe with them you will be sadly
disappointed.

Anyway,
they work great with olive oil I reckon, you can really taste it which
is very pleasant, but thinking about it I probably put in a bit more
than the recipe called for as my hand has a tendency to wobble when
holding any bottle… The no-salt thing isn't a problem if you are an
adult as you are invariably jamming a big wodge of salty cheese on them
anyway.

Like
Mawbroon, I rolled the mixture into little balls about three-quarters
of an inch in diameter, then squashed the little blighters in the palms
of my hands to make discs of about one-and-a-half to two inches across.
I kept them in for about half-an-hour because I like oatcakes a little
golden.

Babybear
has had them with hummus and butter, and her strategy has so far been
to take a nibble off the edge, which she chews a bit but finds a little
dry to be honest. Her next move is to lick the topping off the oatcake
at which point it becomes a bit soggier, before returning to it every
so often as it becomes more wet. She mustn't leave it too long, though,
as it turns into porridge if it sits on her soggy highchair tray (we're
still getting to grips with drinking from a glass). Obviously it
depends how well your baby is doing with gagging and everything, but I
definitely don't think that Babybear would have been able to manage
these until quite recently (she's eight-and-a-half-months). Anyway,
thanks again Mawbroon, I think these will be a real favourite in our
house for many years to come. Well, they will if my husband has
anything to do with it, as he's eaten nothing else all day.

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Organix Moon Biscuits

Friday, August 25th, 2006

Och, I've just realised that I've thrown the box out. Anyway, they are nice, blah blah organic, blah sweetened with grape juice, no hydrogenated fats etc etc. And what's more, they are shaped like little moons which makes them super-easy to hold onto. Which has got me thinking, my baby led weaning chums, that what we need is a biscuit/rusk recipe that we can bake ourselves (therefore we won't be paying through the nose for them) and shape into crescents. I'm hitting the internet now, expect radio silence until I have come up with something sensational.

Oh, and I know that Organix makes lots of little vegetable puff crisps which are useful if you are trying to hang fire on gluten but here's the thing… if you don't need to eat them, I wouldn't. Because it strikes me that they look just like Wotsits, and I'm quite keen that Babybear does not pick up her father's former crisp habit (he was a ten bag-a-day man, or so he tells me) so I'd rather not teach her that some crisps are okay but some aren't.
That's it. Expect radio silence NOW.

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Rice Cakes

Monday, July 17th, 2006

So far, rice cakes are the only food stuff that break my somewhat sniffy 'if I wouldn't eat them, I'm not giving them to my baby' rule. God, but they honk…
Anyway, as long as you don't breathe in when you open the bag then rice cakes are useful for taking out with you as they don't make much mess. I take them out in a dinky little Tupperware pot that I bought for my purees, haw haw.
I buy Cow & Gate ones which are especially for babies and have extra vitamins added and don't contain added salt etc etc but I'd be interested to know if it'd be cheaper or somehow better to get adult 'no-salt' ones. Of course, they wouldn't fit in my baby-sized plastic pots…
If we are in the house I put hummus or cream cheese on them, which Babybear licks off/sticks up her nose/rubs into her hair before sucking the rice cake to death.
I can't think that there's much to recommend them nutritionally, other than if you are trying to avoid gluten which I appreciate a lot of people are. I just give her them because they are tidy. Does that make me a bad mother, I ask you?

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