Easy Jam Tarts for BLW!

For those who haven't heard of it BLW stands for baby-led weaning which is what we've started doing with our daughter in the last month or so. Basically it involves skipping the purees involved in weaning and just letting your baby feed themselves. If you're interested in finding out more Gill Rapley has written a great book and the baby led weaning forum is full of useful advice.

But back to cooking...the point of baking for your baby is that you should avoid giving them sugar, hence all the experimentation recently! So here's a recipe which I made last night and proved very popular with the little teacup this morning. It's a very easy recipe to scale up or down as the quantities are the same.

Jam Tarts

Ingredients
100g butter
100g plain flour
100g wholemeal flour
a few tablespoons of cold water
a few tablespoons of sugar free jam (I used cherry St Dalfour)

Recipe
1. Combine the flours and rub in the butter until it resembles breadcrumbs.
2. Use a little water to form a dough. Wrap the dough in a plastic bag and chill in the fridge for half an hour or so.
3. Grease a patty tin and preheat the oven to gas mark 6 (200 degs C / 400 degs F).
4. Roll out the pastry and stamp out circles using a pastry cutter. If you fancy it also cut out the same number of stars to put on top.
5. Put the circles in the tin and top each with a few teaspoons of jam and a star (if using).
6. Bake in the oven for 15-20mins til lightly browned.
7. Leave to cool before eating.

And here's the results being enjoyed for breakfast!

Spiced Apple, Hazelnut and Date Loaf

We have a load of apples at the moment, from a neighbour's tree (thank you!), that needed something doing with them. We've frozen lots, stewed lots more and this cake was the first of the baking to start using them up! It's adapted (a lot!) from a recipe in a recent Sainsbury's magazine - the original has parsnips and apricots in, here's the recipe if you're interested. My version has apple, hazelnuts and dates in but still uses the original combination of spices and is really very easy to make.

Spiced Apple, Hazelnut and Date Loaf

Ingredients
150g plain flour
150g wholemeal spelt flour
2 tsp baking powder
1 tbsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp ground cloves
10 cardamon pods, seeds removed and crushed
4 eggs, lightly beaten
75ml date syrup
70g pear and apple spread
50ml apple juice concentrate
100ml vegetable oil
2 apples, peeled, cored and roughly diced
100g chopped hazelnuts
100g chopped dried dates
Recipe
1. Preheat oven to 180 deg C (350 degs F / gas mark 4). Grease a 2lb loaf tin.
2. Mix the flours, baking powder, spices, eggs, date syrup, pear and apple spread, apple juice concentrate and oil together in a bowl.
3. Fold in the apple, hazelnuts and dates and transfer to the prepared tin.
4. Bake for an hour and a half until golden and risen and a skewer comes out clean.
5. Leave to cool in the tin then turn out.