Fruity "Pouch" Muffins

I love doing baby led weaning with our DD and she seems to really love food so we've never had to do purees at all. So when someone kindly gave me one of those fruit puree pouch thingys I wasn't sure what to do with it! But then I got thinking that it would go quite nicely in some muffins... And here's the result!

Forgive the american cup measurements, it's (heavily) adapted from a recipe for Apple and Coconut Muffins in "Superimmunity for Kids" by Leo Galland.

Pouch Muffins

Ingredients
1 cup plain floud
1/2 cup wholemeal spelt flour
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda
1/2 tsp vanilla essence
1 tsp vanilla powder (or use more vanilla essence)
1 egg
1/4 cup melted unsalted butter
1/4 cup flaxseed oil
2 tbsp apple juice concentrate
2 tbsp sugar free apricot spread
2 tbsp milk
One pouch of fruit puree (I used a blueberry, vanilla and banana one)

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to gas mark 6 (400 degs F). Line a 12 cupcake tray with cupcake cases.
2. Mix the dry ingredients together.
3. In a separate bowl combine the wet ingredients (except for the pouch contents).
4. Combine the wet and dry, mixing enough to blend together but not over beaten.
5. Put 1 tsp of mixture in each cupcake case. Squeeze over approx 1/2 tsp of pouch contents in each case. Top with 1 tsp of muffin mixture. Swirl with a skewer to make a nice pattern!
6. Bake for approx 10-15 mins until lightly brown.
7. You will probably have some of the pouch contents left so now you have to find something else to do with it; mixed into yoghurt is quite nice.

Sugar free Spice Bread with Vanilla Frosting

Just made another lovely recipe from the Superimmunity for Kids book; a lovely spice bread (or cake really) with vanilla frosting. And you really wouldn't know that it hasn't any refined sugar in! To be honest I found the icing too sweet so would probably add the apple juice concentrate gradually next time until it is to my taste. I'll post some photos soon.... if it doesn't get all eaten before then!

Spice Bread
Ingredients
1 1/2 cups Wholemeal flour
1/2 cup Wholemeal spelt flour (or soy flour if you have it)
1 tsp Bicarbonate of soda
2 tsp Ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp Grated nutmeg
1/4 tsp Ground allspice
1/2 cup Raisins
1/2 cup Chopped nuts (I used a mixture of almonds, cashews and walnuts)
1/2 cup Linseed (or sesame seeds)
3 eggs
3/4 Yoghurt
1/4 cup Butter, melted
1/4 cup Flax or Walnut oil
3/4 cup Apple juice concentrate
Recipe
1. Preheat oven to gas mark 4 (350 degs F/ 180 degs C). Grease a 2lb loaf tin.
2. Sift together the flours, bicarb and spices.
3. Add the raisins, nuts and seeds and mix well.
4. In another bowl beat the eggs, yoghurt, melted butter, oil and apple juice concentrate until blended.
5. Combine both mixtures until blended (but don't over mix).
6. Pour into the prepared tin and bake for 40 mins.

Vanilla Frosting
Ingredients
6 oz Firm tofu
2 tsp Lemon juice
3 tbsp Apple juice concentrate
2 tsp Vanilla essence
1 tbsp Powdered vanilla (if you have it)
Recipe
1. Put the tofu in a blender and mash with a spoon.
2. Add the other ingredients and blend until a smooth mixture.
3. Chill to thicken the frosting.
4. Spread on your cake!

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.

October Bake it! - Ginger Cake

I enjoy 'normal' baking too, i.e. with lots of sugar, and have been following a few blogs on the subject. There's so many out there but I do enjoy the blogs of the Great British Bake Off finalists, Miranda Gore Browne and the Pink Whisk. The Pink Whisk introduced me to the Bake It! club, recipes are posted each month and everyone has a go at the same recipe. So... I thought why not try and adapt a Bake It recipe to be free of refined sugar? The October recipe is Ginger Cake and here's my adaptation :-). It tastes good and looks just like the original really! The method is very similar, I just changed a few of the ingredients. The original recipe is here.

Ginger Cake
Ingredients
125g butter
80g granulated fruit sugar (I used Fruisana)
85g date syrup
85g apple and pear fruit spread
200ml milk
250g self raising flour
1tsp bicarbonate of soda
3 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
2 eggs
a little sugar-free apricot jam

Recipe
1. Grease a 2lb loaf tin. Preheat the oven to 160 degs C (gas mark 3).
2. Melt the butter, fruit sugar, date syrup, fruit spread and milk in a saucepan. Leave to cool for five minutes.
3. Combine the dry ingredients in a bowl and add the melted ingredients.
4. Beat the eggs and add to the mixture. Stir well.
5. Pour into the prepared tin and cook for 45-50 mins til a skewer comes out clean.
6. Leave to cool in the tin for 15 minutes then remove to a cooling rack.
7. Brush with a little sugar-free apricot jam.

 I'm afraid I then cheated a little as I wanted to ice the cake but haven't figured out how to make icing without icing sugar. So I made a ginger buttercream icing (using 40g butter, 100g icing sugar, 20g finely chopped stem ginger and 1tbsp milk) and decorated it using slices of stem ginger. Here's the result (after a few slices were already eaten!):

Fruit and Nut Slice

Over the weekend I made (and ate most of!) this lovely fruit and nut slice. It is very easy to make in between looking after my lovely little daughter and tastes excellent! I would describe it as somewhere between a flapjack, a cereal bar and one of those nice Rawr bars you can buy. It uses pear and apple spread to sweeten it, which looks disturbingly like marmite but doesn't taste like it! The recipe is from Jane Sen's "Healing Foods Cookbook" which also has some other nice sugar-free cookies and cakes... looking forward to trying them soon :-).

Fruit and Nut Slice
Ingredients
150g (5oz) raisins
150g (5oz) nuts (I used hazelnuts but any would do)
4tsp pear and apple spread (or other fruit concentrate)
85ml (3fl oz) sunflower oil
75g (3oz) oats
150g (5oz) plain flour
85ml (3 fl oz) water

Recipe
1. Grease a 7" flan case. Preheat oven to 190 degs C (gas 5 / 375 deg F).
2. Blend the dried fruit and nuts til finely chopped.
3. Mix all the ingredients together til well combined.
N.B. the recipe calls for everything to be added to the blender, mine wouldn't have coped with that so just mixing it in a bowl worked fine! I guess you'd have a smoother mix if you blended everything.
4. Pour/press the sticky dough into the flan case.
5. Cook for 30 mins or until browned.
6. Cut in case and leave to cool before serving.

Sorry no photos... it got eaten too quickly!

Scones

Afternoon tea is a great English tradition and wouldn't be complete without some scones. I've never added sugar to mine, after all they are normally served with plenty of jam so why add even more sugar! And if you're feeling virtuous then you can stick with the sugar-free jams such as St. Dalfour or Meridian. I'm afraid we'd run out of sugar-free jam so I had to eat one with real apricot jam on, terrible! These also freeze really well and can be defrosted in a low oven so everyone thinks you just baked them!

Sultana Scones (makes approx 6 scones)

Ingredients
8 oz self-raising flour
1 1/2 oz butter
2 tbsp sultanas
1/4 pint milk
pinch of salt
Recipe
1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 7 (220 degs C / 425 degs F) and grease a baking tray.
2. Add the salt to the flour. Rub the butter into the flour.
3. Add the sultanas and mix to a soft dough with the milk.
4. Knead a little til smooth then roll out (approx 1" thick).
5. Cut out scones using a round cutter.
6. Put on baking tray and bake for 12-15 minutes til lightly brown.

Chocolate Brownies

Today I thought I'd try out this recipe I found on the Vegetarian Society website. It sounded simple enough but I admit I was dubious that chocolate brownies could be made without sugar. However, I'm now convinced, they taste lovely! Quite sweet, although as a bit of a chocoholic I'd probably like them a bit more chocolatey. We had some for desert with some nice thick plain yoghurt and they were delicious.

Chocolate Brownies 

Ingredients
8 oz\250g dates
4 oz\100g butter
1 egg, beaten
1 very ripe banana, mashed
2½ oz\60g wholemeal flour
2 tsp baking powder
4 tbsp cocoa powder
3 oz\110g walnuts, roughly chopped
1 tsp\5ml vanilla essence

Recipe
1. Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 (180°C / 350°F). Grease a square cake tin (about 18cm x 18cm/7" x 7").
2. Put the dates into a saucepan and add water to just cover them. Cook for 5-10 minutes or until softened. Puree the dates until smooth and allow to cool a little.
3. Cream together the dates and the butter/margarine while the dates are still warm, until light and fluffy.
4. Add the egg, the mashed banana and vanilla essence and mix well.
5. Sieve the flour, baking powder and cocoa powder and add to the mixture.
6. Fold in the walnuts and turn the mixture into the prepared tin.
7. Bake in the preheated oven for 30-35 minutes, or until the brownies feel fairly firm to the touch.

I used a 8" round tin as I didn't have a convenient sized square one. This took an additional 5 mins in the oven.

Banana Bread

This is a yummy recipe from the baby-led weaning forum. DD hasn't tried it yet as she's too small but in a few weeks she might!

Banana Bread
Ingredients
8oz Banana (approx two bananas)
3oz Raisins
4oz Plain flour (I used wholemeal)
3 tsp Baking powder
2oz Butter
1 egg
1/2 tsp mixed spice

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to gas mark 4 (180 deg C/ 350 deg F) and grease a 2 lb loaf tin.
2. Mix together the flour, baking powder, spice and raisins.
3. Melt the butter.
4. Whisk egg and mash in the banana.
5. Fold into the dry mixture and add the melted butter.
6. Put in the prepared tin and bake for 45 mins to an hour until a skewer comes out clean.

Mmmm.. Chocolate cake!

Or, more specifically, sugar-free chocolate courgette cake! I know, it sounds a little strange but it is yummy! I adapted a recipe from Nigel Slater and it's a great way to use up courgette.

Chocolate Courgette Cake
Ingredients
200 g butter
4 tbsp sugar-free jam (I used apricot)
2 eggs
150 g courgette (approx one medium size one)
200 g plain flour
2 tbsp cocoa powder
pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 tsp vanilla essence
60 g walnuts
80 g sultanas

Recipe
1. Preheat oven to gas mark 4 (180 deg C/ 350 deg F) and grease a 2 lb loaf tin.
2. Cream the butter and jam. Add the eggs.
3. Grate the courgette and squeeze the excess moisture out before adding to the mixture.
4. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well.
5. Put in prepared tin and bake for about an hour. (N.B. It seems to be a very moist cake but a skewer should come out clean when the cake is cooked.)

Picture to follow shortly...

Day two - cookies and cake!

Well, to keep us going I tried a couple of recipes on day two and I have to say they have both vanished pretty quickly now! So quickly that I'm afraid there are no photos but I'll try and remember next time...

Firstly some cookies, the original recipe was courtesy of this excellent blog but I have adapted it slightly. These tasted great! Slightly less sweet then perhaps we're used to but the jam and the fruit does make it quite sweet enough. I took the cookies round a friends house and no-one even realised they hadn't any sugar in! I also made another version with ground ginger, sultanas and spelt flour and these were good too.

Walnut and Sultana Cookies

Ingredients

• 100 g butter
• 3 tbsp sugar free jam (I used St Dalfour apricot jam)
• 1 beaten egg
• 50 g ground almonds
• 50 g sultanas
• 30g chopped walnuts
• 100 g wholemeal flour
• 1/2 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp mixed spice

Recipe
1. Cream butter and jam together.
2. Add the egg and beat well.
3. Add the rest of the ingredients to make a sticky dough.
4. Spoon dollups of the mixture onto a baking sheet (I made twelve cookies) and flatten slightly with a fork.
5. Bake at gas mark 4 (180 deg C/ 350 deg F) for 15-20 mins til golden.


And I wanted something to take on a picnic to share. So I found this recipe for a fruit cake (from Rose Elliot's "New Complete Vegetarian" cookbook). This was really good too and surprisingly sweet, I don't think anyone would realise that it has no sugar in. I think it would make an excellent Christmas cake, perhaps with some pretty dried fruit put on the top before you cook it. The cake went down really well at the picnic and a couple of people asked for the recipe so it must have been good! The cake is also vegan.


Fruit Cake

Ingredients

• 225 g dates
• 275 ml water
• 450 g mixed dried fruit (I used sultanas and apricots)
• 175 g plain wholemeal flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp mixed spice
• grated rind of one orange or lemon (I hadn't any so just used a dash of lemon juice!)
• 40 g ground almonds
• 4 tbsp orange juice (again, I hadn't any so used apple juice)
• a few flaked almonds

Recipe

1. Preheat oven to gas 3 (160 deg C / 325 deg F). Grease and line a 2lb loaf tin.
2. Chop dates and add to saucepan with the water. Cook over a low heat til soft. Then remove from heat and mash to break up.
3. Add all the remaining ingredients (except for the flaked almonds) and mix well. Spoon into the tin and sprinkle the flaked almonds on top.
4. Bake for 1 1/2 hours until a skewer inserted comes out clean.
5. Cool slightly in tin and then turn out onto cooling rack.