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.

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!

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!):

Sugar-free Jam - my first attempt!

A lot of the recipes call for use of sugar-free jam. I've been buying this but really I'd like to make my own. So after searching on the internet I found a few recipes and tried this one out. I have to say it was much quicker and easier than making 'normal' jam. The resulting jam wasn't as sweet as the shop brought sugar-free jams so I think next time I'd add more juice concentrate. I was lucky enough to find a lot of mirabelles (small, sweet, yellow plums) growing for free in the hedgerow so made the jam from these. However, I'm sure you could use any variety of sweet plums if you don't have mirabelles!

Sugar-Free Mirabelle Jam
Ingredients
900 g mirabelles (or other plums)
90 ml apple juice concentrate
120 ml liquid pectin (I used Certo)
Recipe
1.  Stone and chop fruit. Place in pan with apple juice concentrate.
2. Simmer for ten minutes.
3. Boil hard for ten minutes.
4. Add the liquid pectin and pot in sterilised jam jars.

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.