Happy Birthday Mathilda! (and carrot cake recipe)

My last post about my C-Section kind of put a  downer on my blog, hence why I think I haven't posted for a while.  So, it's a bit late, but Mathilda turned 1 nearly a month ago (19th May).  Such a huge milestone for us!  And how much she's changed and blossomed in 12 months.  This post is to celebrate her birthday.

Here's a few photos from her special day (we went to Bristol Zoo)...

 

I made her a carrot cake for her birthday cake.  I wanted to make something vaguely healthy as she's still very little and has the rest of her life to eat junk food.  I thought I'd share the recipe, as it turned out to be a very delicious cake and was quite easy to make!

CARROT CAKE

Ingredients:

180g wholemeal flour

2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp ground cinnamon
½ tsp freshly grated nutmeg
180g light muscovado sugar
150ml sunflower oil
2 large eggs
200g carrots, coarsley grated
85g raisins

For the Frosting: 

1 lime

200g cream cheese
100g unsalted butter, softened
85-100g unrefined icing sugar

Method

1. For the cake: preheat the oven to 180C. Grease and line one deep 20cm cake tin.

2. Sift the flour and baking powder into a large bowl and mix in the cinnamon and nutmeg.

3. In a separate bowl, use an electric mixer to whisk together the sugar, sunflower oil and eggs until smooth.

4. With a large metal spoon, fold in the carrots and raisins, then fold in the flour and spice mixture until well combined.

4. Spoon the mixture into the prepared cake tin, place on baking tray and bake until the cake is golden-brown and a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. For me it took about an hour.  Remove from the oven and leave to cool in the tin.

5. For the frosting: squeeze the juice from the lime.

6. Beat the cream cheese in a bowl with the softened butter, icing sugar. Add the lime juice slowly, beating the mixture continuously to prevent it from curdling. Add to taste.

7. ISpread the frosting over the top.

8. Serve chilled.

 

 

 

 

 

Spiced Butternut squash mash

Here's another baby food recipe I thought I'd share. This one is my own creation!!

My daughter has never been too keen on plain butternut squash for some inexplicable reason, so I thought I'd have a try at 'spicing' it up a bit for her! So I got into the kitchen and came up with the following recipe. I'm happy to add that my daughter is now a fan of butternut squash!


Ingredients:
1 organic butternut squash, peeled and diced
1 potato, peeled and diced
1/2 an onion, chopped
1 small garlic clove
Dash of Olive oil
Pinch of dried herbs de Provence
Pinch of ground cumin
Pinch of ground cinnamon
Splash of water

In a pan, heat the olive oil on a medium heat and add the chopped onion. Let that soften then add the butternut squash, potato and garlic. Give it a good stir. Then stir in the herbs and spices and add a splash of water to stop the ingredients sticking to the bottom of the pan.
Place a lid on the pan and lower the heat to let the potatoes and squash gently cook through.
After 15 mins or so it should be all nicely cooked through and soft.
Now I guess the options are endless!
As my daughter is 10 months old and can feed herself finger foods I didn't bother to purée this. I just mashed it a but with a spoon, making sure to leave some lumps of squash and potato to add a bit of texture.
But you could purée it, or even use it as a spread on some toast.
With the left over mash you can freeze it for later (this recipe makes a large batch).

This recipe is suitable for babies aged 8 months and over.

Enjoy!





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Teething biscuit recipe

This is a great recipe from www.wholesomebabyfoods.com:

Teething Biscuit Recipes - Eggless Baby Cereal Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup flour
1 cup dry infant rice cereal with bananas (or other flavored or
unflavored infant cereal)
3 tablespoons cooking oil
ice water

Directions:
Preheat oven 425F
Mix flour and cereal.
Gradually stir in oil. Mix a little ice water at a time (start with 1/4 cup) until dough begins to form a ball and pull away from the bowl.
Roll out to the thickness of a cracker on a floured surface and cut into desired shapes.
Bake on an ungreased cookie sheet 10-12 min. or until lightly brown. Cool completely.

Store in an airtight container. (you may want to try 1/2 plain and 1/2 flavored baby cereal as the taste when using full flavored baby cereal is very strong.)

For the cereal I used Organic Baby Muesli, and I also added some nutmeg and cinnamon to make the mixture a bit more flavoursome.

Mathilda loves them!

Even though I stored them in an air tight container, they started to go a bit mouldy after a week or so, so keep that in mind. Other than that, this is a great little recipe, very easy to make and it's nice to know exactly what your baby is eating, wholesome natural ingredients!