Sweet Potatoes Mayai recipe for baby-led weaning

A few years ago I got to visit Tanzania for a couple of months. A popular street food was "chips mayai"-- deep-fried chips with an egg (the 'yai', plural 'mayai') broken over them, resulting in a tangled, greasy-good mass of chip and egg, best slathered with pilipili (pepper) sauce. This recipe was inspired by that, but is less greasy and involves sweet potatoes rather than fries.  It's a good general formula that could be readily adapted to whatever veggies you have on hand-- potatoes, squash. Well, really just potatoes or squash. Maybe carrots. Still! That's pretty versatile!

My main discovery is that if you grate things directly into your frying pan, they cook quickly and you save time on cleanup. I am gonna be doing this with everything from now on. Well, really just potatoes or squash. Maybe carrots. Still! I eat a lot of potatoes and squash! So it's a useful technique!

Sweet potatoes mayai

2 Tbs olive oil
2 medium sweet potatoes
1/2 onion
1 egg
ground black pepper to taste
1 tsp dried thyme
your favorite pepper sauce

Get the olive oil heating up in your trusty skillet over medium-high heat.  Using the coarsest side of your grater, grate in the onion. (Watch your fingers!). Give it a stir. The quickly grate in the sweet potatoes. Stir in the black pepper and thyme.  Let cook until potato is cooked through, stirring with restraint (you want browned bits).  It really only takes a few minutes. When the veggies are cooked, break your egg over the middle of the pile. Cook like you would any fried egg, flipping halfway through (aim it onto some unincorporated veggies if you can). 

Let some cool for the baby, and eat yours with added salt and hot sauce. Yum!

Perfect for those practicing their pincer grip, or those not quite ready for that can grab a big hunk with egg and still get some veggies, too.

Muffin Monday-- Recipe for Apple-Peanut Butter Muffins

My craving for satisfying apple muffins was left unrequited with last week's muffin, so I decided to have another go this week.  I've got a new recipe for you, with a bit of a twist-- peanut butter! Apples and peanut butter being one of my go-to snacks throughout the fall and winter.  My appreciation for the combo has been enhanced by my finally buying-- and devouring in record time-- natural peanut butter. It actually tastes like peanuts! Who knew?

We introduced peanut butter to Mae several weeks ago, and she appears to take it just fine-- no allergies here, thank goodness.  So this muffin is a good way for her to enjoy this flavor combo, too (since I'm still pretty nervous about chunks of raw apple).

The recipe is based on these muffins, with a few changes to make up for the fact that I omitted most (but not all) of the sugar.  I added the apples, spices, and the peanut butter. The result is light, fluffy, and moist, which is exactly what I was going for. Win! This time I also remembered to add salt to the second half of the batter for some adult-friendly muffins. The salt-free ones were not bad, but they still benefitted some from the inclusion of salt. Just take care not to overstir the batter when you add the it, or the muffins will end up with the texture of little rubber lumps.

Apple-Peanut Butter Muffins

1 c. AP flour
1/2 c. whole wheat flour
1/4 c. sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp baking soda
1/4 c. canola oil
1/2 c. milk
1/2 c. sour cream
1 egg 1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp cardamom
1 c. cinnamon stewed apples, peeled and lightly mashed
natural peanut butter (no sugar or salt added)

Preheat your oven to 350, and prep your mini-muffin tins.
In a large bowl, mix together the flours, sugar, baking powder, baking soda, and spices. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the oil, milk, sour cream, egg, and vanilla. Gently stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, then fold in the mashed apples.

Fill your muffin tins, then with a fingertip dipped in flour to prevent sticking, make little indentations in the center of each proto-muffin.  Add a 1/2 tsp or so dollop of the peanut butter.  (If that's too fussy, just spread peanut butter on 'em when it's time to eat 'em. That'll work, too.)

Bake for 12-15 minutes each. Makes 3 dozen mini-muffins.

Quick sugar free skillet plum-orange jam recipe for baby-led weaning

These little prune plums at the farmer's market can be put to good use as a quick and easy sugar-free 'jam' for on toast. Any kind of plums will do, though.

Sugar-free orange-plum jam with cardamom

4 small plums

1/4 c. freshly squeezed orange juice

pinch of cardamom powder

Pit the plums and put them in a small skillet or saucepan along with the orange juice and the cardamom.  You can peel the plums if you want, but I find that once they get cooking, the skins pull away easily enough.  Go easy on the cardamom-- the flavor will intensify as the mixture cooks down. Anyway, just let it all simmer, mashing up the plums and stirring as it all simmers down to a lovely, thick, fruity sauce. When it's thick enough to mound on a spoon, you're done.  It makes a couple of tablespoons.

Muffin Monday-- "Hello, My Name is ______" Muffins recipe

Just realized I can use Helvetica here. Awesome!

Anyhow, we're traveling, visiting Mae's Grammy and Grandpa, so no pictures this time. 

Bit of a muffin fail, too. Somewhat.  I have this basic, utterly plain muffin recipe, to which you add stuff of your choosing to render them yummy. The basic recipe was a success, but my particular variation this time did not exactly open up new vistas of muffiny goodness. I have an idea of what went wrong. I'll go into that below, but here's the fill-in-the-blank muffin recipe:

"Hello, My Name Is _____" Muffins

2 c. flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
2 eggs
1/4 c. melted butter
3/4 c. milk
1/2 tsp salt (optional)

Preheat your oven to 375. In a medium bowl, stir together the flour and baking powder. In a small bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, butter. Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients, fold in your additional custom ingredients (see below), and bake for 12-15 minutes.

I used 1/2 c. whole wheat flour and 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour. To this, I added: 1 c. oats, 1/3 c. apple butter, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, ginger, and cloves, and 1 diced apple. I stirred the oats and spices into the flour mixture, and the apple butter into the egg/milk mixture. Added the diced apple at the end. The oats were a success, and the apple chunks were nice, but you couldn't really taste the apple butter or spices. The result was a bit bland. More than a bit. Quite. Quite bland. Very, I would go so far as to say. I should have added at least a half teaspoon of the spices, probably more. Plus, this really needs salt. I should have baked Mae's dozen and then folded in some salt to make the remainder adult-friendly. But I didn't, and they taste flat. Salted butter helps, but does not redeem. 

The muffin substrate was good, though, texturally speaking, and I'll definitely be having another go at these. You can stir in cheese, herbs, dried fruit, fresh fruit, use a mixture of flours and grains, etc. etc. Lots of ways to change these up.

Mae thought it was pretty good, even if I was not impressed with my additions. Meanwhile, my quest for perfect apple muffins continues. Stay tuned.

Muffin Monday: Browned butter orange oat muffins with banana-orange cream-cheese filling

This past spring, I finally discovered the joy that is browned butter when I made Mae's dad a batch of Nigella Lawson's burnt butter cupcakes for his birthday. I vowed that I would make a batch of browned butter to keep in a vat in the fridge and use in everything. I haven't actually done that (yet), and it's probably for the best. But how could I resist working it into a muffin? These are toasty goodness- the browned butter, toasted oatmeal, and toasted pecans in the filling. Enjoy!

Banana-orange cream cheese filling/spread

2 small ripe bananas
1/2 c. orange juice
2 whole cloves
4 oz. cream cheese, cut into pieces
1/4 c. finely chopped toasted pecans (optional)

Chop or break the bananas into a few large chunks and put them together with the orange juice into a small skillet. Add the cloves. Turn up heat to medium high. As the bananas soften with cooking, mush them up, and cook until the mixture is reduced and thickened. Turn off the heat, remove the cloves, and stir in the cream cheese, then the pecans. Remove from heat and let cool. This can be made a day or two in advance.  It actually makes about twice as much as you need for the muffins, but it's so good you'll want extra (for spreading on the muffins, or toast, or pancakes, or....).

Browned butter orange oat muffins

1 stick butter
1 c. buttermilk
1 egg
finely grated zest of 1 orange
1 c. rolled oats
1 c. All Purpose flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
 1/2 tsp baking soda

Preheat your oven to 350 and grease up your mini-muffin tins.

First, brown your butter. In a small pan (8 inches wide and at least an inch deep, because it'll foam a lot), melt the butter over medium heat. Let it continue to heat-- it'll foam at first, then gradually begin to darken. Let it go until it's so dark you think, "Oh no, it's ruined!", then carefully strain it into a heatproof receptacle (pyrex is good). I assure you that unless it actually bursts into flames, you won't have ruined it (unless you forget to strain it, in which case you'll have nasty burnt sludge in your muffins, and you don't want that). Let it cool.  There won't be quite a 1/2 cup anymore, but that's fine.

In a small bowl, whisk together the cooled butter, the buttermilk, egg, and orange zest.

Next, toast your oats.  Go ahead and use the same pan you browned the butter in (after it's cooled a bit so you don't instantly burn your oats). Heat them over medium heat, stirring frequently, until they're beginning to turn golden. Take them off the heat and let them cool for a few minutes, then whisk them into the liquid mixture.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and baking soda. Stir the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients until just combined.  Fill the muffin tins halfway; add a 1/2 tsp of the filling mixture in the center of the batter, then cover with a little more of the batter. Bake 10-12 minutes. (If you don't want to be bothered with filling them, you can spread it on just like frosting on a cupcake. That would be stylish!)

Chamomile Apple Compote Recipe

Mae has just in the past couple of weeks gotten the hang of her pincer grip, and is beginning to be able to handle smaller things. This opens up a brave new world of handy foodstuffs. Like dried fruit. She did fine with plain dried cranberries, but I just thought she might enjoy it more if they were softened a bit.  But how? Most dried fruit already has a bit of sugar added, so I didn't want to make a sugar syrup the way most compotes call for. Plain water was too boring. I tried stewing the dried fruit in some orange juice, and while this was delicious, it was still pretty sweet. An infusion of chamomile flowers proved to be a happy medium, resulting in a light, fresh-tasting syrup once the dried fruit and apples are stewed together with the chamomile 'tea'.  It goes very well with some toast, or stirred into yogurt in the morning.

Chamomile Apple Compote

1 Tbs chamomile flowers (or 2 teabags)
1/2 c. water
1 apple, peeled, cored, sliced
1/3 c. golden raisins
5 dried apricots, chopped

BRing the water to a boil and pour over the chamomile petals. Let steep 5-10 minutes, then strain into a small saucepan. Add the apple, raisins, and apricots. Simmer until apples are soft and liquid is mostly absorbed.

(Hah, no, she isn't eating that well out of a bowl, nor is she eating that much all at once. I took the bowl away for its own safety after I got the picture.)

Quick sugar-free ginger-pear butter recipe for babies (or anyone, really)

I believe I've mentioned my ongoing obsession with jam making. Every time a new fruit turns up at the farmer's market, I buy a few pounds of it and turn it into jam. The pantry is really filling up, since I'm also the only one around who eats jam with any regularity.  I'm not ready to give any to Mae yet since it's full of sugar. (Mmm, sugar.)  It seems unfortunate that her mother is reguarly turning out delicious fruit spreads, and she can't have any. She has been getting one thing: some sugar-free apple butter we got at a country store in Nashville, Indiana. Fruit butters are a puree of fruit that has been cooked down until thick and spreadable. They usually have much less sugar than do jams-- perhaps half the amount or less.  Indeed, with certain fruits, you can get away with not adding any sugar at all.  The natural sweetness of the fruit becomes concentrated so you don't really need much extra sugar, if any.

The problem with butters is that it takes so long to cook them down, it's really an all-day affair.   But you can just make a very small amount for immediate consumption.  Like, say, one pear's worth.  It cooks down fairly quickly, you just have a little to store for a short time, you don't have to worry about buying a ton of fruit, spending 12 hours boiling it down, processing the jars for long-term storage, etc., etc. And you can experiment with flavors more freely without worrying that you're wasting a ton of fruit on something you might not care for in the end.

The technique is simple. Get some nice, juicy, ripe fruit. The best fruits for butters are pulpy, as opposed to juicy (for example, oranges would make a lousy butter, whereas apples, pears, plums are perfect for this application).  Just mash the fruit up in a skillet, add whatever spices you want, stir it as the liquid cooks off. When it's nice and thick, it's done.

 Quick skillet ginger-pear butter

1 ripe pear (should not be crispy, but soft and juicy)
a squeeze of lemon juice
1/4-1/2 tsp grated fresh ginger (1/2 tsp makes it very zingy!)
drop of vanilla extract
(optional: 1 tsp brown sugar)

Peel and core the pear. Chop it up in a few big pieces, put it in a small skillet over medium heat. Toss it with the lemon juice and mash it up good. Stir in the ginger, and vanilla. (And the teaspoon of sugar if you've decide to use it). Turn the heat down to low. Stir frequently-- more and more frequently the longer it's been on. You'll need to stir it more or less constantly toward the end or it may scorch.  After about 5 minutes, you should have a nice sauce-- you could stop there and mix it into yogurt or eat it with a spoon. If you want the spread, though, keep going and keep stirring another 5-10 minutes, or until it's of a thick, spreadable consistency (or until, in common jammaking parlance, it "will mound on a spoon").  It cooks down a lot. The one pear yielded about 2 tablespoons of spread.  Store it in the fridge until it's all gone. That shouldn't take long.

If you want to make more, go ahead and double or triple it, but use a larger skillet to cook it in so there's still plenty of surface area to help speed the evaporation along.

Messiness rating: 1 (1-2 wipe clean-up)

Carrot ginger pancakes recipe for baby led weaning

I tend to go through brief fits of enthusiasm for certain types of food, and explore all the variations of it I can think of until the obsession wanes on its own. This usually happens with sweets (there was the marshmallow phase, a fudge phase, a pate de fruit phase, an herb-infused syrup phase...), but I've also had prolonged obsessions with waffles, granola, and jam (this one is ongoing, and as far as I can tell will end only when I run out of pantry space or Mae's dad asks me not to buy any more canning jars). Right now, my attention has shifted to pancakes, due to (1) the fact that I've been eating a lot of these pancakes in the mornings because there's usually already a batch in the freezer, and I've begun to crave variety, and (2) this thread on eGullet.  It was the description of the apple pancakes that got me thinking about vegetables grated into pancakes. Not in a sneaky way, but in a "hey, that is good!" sort of way. A carrot cake sort of way.

 And so the carrot pancakes were born, although I ended up going with a slightly more savory profile than carrot cake.  You could carrot-cakify them further by throwing in a pinch of cloves, nutmeg, and allspice, as well as some ground toasted walnuts. Or you could render them more savory by leaving out the cinnamon and including some cumin and coriander. And perhaps some scallion. But I think they're pretty good as-is. 

Carrot-ginger pancakes

1 egg
1/4 c. milk
2 Tbs oil
1/2 tsp. finely grated fresh gingerroot
1 c. coarsely grated carrot
1/2 c. all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. ground ginger
1/2 tsp. cinnamon

In one bowl, whisk together the egg, milk, oil, and grated ginger.  In another bowl, toss together the remaining ingredients. Get your skillet heating up over medium-high heat and brush it with some oil. Pour the wet ingredients into the flour/carrot mixture, and stir until just combined. Spoon the batter out onto the hot griddle-- I made these a bit smaller than my usual pancakes, about 3 inches across. Flip them when the bubbles show in the middle, and cook until nice and brown on both sides.  If you want to add some salt to the adult ones, just make the pancakes for the baby first and then throw a pinch of salt into the remaining batter.

Muffin Monday-- bran muffin recipe for baby-led weaning

Welcome to Muffin Monday! I've found that the muffin texture is perfect for Mae-- toast or bread sometimes gets gummy and makes a big wad that can cause gagging, but muffins break apart nicely. Unfortunately, most muffin recipes are on the sugary side. That's ok. I can fix that. First up, whole wheat bran muffins. These feature 100% whole wheat and bran, with molasses for sweetness (and a little extra iron!). I've kept them plain, as I'm not quite sure Mae is ready for dried fruit, but in a couple months I'll give it a try and let you know how it goes. These are delicious with a little apple butter on them. I'll be sneaking a few for myself. Probably more than a few, actually, since the recipe made about 4 dozen. Luckily they freeze just fine.

Whole Wheat Bran Muffins

1 1/2 c. wheat bran

2 1/2 c. whole wheat flour

1/2 tsp salt

2 1/2 tsp baking soda

1 Tbs cinnamon

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

2 c. buttermilk

1/2 c. molasses (I used half sorghum and half blackstrap)

1 egg

1/4 c. vegetable oil

Preheat oven to 350, grease a mini-muffin pan. Whisk together the first 6 ingredients. In another bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, egg, oil, and molasses. Pour the wet ingredients in to the dry ingredients and stir 'em up until just combined. (No huge lumps, but don't overbeat them either). Fill the cups of the mini muffin pan, bake for about 12 minutes, or until a knife stuck in one comes out without batter on it.

Baby-led weaning recipe for Whole Wheat Pancakes

These are the pancakes my mother always made for me, so they're my Platonic ideal of a pancake (which helps explain why I've never been a fan of the pancakes one gets at Pancake House type establishments). When I was little, I always used to get excited about helping to make them by dropping batter onto the skillet-- always in tiny kid-size drops. Now I make them tiny-kid-size for Mae-- about 1 1/2 inches in diameter. Snip them in half and she has a perfect little hand-sized piece to hold. They freeze well, too-- I make a big batch and freeze, then reheat in the toaster oven. Smear with sugar-free apple butter, and there you go.

Whole Wheat Pancakes

1 1/4 c. whole wheat flour

1/3 c. All Purpose flour

2 tsp baking powder

3/4 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 c. buttermilk

1/2 c. milk

2 eggs

1/4 c. canola oil

In a bowl, mix together the dry ingredients. In a smaller bowl, whisk together the buttermilk, milk, eggs, and oil. Stir the liquid ingredients into the dry ingredients. Brush a griddle with a little extra oil, and heat over medium high heat. Drop spoonfuls of batter in, cook until bubbles begin to form in the middle, like this:

I use about a 1/4 cup of batter for adult-sized pancakes, and a teaspoon for baby-sized ones. Flip 'em and cook until nice and brown.

When I make these, I get about 8 adult-sized pancakes and 16 tiny ones.

Stewed cinnamon apples recipe for baby led weaning

Fruit was one of the first things Mae went for when she started eating solids. Peaches and nectarines are her true loves (the first time she had a peach, she cried when it was all gone), and she's fairly enthusiastic about plums, bananas, and mango as well. Apples are a little bit more of a challenge for someone with no teeth-- left raw, they're a choking hazard. Stew 'em up in a pan with a little cinnamon, though, and you've got a winner-- nice and soft, easily grasped by little hands, and portable as well. I make up a batch and keep the slices in the fridge in a little container, ready to grab when we're going out to dinner or for a quick snack or breakfast.  She started eating these at 6 months old.

Stewed cinnamon apples

1 apple

sprinkle of cinnamon

 Cut the apple into 12 wedges. Remove core. You can peel it before cooking or if you're lazy like me, cook with the peel on and just pull the peel off before you give it to the baby.  (I find that if I leave the peel on, she can't chew it up and gags on it, so I do recommend removing it at some point). Put the apple wedges in a 12 inch pan (I like cast iron) with about 1/2 cup of water. Sprinkle each slice with cinnamon. (Ginger or cardamom would also be good!) Cook apples over medium-low heat, turning once or twice, until the water has evaporated and they're soft and cooked completely through.  If you wander off and forget about them, they'll get nice and caramelized. Even yummier!