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.

Roasted zucchini 'hummus' recipe for baby-led weaning

'Hummus' in quotes because I'm not sure what the necessary and sufficient conditions for being hummus are, but probably this doesn't really meet them. It's more of a family-resemblance sort of relationship. It's got garlic, it's got tahini, and you can dip it or spread it.  I just thought it might be good, and I was right. Mae agrees.  That cracker it's sitting on? Easier than you might think. Recipe for those tomorrow.

Roasted zucchini 'hummus'

4 medium zucchini (~6 inches)
4 cloves garlic
2 Tbs olive oil+ additional if desired
black pepper
1 Tbs tahini
1/2 tsp sesame oil
juice of 1/2 a lemon

Heat your oven to 400. Quarter the zucchini lengthwise, and then cut into 1/2 inch pieces. In a bowl, toss them with the olive oil and garlic cloves, grind black pepper over them, and then turn 'em out onto a sheet pan (or trust iron skillet!). Roast them for 30 minutes, turning halfway through. When they're nice and soft and browned, they're ready. Let them cool a bit, then dump them in a blender with the remaining ingredients. Blend until reasonably smooth.  Mine still had bits of skin visible, and I thought that was fine; you do what you like.  Spread it on crackers, pita, toast, rice cakes, eat it with a spoon or, if it comes down to it (and it well may!) with your fingers.

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!)

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)