Healthy kid's recipes - children's banana and peach milkshake

Again an easy and delicious recipe where you can use fruit that is over ripe and needs using up.

Banana and peach milkshake (from 1 year old)
Although if you use breast or formula milk you can give this to your baby a lot earlier on. Just make sure the consistency is not too thick and leave out the honey.

Ingredients:

1 banana
1 peach
Some whole milk
A spoonful of honey

Preparation:

1. Place the banana, pitted peach and honey in a high rimmed container
2. Add a little milk at first and with a hand blender mix the ingredients together
3. If the shake is too thick keep adding milk until you are happy with it's consistency

Suggestions:

You can add any fruit to the shake that you wish - strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, kiwi, pear (needs to be very ripe) - basically any fruit your have lying around. To make the shake a little more nutritious and thicker you could add a handful of oats. Plain yoghurt is also a good substitute for  milk.

Kinder Kitchen cooking tip - the joys of a juicer!

As you may have read, my daughter has become one fussy terrible two. Her terrible two's kicked in early (at around 18 months) and with them came a number of other issues. I fished out my juicer that I hadn't used in years and decided to try her on some freshly made juices using a mixture of vegetables and fruit. A break through. She now gets a good number of vitamins without knowing what she is actually drinking.

Ingredients:

1 electric juicer
1 stick of celery (can be increased once they are used to the taste)
2 medium carrots
3 apples (you can add more if you need to disguise the taste a little more)

Method:

1. Wash, peel and core the fruit and vegetables. (you do not even need to peel them if you don't want to but just give them a really good wash beforehand) 
2. Add to the juicer and serve with a straw!

It is as easy as that. Cleaning the juicer is the hardest part.

More recipes to follow..........

Today's nutritious recipe from Kinder Kitchen - mash with fish and sweetcorn for babies

Well, my daughter has decided not to eat anything green in colour. One vegetable that she does eat at the moment is sweetcorn. Hence, I have been adding it to a number of dishes. Mash with fish and sweetcorn was eaten without any problems - mostly because she couldn't pick the sweetcorn out one by one as it was stuck to the mash. What a mum has to do!

Mash with fish and sweetcorn (from 9 months upwards)

 

Ingredients:

2 potatoes
1 tablespoon sweetcorn
100 grams boned fish (cod, pollack, salmon, haddock – any fish your child likes or any fish that is on special offer)
75 ml formula/whole milk (after 1 year use cows milk)
Black pepper

Method:

1. Wash and peel the potatoes, and boil until soft (15-20 minutes). Empty the water from the pan and mash the potatoes with a potato masher
2. Cook the fish on a low heat in the milk for 10 minutes. Once cooked remove the fish from the milk and remove the fish’s skin and throw away
3. In the saucepan with the potatoes add the milk, fish, sweetcorn and a little black pepper, mix thoroughly and heat through for a couple of minutes on a low heat
4. Serve once cooled.

Additional suggestions:

A great thing to add to this dish is a boiled egg which has been finely chopped. Instead of using normal potatoes you could always use sweet potatoes although they only need to be boiled for ten minutes or so until soft.

Today's nutritious recipe from Kinder Kitchen - kids treat - chocolate shredded wheat

Chocolate shredded wheat (from 12 months) – makes 18 cakes

Ingredients:
2 packets of Milka chocolate
5 large shredded wheat
6 tablespoons of boiling water
18 fairy cake cases

Cook:
1 Break the chocolate into small pieces and place in a bowl and add the water.
2 Place with bowl containing the chocolate into a pan of freshly boiled water. Keep stirring the chocolate until it has completely dissolved. Should the mixture be a little too thick add another couple of tablespoons of water.
3 Now crumble the shredded wheat into the mixture and stir until all the wheat has been coated in chocolate
4 Spoon a heaped tablespoon of the mixture into the fairy cake cases and place in the fridge for the chocolate to solidify.

Additional info:
Milka is a great first chocolate for your babies to try as it does not have many bad ingredients in it. It does however contain nut sources so be careful if there is a history of nut allergies in your family. This recipe is also a great one to make with your child once it is a little older – just be careful when melting the chocolate over the boiling water.

Today's nutritious recipe from Kinder Kitchen - pitta bread pizza bites

When you are in a hurry and have a little tomato sauce in the freezer along with some frozen pitta bread these are so quick and easy to make they are a god send!

Finger foods - pitta bread pizza bites (from 9 months)



Great finger food or for the packed lunch box

Ingredients:
6 pitta breads
Olive oil
1 tin of plum tomatoes
1 garlic clove, crushed
1 tablespoon tomato puree
Some fresh or dried herbs for the sauce and to top the pizza with
1 ball of fresh mozzarella torn or cut into small pieces or 6 tablespoons of grated cheddar cheese


Method:

1. First, make the tomato sauce by frying the garlic in a little oil on a low heat for 10 seconds (careful as garlic burns easily)
2. Then add the puree, tinned tomatoes and herbs and cook on a low heat for 30 minutes. Once cooked, puree the sauce with a hand blender to a smooth paste. You don't have to puree the sauce if you don't have time
3. Spoon the tomato sauce onto the pitta breads and then place the cheese on top and finish off by sprinkling some herbs on the cheese.
4. Place under a medium grill for a couple of minutes until the cheese is bubbling
5. Slice into fingers and serve as a main course, place in a lunch box or as finger food.

Suggestions:

You can always double the quantity of tomato sauce to keep in the fridge (up to three days) or freezer to use at a later date.

You can add all kinds of toppings to these pizzas – ham, sweetcorn, spinach, fresh tomatoes, pineapple – basically anything that does not need to cook and can just be warmed up under the grill.

Today's nutritious recipe from Kinder Kitchen - Chocolate Oaties

These are a great snack and a winner at children's parties. They are yummy and nutritious at the same time.

Chocolate oaties (from 12 months)

Ingredients:
100g butter at room temperature
100g sugar
1 egg
75g self raising flour
100g rolled (porridge) oats
30g cocoa powder
50 grams chopped apricots or dried cranberries or whole raisins

Cook:
1. In a bowl, mix the butter and sugar together until they are light and fluffy. Then whisk in the egg. Now add the flour, oats and cocoa powder and finely chopped fruit.
2. On a greased baking tray (or on baking paper), spoon a teaspoon of the mixture onto the tray and flatten slightly remembering to leave at least 3cm between each oatie.
3. Place the tray into an oven at 180°C/ gas mark 4 and bake for 12-15 minutes.
4. Remove from the oven and allow to cool slightly before placing on a cooling rack.

Suggestions:
To keep fresh, place them in an airtight container or in the fridge.

Today's nutritious recipe from Kinder Kitchen - fruit coulis/sauce

I bought a couple of punnets of fruit the other day and beacuse the raspberries and blackberries were still a little sharp in their taste my daughter spat them out. So I decided to make a coulis/sauce with them and add them to her favourite foods.

Fruit coulis (from 9 months)

Ingredients:
1 punnet raspberries
1 punnet blackberries
2 tablespoons icing sugar

You can add any other fruit/berries to the mixture (strawberries, kiwi's, blueberries etc). Per punnet add a spoonful of icing sugar but of course you can leave this out if you wish. This is a great receipe to use with fruit/berries that is on speical offer at the supermarket as it does not matter if they are a little bruised and starting to wilt.

Cook:
1. Place the washed fruit and icing sugar into a high container
2. With a hand blender whiz all the ingredients together
3. Refrigerate immediately

Serving suggestions:
You can serve the coulis with ice cream, plain yoghurt, pancakes, porridge – basically wih any food your child likes. If you do not want the pips in the sauce, pass the coulis through a sieve.

Today's nutritious recipe from Kinder Kitchen - cheats homemade tomato ketchup

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my 20 month old has all of a sudden decided to become a fussy eater. One thing she seems to still relish is tomato ketchup. In order to make it a little more tomatoey and nutritious I came up with this cheats recipe.

Cheats homemade tomato ketchup (from 12 months)

Ingredients:

1 tin of good tinned plum tomatoes
2 heaped tablespoons of tomato puree
2 heaped tablespoons of tomato ketchup

Cook:

1. Place all the ingredients into a saucepan and cook for around ten minutes
2. Once cooked, blend the sauce together with a hand blender

Serving suggestions

You can serve this with most foods. I even like to eat it too. My daughter loves to dip her food into it and it is ideal to serve with finger foods - broccoli and cauliflower or homemade burger and fat chips.

Your comments please

I'd love to hear what you think about the recipes and tit bits of advice posted on this blog. Please either write on the blog or send me an email just to let me know your thoughts, improvements or what you would like to see added to this blog.
Thanks!

Today's Kinder Kitchen cooking tip - adding foods to cereals

Breakfast cereals are a great source of vitamins. Most have been fortified with the most commonly needed vitamins - calcium, vitamin A and D, iron etc. Porridge is one of the healthiest cereals to give your children.


Porridge
- Cook small pieces of apple in the porridge
- Add half or a full mashed banana once the porridge is cooked

Because I do not eat diary products I cook my porridge with water. This takes a little getting used to especially if you are used to cooking porridge with full fat milk but it can be a much healthier alternative. However, do not substitute water for milk when your baby is too young as it will need all the milk it can get early on. On the other hand, should your child be lactose intolerant this is a great breakfast. A less healthier and sweeter alternative is eating cereals with fruit juice which is not advisable for young babies and toddlers due to tooth decay, but nevertheless an option.

Fruit
Adding any seasonal fruit to breakfast cereals is a great way of your child having a healthier start in the morning. Currently strawberries are in season and hence they are not too expensive. By adding a couple of strawberries cut into quarters, blueberries, raspberries or clementine segments will add flavour to any breakfast. It will also not make it so boring. Varying the cereal from day to day is also a good idea in order to keep our little one's interested.

N.B. When choosing breakfast cereals try and go for the wholegrain option wherever possible and also try to find ones that have not had too much sugar or salt added to them.