Tag Archives: toddler

Roasted carrot soup for the whole family

Posted on April 4, 2013 by TheGingerbreadMum

Happy International Carrot Day! Bet you didn’t know that even though this year marks a decade of celebrating the root vegetable. I certainly didn’t!

After our Easter indulgences, I though it was time to return to my mission of getting as many vegetables into Nicholas as possible (and soup’s the least stressful way). I’m sure the exhausted Easter bunny would also happily relax with a large bowlful.

This is a super simple soup (try to say that quickly as many times as you can!) the whole family can enjoy from weaning babies (omit the seasoning) to adults. It freezes well and can also be used as a pasta sauce for a quick healthy lunch.

Roasting the carrots and onion, before adding them to the stock, creates an extra depth of flavour. Ordinary carrot soup becomes something more interesting to the palette. While roasting the vegetables means the cooking time is longer, you can always roast them earlier in the day (if you’re at home) or even the day before.

Like most soups, don’t be too worried about exact measurements; slightly less or slightly more carrots won’t make much difference to the end result. If you don’t have enough carrots, add some other root vegetables like parsnip, turnip or potato.

If you’re not serving this to a baby, you can add some warming spice like coriander (you could sprinkle some ground coriander over the vegetables before roasting).

ROASTED CARROT SOUP

Prep time: 10 mins
Cook time: 40 mins
Makes 4 adult servings
Freezable

750g carrots, roughly chopped
1 large onion, quartered
1 tbsp olive oil
1 litre vegetable or chicken stock
1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
salt and pepper (optional)

Preheat the oven to 200C.

Lay the chopped carrots and onion in a single layer on a roasting tray. Drizzle over the oil, and season with salt and pepper (if using). Roast for 3o minutes or until the vegetables start to turn golden.

Heat the stock in a medium to large pot until lightly boiling. Turn the heat down to low, add the vegetables and thyme, and simmer for 10 minutes.

Take the soup off the heat and let it cool a little if you have the time. Purée until smooth. Check if you need to add any more seasoning.

Variations:

use a mixture of carrots and parsnips
sprinkle the vegetables with ground coriander before roasting (you can also add fresh coriander later)

Other Uses:

Mix through some cooked pasta (or rice) for a quick lunch

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Posted in baby, dinner, family, lunch, recipe, toddler and tagged baby, carrot, carrot coup, dairy-free, dinner, family, freezable, gluten-free, lunch, recipe, soup, toddler, vegan, vegetable soup, vegetarian, whole family. Bookmark the permalink.

Coconut and lime macaroons

Posted on April 2, 2013 by TheGingerbreadMum

While Easter is over, although the tempting chocolate eggs linger, I wanted to share one last Easter-inspired recipe. The great thing is you don’t need to wait until next Easter to make them. Shape them into circles or other shapes, colour them or not, and they’re a great dairy-free sweet morsel.

This recipe (apart from the food colouring) is an unchanged Jill Dupleix recipe and, following her food philosophy, they are a wonderfully light treat. The non-traditional lime zest and juice add a fresh zing, and contrast perfectly with the chewy coconut interior, making it easier to eat another one, and another one, and another one!

I wanted little bite-sized macaroons so I used a very small round cookie cutter approximately 4cm in diameter. I then shaped the circles into egg shapes by gently pinching the top. Jill uses the rim of a small liqueur glass to make slightly bigger macaroons. Because mine were smaller than the original recipe, they cooked quicker. Do watch them closely as they can colour very quickly at the end (as you can see in my photo!).

Nicholas had great fun helping me squish and squeeze the ingredients together with our hands. He also enjoyed cutting out the circles, but because of the sticky consistency of the mixture he needed help to get them on the baking tray.

Make them plain like the original recipe or add some food colouring for fun. We also made multi-coloured macaroons by pressing stripes of different coloured mixture together. With so few ingredients they’re perfect for your munchkin’s next cooking activity.

COCONUT AND LIME MACAROONS

Prep time: 10-15 mins
Cook time: 8-12 mins
Makes 30 bite-sized macaroons

2 egg whites
100g caster sugar
160g desiccated coconut
1 tsp grated lime (about 1/2 a lime)
1 tbsp lime juice (about 1/2 a lime)
food colouring of your choice (optional)

Preheat the oven to 180C and line a baking tray with baking paper.

Put the egg whites, sugar, coconut, lime zest and juice in a bowl, and use your hands to mix and squeeze until they lightly come together.

If using food colouring, divide you mixture into smaller bowls and add a drop or two of your desired colouring. Mix until evenly coloured.

On a piece of baking paper, press the mixture into a flat shape (about 1cm high) using wet hands.

Use a small round cookie cutter (approx. 4cm in diameter) to cut out small rounds, and place on your prepared baking tray.

Using wet hands, gently pinch the top of each circle to create oval shapes.

Bake for 8-12 minutes in the centre of the oven until just starting to colour.

Cool the macaroons on a wire rack (move them carefully as they’ll still be quite soft while they’re still warm), and store in an airtight jar.

Happy belated Easter from my own little Easter bunny!

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Posted in cooking with toddlers, dessert, family, recipe, snack, toddler and tagged afternoon tea, coconut, coconut macaroons, cooking with kids, dairy-free, Easter, Easter eggs, finger food, gluten-free, Jill Dupleix, lime, macaroons, snack, toddler, vegetarian. Bookmark the permalink.

Cute Lunches: Easter snacking plate

Posted on March 30, 2013 by TheGingerbreadMum

With Easter bunny coming tonight, this is the last of our cute plates for Easter. Today it was a snacking plate.

I used an egg-shaped cookie cutter for the sandwiches. I mixed a little food colouring in water and decorated the top slices. The sandwiches have a light curried egg filling: mashed boiled egg, some mayonnaise and a pinch of mild curry powder.

I made an avocado dip by mashing up half an avocado with a squeeze of lemon juice and a pinch of salt, serving it inside a plastic Easter egg with some carrot sticks for dipping.

Hoping the Easter bunny brings you lots of goodies!

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Posted in cute lunches, lunch, snack, toddler and tagged cute lunches, Easter, snacking plate, toddler, vegetarian. Bookmark the permalink.

Broccoli, asparagus and pea soup

Posted on March 16, 2013 by TheGingerbreadMum

Until I started thinking about St Patrick’s Day, and what healthy green recipe I could come up with for you, I didn’t realise that most of the soups I’ve posted here are green! So I thought I’d make a super green soup, the greenest of green soups for this St Paddy’s Day.

BROCCOLI, ASPARAGUS AND PEA SOUP

Prep time: 15 mins
Cook time: 20 mins
Makes 6 adult servings
Freezable

1 tbsp olive oil (or butter)
1 onion, diced
2 sticks celery, roughly chopped
300g broccoli, stalks and heads roughly chopped
300g asparagus, roughly chopped
1 cup frozen peas
1 litre hot vegetable or chicken stock
1 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
Salt and pepper

Heat the olive oil in a large pot over a medium heat. Add the onions and celery, and sauté for 5 minutes without letting the vegetables brown (turn down the heat if they do start to brown).

Add the broccoli stalks and about 750ml of stock to the pot. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer for about 10 minutes.

Add the broccoli heads, asparagus, peas and thyme, cover and cook for another 5 minutes until the broccoli stalks and asparagus are tender.

Take off the heat and purée until smooth. Check if you need to add any seasoning.

Variations:

For older palettes, add a pinch of warming cayenne pepper as you sauté the onion and celery.

Are you eating (or drinking) anything special for St Patrick’s Day tomorrow?

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Posted in dinner, family, lunch, recipe, toddler and tagged asparagus, broccoli, dinner, family, freezable, lunch, peas, recipe, soup, St Patrick's Day, toddler, vegetable soup, vegetarian. Bookmark the permalink.

Sweet potato crisps

Posted on February 25, 2013 by TheGingerbreadMum

Who doesn’t like crisps? If your hand’s up, I don’t believe you!

Hubby is a big fan of vegetable crisps. So when I came across Yelena’s Orange Sweet Potato Crisps with Thyme (on her Melangery food blog) I thought both hubby and Nicholas would like them. Take a look at Yelena’s gorgeous photos and try not to drool.

The additional flavours of orange (zest) and thyme work delightfully with the sweet potato (I’m thinking of adding them when I next make sweet potato mash). But if you wanted plainer or easier crisps, you could leave them out.

If you don’t have a mandoline slicer, just make sure you slice the sweet potato as thinly as you can. I always struggle with my mandoline slicer and never get the lovely quick sliding action I see others use on cooking shows. If anyone has any tips for using them, please share!

You need to eat these fairly quickly after cooking them otherwise they’ll start losing their lovely crispiness. Although, I’m sure sticking them back into the oven for a few minutes would crisp them up again.

SWEET POTATO CRISPS

Prep time: 10-15 mins
Cook time: 40 mins
Makes 2 servings

1 medium sweet potato, scrubbed and sliced as thinly as possible into rounds
2 tbsp olive oil
1 tsp orange zest
1 tsp thyme
salt and pepper

Preheat your oven to 160C. Line two oven trays with baking paper.

Mix the olive oil and orange zest together in a small bowl.

Using a pastry brush, brush the trays with about half of the orange oil mixture.

Lay the sweet potato slices on the tray in a single layer and brush with the remaining orange oil.

Sprinkle over the thyme, and salt and pepper.

Bake one tray at a time for about 20 mins until the edges are starting to curl up, and the centre is dry to the touch and golden brown (I let mine cook a bit too long).

Put the tray on a wire rack for the crisps to cool. After a few minutes they’ll become crisp.

Repeat with your second tray of sweet potato slices.

Eat immediately!

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Posted in family, recipe, snack, toddler and tagged crisps, family, finger food, Melangery, recipe, snack, sweet potato, thyme, toddler, vegan, vegetable crisps, vegetarian. Bookmark the permalink.

Broccoli soup

Posted on February 19, 2013 by TheGingerbreadMum

Nicholas’ second birthday is quickly approaching (where did that last year go? Hang on, where did those two years go?), hence most of my time in the kitchen is party food planning and preparation. I’m trying very hard to reign my wild ideas in to something more easily achieveable!

But I am continuing my soup crusade and I’m loving the fact that Nicholas is often asking for soup, especially at dinner time. This really has been a successful way to get more veg into him.

Initially Nicholas loved broccoli, and happily munched it as one of his first finger foods. That didn’t last long. The only way he eats it now is if he can’t pick it out of whatever new thing I’ve tried to ‘hide’ it in. He can’t get enough of smooth broccoli soup!

You can make a simple broccoli soup with broccoli, onion and potato, but when I came across a different take on the standard version which has white beans and ginger I knew I had to try it. Melissa and Jasmine Hemsley’s broccoli, ginger and white bean soup uses the whole head of broccoli, fresh ginger for a healthy zing and white beans to boost the nutritional value even more. The two sisters are the founders of Hemsley & Hemsley, promoting healthy food.

I decreased the zing in the soup (for younger taste buds) by using ground ginger instead of fresh and omitting the lime juice, but I did leave in the pinch of cayenne pepper and all 5 cloves of garlic (use your knowledge of your family’s tastebuds to decide, but I’d err on the side of caution initially with little ones). I also reduced the salt by leaving out the Tamari soy sauce. Next time I’ll try using fresh ginger, but a smaller piece than the original recipe. I love the extra thickness you get using some white beans (I think they’ll often be added to my soups from now on!).

This makes a large quantity of soup; perfect for freezing the leftovers for another week.

BROCCOLI SOUP

Prep time: 15 mins
Cook time: 18-20 mins
Makes 6 adult servings
Freezable

600g broccoli
2 onions, roughly chopped
5 cloves of garlic, roughly chopped
1 tbsp vegetable oil (the original recipe uses coconut oil)
1 tsp ground ginger
a small pinch of cayenne peper
1 litre of good quality vegetable or water
1 400g can of white beans (I used butter beans but you could use cannellini or haricot beans), rinsed and drained
salt and pepper

In a large pot, gently fry the onion, garlic, ground ginger and cayenne pepper in the oil over a medium-low heat for 5 minutes.

Remove the heads from the broccoli and roughly chop, then roughly chop the stems.

Add the broccoli stalks and about 750ml of the stock to the pot. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat to low, cover and simmer for 8-10 minutes.

Add the broccoli heads and white beans, cover and cook for another 5 mins until the broccoli stalks are tender.

Take off the heat and puree until smooth. Check if you need to add any seasoning.

Variations:

For older eaters, serve with a sprinking of toasted pine nuts or seeds.
Serve with a squeeze of lemon or lime juice.
Take out some of the broccoli heads before pureeing, then add for a chunkier soup.
Serve with a small piece of soft spreadable cheese swirled through.

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Posted in dinner, family, lunch, recipe, toddler and tagged broccoli, broccoli soup, dinner, family, Hemsley & Hemsley, lunch, recipe, soup, toddler, vegetarian. Bookmark the permalink.

Dairy-free banana bread

Posted on February 6, 2013 by TheGingerbreadMum

I didn’t realise how much I used bananas in cooking until I started writing this blog! There’s banana muffins, banana teething biscuits, banana chips, banana icecream, banana pikelets, banana and butternut squash loaf, and they’re also my ‘secret’ sweetener in my sugar-free flapjacks. And these are just the recipes I’ve blogged!

Banana is commonly one of the first solid foods a baby experiences, and I think I probably just tried different things with them as Nicholas always loves them. I also pretty much constantly have some very ripe ones in the freezer waiting to be turned into something yummy.

I’ve tried many banana bread recipes over the years with varying degrees of success. Most of the time I prefer mine to be light and fluffy like a sponge, rather than heavy and moist. And while I adore cream cheese frosting, for me this banana bread is much better without it distracting your taste buds. It also means I feel less guilt when eating it for breakfast.

Banana bread recipes are quite similar overall with a different tweak here and there. My recipe isn’t anything new, but it’s evolved from combining recipes I’ve come across and experimenting until I was happy.

One thing you might want to experiment with is the texture of the mashed banana. Some cooks puree it with a blender while others leave it quite chunky. Supposedly pureeing it gives a richer banana flavour to the finished product. I mash my bananas with a fork, but mash about half of them until they’re very smooth and the remainder I only mash a little so you find the occasional chunk in the finished bread.

There’s quite a bit of banana in this recipe, but you can easily get away with less; even two smallish bananas would work fine (you want at least 175g of it unpeeled).

DAIRY-FREE BANANA BREAD

Prep time: 10-15 mins
Cook time: 40-45 mins
Freezable

175g self-raising flour
2 1/2 tsp baking powder
175g golden caster sugar
2 eggs
1/4 cup vegetable oil
2 1/2 medium bananas, mashed
50g walnuts (or pecans), chopped

Preheat the oven to 160C. Line a loaf tin with baking paper.

Whisk the sugar, eggs and oil together at a medium speed using a handheld beater or in an electric mixer. Whisk for a few minutes until it’s pale and fluffy.

Sift in the flour and baking powder, add the mashed banana, and mix until combined using a low speed. Gently stir through the walnuts.

Pour into your prepared tin and bake for 40-45 minutes until a skewer comes out clean.

Variations:

Make individual muffins instead of a loaf (easier to freeze if you’re not going to eat all of it)
Dust with icing sugar
Top with cream cheese frosting for a more decadent loaf

I’m linking up this recipe to the One Ingredient Challenge hosted by Franglais Kitchen and How to Cook Good Food. Why not enter your own banana recipe and join the linky party? Read the rules here.