BLW

  • Toddler-Friendly French Toast

    Something I love about moving on from the initial weaning process when it comes to first foods is that an entire world of easy food opens up as they get a little older. We started with baby-led weaning and found it suited our lifestyle and the way we wanted to feed our daughter so much better, even though I will be the first to admit that I was a little nervous to start, but once we got going and I saw how easy it was I was hooked. In the early days, between 6 months to a year, I definitely found that I would often batch make extra things for lunches although most of the time we would eat the same, they were always good to have on hand.

    The great thing about baby-led weaning is that you can all eat the same and together, and this is something that moves through toddlerhood and beyond. One thing I didn’t want was to be making separate dinners or being eating at different times, and thankfully, so far, we’ve been able to maintain that. Something we also loved doing throughout the first 6 months of weaning was eating 100 foods before 1. It’s a fun challenge where you see how many new foods and flavours you can tick off your list before your baby turns 1. We loved it and found it nice and easy to complete, so much so that I created our own list into a PDF once we had completed it and you can download it here if you would like to try it.

    Toddler-Friendly French Toast

    At the time of writing I am in my second trimester of pregnancy and it has recently been all about French toast for breakfast, so I have been sharing this with my almost two year old daughter, and she’s been loving it too. She’s very open to new flavours and foods at the moment, something that I think is to do with our baby-led weaning experiences, although maybe it’s just one of those things.

    I thought today I would share with you a simple French Toast recipe I use for both my toddler and also the adults in this house. It’s tasty, easy to whip up and in our house is a firm toddler favourite.

    Toddler Friendly French Toast

    Toddler Friendly French Toast

    Prep Time: 10 minutes
    Cook Time: 10 minutes
    Total Time: 20 minutes

    Ingredients

    • 2 Eggs (Beaten)
    • 2 tsp Vanilla Essence
    • 1 tsp Ground cinnamon
    • 3 slices Bread

    Instructions

    1. Crack eggs into a bowl and whisk
    2. Add in the vanilla essence and cinnamon and mind until smooth
    3. Coat both side of bread with mixture and pop into frying pan
    4. Cook on both sides
    5. Serve with fruit, bacon and syrup of your choice

    As you can see this is a super simple recipe to create and whip up in the morning. For myself I serve it as the picture shows and for my daughter I usually cut it into to strips. She loves it with blueberries (her favourite fruit) and a little honey (because she is over 1). Another great recipe is bacon and maple syrup as it is super tasty too.

    If you give this a try let me know, I would love to hear if you little one’s love it too.

  • Broccoli & Cheese Pinwheels for baby led weaning

    Weโ€™re a couple of months into our weaning journey now and weโ€™ve been trying an abundance of recipes that I am going to try and get published asap. Sometimes it definitely feels like there arenโ€™t enough hours in the day. but today I want to share my broccoli and cheese pinwheels recipe with you.

    Being the independent baby led weaner that our little girl is I like to try new foods, textures and flavours all the time, I like to introduce new finger foods for her to explore and I love to try new recipes myself that I can give her. We love trying different things for lunches and you can check out another one of her favourite lunchtime foods in my previous blog post.

    pinwheels

    Making the pinwheels:

    One of my IG friends had recommended trying pinwheels, and although I had heard of them I didnโ€™t quite know what I would put in them, so I came up with a recipe (probably one thatโ€™s been done before – but as with most things parenting-related you will find I wing it as I go).

    I decided to try a Broccoli and cheese mixture so I could do them for Hadleyโ€™s lunch. At this point in our weaning journey, I would say she is more interested in veggies than fruits, although I am trying to get her to take more of interest where I can. This pinwheels recipe is super simple and really tasty, my husband and I might have tried a couple for ourselves too – just to be sure they tasted ok for Hadley, of course.

    Broccoli & Cheese Pinwheels

    Broccoli & Cheese Pinwheels

    Prep Time: 10 minutes
    Cook Time: 30 minutes
    Total Time: 40 minutes

    Ingredients

    • All butter pre-rolled puff pastry
    • A head of Broccoli
    • Milk
    • 100g cheese

    Instructions

    1. Cut the broccoli into florets and steam for 20 minutes until soft.
    2. Add to blender with a small about of milk and blend until a creamy paste that isn't runny.
    3. Lay out the pre-rolled pastry.
    4. Spread the broccoli paste on the pastry.
    5. Grate the cheese and sprinkle on top.
    6. Roll pastry back up into its roll.
    7. Cut into slices.
    8. Place on a baking tray and cook for 20-30 minutes.

    There are so many different options and flavours to try when it comes to pinwheels and baby-led weaning – you can follow so many different recipes, this recipe, recipes on Pinterest or do what I did and create your own and see how it goes.

    pinwheels

    As you can see Hadley got stuck in straight away and she demolished quite a bit. Although she doesn’t have any teeth yet she is surprisingly good at gumming! Also, isn’t her plate amazing? I absolutely love the Bamboo Bamboo range and you can pick up her plate on Amazon*.

    Have you tried pinwheels before? What is your favourite way to make them? Leave me a comment below!