Party food part 1: Mini Quiche

Over the next few posts I will (finally!) be showing you some of the recipes I used for Little Miss' 1st birthday party when she had her mini friends over to play. These include mini quiches, green falafel, spinach and bean triangles and the sugar free cakes I made too.

As well as these we had houmous, cucumber, carrot, red pepper slices, mini breadsticks, mini rice cakes, melon, satsuma and dried apricots for the mini people as well as some naughty sugary cupcakes for the exhausted parents!

The feast for the little ones

Fuel for the parents (mint chocolate, caramel coconut, ginger & lemon and pistachio & rosewater)

Today's post will be about the mini quiches. The basis of the filling is tofu, non-dairy milk, nutmeg and turmeric. To this you can add the fillings you like. For me a quiche needs onion which I like to fry before it goes in the mixture. In ours we also put peas and curly kale. Previously, when we made a big quiche, we used red pepper and broccoli which resulted in a fantastic mixture of colours and tastes.

Any shortcrust savoury pastry recipe will work with this and I tried a few out. You could even buy ready made pastry if the thought of making your own scares you (but it really is not hard to do!).

Here is a pastry recipe that you could use:

225g plain flour

100g margarine

2.5 tablespoons of COLD water

(usually this would have salt added but I left this out for the sakes of the mini people)

Mix the flour an margarine together (really helps to have a machine) and then mix in the water so it comes together as a dough. If it doesn't come together, add a little more water. If it is really sticky (it should be more firm than sticky) then add a little more flour.

Grease a bun tin (what you would make fairy cakes in). Roll out the pastry on a floured surface with a floured rolling pin until it is a couple of mm thick. Cut out circles that will fit into the bun tin using pastry cutters and press into each depression. Put a little greaseproof paper onto the bottom of each one and then put a few baking beans onto this. Blind bake (i.e. without the filling) for 10 minutes in a preheated oven at 180 degrees celcius.

While these are baking you can prepare your filling.

Essential Ingredients:

400g block of firm tofu

1/3 cup soya milk

1/2 tsp nutmeg

1/2 tsp turmeric

Pepper to taste (salt too if you want to)

What I used as well:

1/2 large red onion, chopped

Cup of frozen peas

2 cups of curly kale

Fry any vegetables which you think need it. I did this to the onion and lightly fried the kale also. I would be inclined to fry or even roast red pepper to release that lovely flavour even more.

In a food processor, blend all the essential ingredients together. This doesn't have to be completely smooth (I like it a bit chunky). Then add the vegetables and blitz for a few seconds (but still to leave plenty of chunks).

Fill the pre-baked pastry shells with the filling (to the top). I froze some at this point. Bake for around 20 minutes until they start to brown and are piping hot all the way through.

I do think a bit of red pepper in these ones would have made them more visually appealing but they went down a storm with both the children and the parents and can be eaten hot or cold. 

JULES XOXO

Stir-fry for mini vegans

I was hoping to have all the photos for my party finger food sorted by now as Little Miss has had her first birthday (!!!!! I can't actually believe she is one!) and was meant to have had two parties by now (one for her baby friends and one for the family) but both had to be postponed.  So although I have the recipes pretty much sorted I don't have the photos to go with them.

Anyway on with today's post! For dinner we are having stir-fry which is a favourite in our household but I hadn't yet bubbafied it for Little Miss. Usually when I am making stir-fry I use lashings of soy sauce and mirin (a rice wine) but due to the salt and alcohol in these I wanted to leave these out for LM. I remember another mum telling me that she used lemon and ginger as a sauce for her little one so I used this idea and it turned out delicious. Despite struggling with eating at the moment due to teething, LM enjoyed this a lot and ate more than I expected.

This is a very rough recipe and quantities and ingredients can be easily swapped. This made enough for LM and a small portion for me

Ingredients:

1-2 tablespoons of sesame oil or stir-fry oil

Cube of frozen fresh ginger (I have found these and the garlic cubes invaluable for speedy cooking and you know it won't go off). Use fresh grated ginger if you have it though.

3 tablespoons of lemon juice (add more if you prefer)

3 handfuls of ripped greens (LM's dad was very surprised that there is a vegetable just called "greens"!)

Half a courgette, grated

A handful of cherry tomatoes, halved

A portion of noodles (we used dried wheat noodles and boiled them in water before adding)

Method:

Heat the oil, ginger and lemon in a saucepan

Add all the vegetables and fry for a few minutes.

Add the noodles and cook until all the greens are soft.

And you're done! It's so simple, takes hardly any time and you can use lots of vegetables that are in your fridge. Using frozen fresh ginger and dried noodles means you can have the ingredients in almost always as long as you have some veg in the fridge.

JULES XOXO

Sugar free banana bread

I've been looking for recipes for snacks to have in the day other than our staples of fruit, veg and rice cakes! 

I found lots of recipes for banana bread but ended up creating my own using the others as a guideline. It made a lovely moist and dense cake perfect for mini fingers. It has only 5 ingredients. The bananas for this are best if they are very ripe, i.e. lots of brown spots, as they mash up really well and are sweeter as the starch turns into sugars. I cook this in a loaf tin but if you don't have one a cake tin would be fine too.

Ingredients

5/6 ripe bananas

2 cups plain flour

1 cup raisins

2 teaspoons cinnamon

1 teaspoon baking powder

(You may need a splash of non-dairy milk if your bananas do not make the dough wet enough)

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius.  

Line and grease a loaf tin/cake tin

Mash the bananas into the flour

Add the other ingredients and stir in well.

If the dough is dry add a bit of non-dairy milk. It should be a very thick dough that sticks to the spoon but still shiny and wet.

Pour into your tin and bake in the oven for around 25-30 minutes. The top of the bread should have gone darker brown and a knife should come out clean when it has pierced the cake.

I enjoy a warm piece of banana bread so no need to fully cool down if you can't wait (but obviously make sure it is cool enough for the babies and children!),

The raisins and cinnamon of this recipe really complement the textures and flavours of the cake. It is lovely and sweet despite there being no sugar in it and the high fruit content means it is pretty healthy.

We enjoyed this for both snacks and breakfast. In our hurry to eat it I never managed to take any pictures. Sorry.

JULES XOXO

Vegetable fritters

I have been trying to do some sort of meal planning this week so have been trawling the Internet for ideas for some nice recipes suitable for all of us. Of course most baby-led weaning websites aren't vegan but there quite a few vegetarian recipes out there. I saw one for butternut squash and sweetcorn pancakes which sounded really good for finger food. I hadn't really considered savoury pancakes like that before.

If you've seen pancake recipes before or cooked non-vegan pancakes you'll know thy then to have egg and milk in. Obviously you can substitute both of these relatively easily (non-dairy milk for the cows milk and flaxseed/banana/egg replacers etc) but I decided to make more of a dense fritter style instead. To be honest this was really because I didn't have any suitable egg replacers in!

Little Miss' daddy doesn't really like sweetcorn much and I only like the kind straight from the cob so I used courgette (zucchini) instead.

Ingredients

100g butternut squash

100g courgette

150g flour (all purpose)

Non-dairy milk (rice milk isn't recommended for babies)

Some vegetable/sunflower/olive oil

Method

Steam the vegetables until soft  (I used a metal sieve over a boiling pan of water with a lid  on top. No fancy steamers here!). 

Mash together with the flour.

Add non-dairy milk until a thick batter forms (still sticks to the spoon but is quite gloopy).

Heat up some oil in a frying pan. About 2 tablespoons will probably do.

Fry spoonfuls spread into small discs (ours were about 4cm across). They will probably need just a few minutes each side until they are golden brown.

Let them cool down on some kitchen roll to absorb some of the excess oil.

This made about 12 small fritters. We each had 4 each (LM didn't consume all 4 but 4 were needed for the obligatory "throw some on the floor" and "mash some on my head" purposes". LM's daddy and I had some extra vegetables and sweet chilli sauce with ours.

These went down a storm with everyone and were perfect for a weekend lunch all together. They would work with so many other vegetables so give them a go and tell me how yours went!

JULES XOXO