This is a super puree to introduce beetroot to your little one! The pear gives it a bit of sweetness which offsets the earthy flavour of the beetroot. It’s so simple to make!
You will need:
2 beetroots – peeled and roughly chopped
1 pear – peeled and roughly chopped
Put the chopped beetroot in a saucepan and boil till soft. You could also steam or microwave – up to you. Reserve some of the cooking juices for later.
Blend the cooked beetroot and the raw pear until smooth, adding as much of the reserved cooking juice as necessary to get your preferred consistency. You could use a bit of water instead of the reserved cooking juices if you’d prefer.
Serve straight away, pop into freezer portions for later, or spoon as much as you need into a Super Squish pouch for a fabulous meal on the go.
Who doesn’t love a dollop of delicious, creamy ice cream? Even when the weather gets colder? It’s probably one of my favourite desserts and my four year old would eat it at every meal if I let him!
Obviously all the additional sugar in the traditional dessert isn’t ideal and means that it’s kept as a ‘sometimes’ food in our house. Frozen banana ice creams are a win. They are full of healthy fats and, without added sugar, they are a fabulous gelato substitute. Not exactly like the original dessert, but I think they are just as delicious. The secret is to make sure the bananas are as ripe as possible because they are the only source of sweetness in the dish. This ice cream is very rich, so a little goes a long way. It makes a yummy creamy squishy treat on the go when served in a Super Squish pouch.
Recipe
You will need:
4 large very ripe bananas
about 250ml coconut cream
2 tablespoons unsweetened peanut butter or another unsweetened nut butter of your choice – I love the Meridian brand!
1 tsp Vanilla extract
Method
Peel the bananas and chop up into small pieces then freeze. Freeze in small batches – small enough to fit in your food processor. This is very important, as if you don’t freeze in small portions, it is impossible to put in the food processor. Blitz the frozen banana with all the other ingredients until smooth and creamy. Place into a freezable container or spoon into Super Squish pouches and freeze. Stir the banana ice cream every 30 minutes or so (if you remember!) until it’s frozen.
Delicious! Tastes like cookie dough…yum!
TIP:To make the banana ice cream nut free, substitute the nut butter for a tablespoon or two of cocoa for a chocolatey variation! You could also add chocolate chips before freezing.
ANOTHER TIP: You could spoon the banana ice cream into ice cube trays and then when frozen decant into a zip loc bag. You can then take a few cubes of ice cream out and pop into the Super Squish pouch when you want to go out. The ice cream will defrost a bit so its ready to eat! Its rich, so a few cubes are a perfect sweet treat.
Take a stroll down the cereal aisle in most supermarkets (if not all!) and you’ll see that it’s typically dominated by pack after pack of brightly coloured, cartoon decorated cereal boxes filled with sugary cereals…at children’s eye level! I’m sure if any of you have ever wheeled a small child along this aisle or, heaven forbid, tried to sneak past this aisle, you will understand my frustration at having to listen to ‘Mummy, go back, I want to see the tiger on that box!’ and the ensuing explanation as to why we can’t take the tiger box home with us – or variations on that theme. It’s not as if we never eat sugar in our house, but I’m trying to make a concerted effort to limit our sugar intake where possible. If you are on this journey – like me – then keep reading 🙂
As a result, I now read the labels on most of the things I buy to check the sugar content. I’ve noticed that many so-called ‘healthy’ kids cereals with ‘no refined sugar’, actually have other sugar/syrup added. Not good.
This brings us to Brilliant Banana Oats. It’s a super easy recipe that I created while trying to think how I could make my son’s breakfast oats sweeter without adding syrup/sugar/honey etc. It’s now a staple breakfast in our house for the whole family. In fact, my husband (who cycles into work every day and needs something to keep him going till lunchtime) commented that having oats for breakfast, instead of his other cereal, means he can go without eating until lunchtime whereas the other cereal doesn’t seem to touch sides. Go oats go!
This is a great breakfast/morning snack for little ones when you’re weaning them too – you can pop the warm oats into a Super Squish pouch and head out. It’s probably good to add a little more liquid to the pot if you’re going to put into a pouch to prevent it becoming stodgy. Experiment and see what works for you.
Ingredients: (1 adult serving, so if making for a little one you might want to adjust quantities):
40-50g porridge oats (if you need to make this gluten free, just buy gluten free oats)
200 -250ml milk (dairy or alternative if you need to go dairy-free) – you’ll need to play around with this quantity depending on how thick you like your oats. Check on the oat packet for the manufacturers suggestions.
1 ripe banana – the riper the banana, the sweeter the oat porridge will be!
Peel and mash the banana well. Add the banana mixture to the oats in a pot and combine. Add the milk and stir till well mixed. Cook on the stove top till cooked (Check oat packet for suggested cooking time).
Serve immediately or cool slightly and pour into a Super Squish pouch for eating a little later. You could also add fruit puree or top with berries and yoghurt.
There are so many nutritional benefits of adding fish to our diets. When my son was starting to eat solid food, good old fish pie was a favourite dish of mine to get him to eat fish, in addition to the childhood staple of fish fingers (of course!!).
I used to make fish pie with the traditional white sauce, but as he grew a bit older he started to refuse to eat it! I did some some internet research to try and find alternative recipes that hopefully would be acceptable to the increasingly fussy toddler. I came upon a recipe using coconut milk which I have adapted and made my own. It’s such a versatile recipe – you can add whatever vegetables you have in the fridge, and whatever fish you prefer. Typically avoid smoked fish, or add it in small quantities, as it has a strong flavour that not all kids will like.
I’m on a mission to ‘Make Veg The Hero’! Basically, I want to try and get my son to eat loads of healthy vegetables, which typically means disguising them as much as possible. This dish will allow you to sneakily introduce vegetables of your choice into the meal. WIN! The key step in this recipe is to use a food processor/small blender to blitz the vegetables into teeny, tiny pieces.
This also makes a great quick family supper – I serve it over egg noodles or spiralised courgettes. If you add more coconut milk it becomes more like a soup.
Ingredients:
– Half a small head of cauliflower
– Half a small head of broccoli
– 1 onion
– about 1 tablespoon of olive oil / coconut oil
– 2 cloves of garlic
– 1 red pepper (deseeded)
– 1 carrot
– juice of a lime
– a handful of flat leaf parsely – chopped (optional)
– about 600g skinless/deboned fish – e.g. salmon, white fish (I buy 2 packs of Sainsburys fish pie mix, but it does have smoked haddock in it) – cut into bite sized chunks
– 1 to 2 400g tins of coconut milk (add 1 tin and then you can add more later, depending on how many vegetables you have added, to get the consistency you want)
Method:
Note: You can substitute the vegetables with any others you might have in your fridge – green beans, courgettes are great alternatives. Obviously if you add some frozen peas, you don’t need to blitz them but you can add them just before the end of the cooking time. You can also experiment with the quantities of vegetables you add. Use the quantities above as a guide, but it is such a versatile recipe that you can amend it very easily.
Heat a tablespoon of oil in a large pot on a low/medium heat – you don’t want the garlic to burn. Blitz the onions into fine pieces and crush the garlic. Add to the pot and cook for a few minutes. Meanwhile blitz the remaining vegetables as you did the onions and add to the pan. Cook on a med/low heat for about 10-15 minutes or until the vegetables are soft, stirring regularly. Add the tin of coconut milk, bring to the boil and then simmer on a low heat for 5 minutes. Add the fish to the pot, gently stirring so that the fish is covered by the coconut milk (add more coconut milk if you need to). Poach the fish for 10 minutes or until the fish is cooked through. TIP: Avoid stirring the fish around too much while cooking to avoid the fish breaking up into tiny bits.
Season with lime juice to taste, and add salt and pepper to taste (if adding). Serve with mashed sweet potato, rice, noodles or accompaniment of your choice.
Makes enough for 2 adults and 2 children with extra left over, depending on your portion sizes!
If you are feeding this to a little one as part of the weaning process, blend/pulse in a food processor to the desired consistency. Pop into Super Squish pouches and freeze or refrigerate if not using straight away.
I need to say upfront that this just might be my favourite smoothie recipe so far! Quite surprising, as the thought of adding raw butternut to a smoothie isn’t something that I would instinctively think of as being yummy!
Pumpkin and butternut are in season at the moment and, although we’ve used butternut in this recipe, you can easily substitute pumpkin or any other squash. The really great thing about this butternut smoothie is that it’s predominately made of vegetables. So without exerting too much effort, it’s a fabulous way to get more veggies into your kids (or your diet) without them even knowing.
Ingredients:
– about 100g butternut (great way to use up any left over bits of squash you might have in the fridge!) – peel and cut into discs/chunks
– about 100g very ripe banana – weighed without peel (frozen would be good, but not essential)
– half an avocado (ours was around 65g), skin removed
– 200ml unsweetened almond milk – our preferred brand is Rude Health as the blend of rice and almond milk adds a nice nutty sweetness to the smoothie (TIP: you may want to add more milk to taste as the avocado can make the smoothie very thick)
– we didn’t need to add any honey as the smoothie ended up being sweet enough thanks to the ripeness of the banana!
– you could add a few ice blocks too
Blitz it all in a blender till smooth and enjoy! This recipe will fill about 4 Super Squish pouches (depending on how much liquid you add – it’s a personal preference kind of thing!).
We experimented with making a raw butternut smoothie today and it was unexpectedly delicious! No added sugar, dairy and gluten free and mainly made of raw vegetables.
My small helper downed 2 Super Squish pouches and gave it his seal of approval. Recipe coming soon… Watch this space.
When I decided to do the seasonal smoothie campaign I wanted to focus on creating smoothies that are predominantly made up of vegetables with just a bit of fruit thrown in for sweetness.
While there is nothing wrong with all fruit smoothies, I’m trying to be more careful about how much sugar my 3 and a half year old has during the day. There is less sugar in a predominantly veggie smoothie than one that is mostly fruit, so that ticks this box. Also, this type of smoothie is a fantastic way to get additional vegetables into him without him knowing! It goes without saying that the smoothie had to be enjoyed by my 3 and a half year old. I wanted him to ask me for more when his glass was empty! Quite a challenge to say the least. I’m pleased to say that this smoothie passed the test!
There is an abundance of seasonal veggies in October. The most obvious of them all is, of course, the pumpkin. However, I’ve chosen to focus on one that tends to be overlooked – the cauliflower. My mission was to make a cauliflower smoothie! I don’t think you can be ambivalent about cauliflower – either you like it or you don’t! It isn’t one of my favourite veg and I don’t cook it often, so it was a challenge to come up with a smoothie recipe that made it the star. The great thing about adding cauliflower to a smoothie is that it has a rather bland flavour, and therefore can be used to bulk up smoothies without affecting the flavour too much.
Seeing as beetroot is also seasonal (and I had some left over in my fridge) I decided to throw that in too for a bit of vibrant colour. Avocado may not be in season, but I was looking for something that would add a creaminess to the smoothie. It worked brilliantly!
Ingredients:
70g fresh beetroot peeled
100g cauliflower
half a ripe avocado
2 small very ripe bananas (one large banana would work fine)
15 frozen raspberries (any frozen berries)
a small handful of ice
350/400ml unsweetened almond milk (my favourite brand is the Rude Health almond milk (a mixture of almond and rice milk), as it is naturally sweeter due to the addition of rice milk). Add milk to taste and to get the consistency you prefer.
Blitz and enjoy this yummy cauliflower smoothie!
This should fill about 5 Super Squish pouches, with a kiddie-sized glass left over for drinking straight away.
Maybe some of you have children that love beetroot. Mine does not. Not at all.
I even tried to get him to try beetroot juice once thinking that the gorgeous bright colour would make it palatable. It did not work at all and he refused to let the glass get anywhere near his lips! Off the record, I love love love beetroot juice and all things beetroot, so I can vouch for the deliciousness of the juice! So, in my quest to make the humble beetroot something that he would eat, I resorted to blending it into a smoothie. By the way, I initially tried apple instead of banana in the recipe and it wasn’t accepted by the 3.5 year old….
Fresh beetroot is in season at the moment, so should be readily available if you feel like giving this recipe a go.
Ingredients:
1 large ripe banana (try and get a very ripe banana to sweeten the smoothie as much as possible)
about 50g raw beetroot (peeled) – stains your fingers so watch out!
30g frozen raspberries (any frozen berries would work fine)
180 – 250ml freshly squeezed orange juice (or watered down according to your preference)
Bomb all of the ingredients in the blender and whizz till smooth. The colour is gorgeous!
(By the way, I initially tried apple instead of banana and it wasn’t accepted by the 3.5 year old)
Fills about 2 pouches with a little to spare (depending on how much liquid you add to taste)
TIP: I kept the smoothie in the fridge overnight and just blended it again the next day before drinking.
This smoothie was named by a friend of mine while trying to convince her 3 year olds to try this nutrient packed yummy smoothie! It did the trick, the littlies gulped it down and the name has stuck in our house.
It’s great for little kids and bigger ones (including grown ups!) too. It can be made dairy free or gluten free if you use suitable milk alternatives like oat milk, soya milk etc.
You need:
two large handfuls of baby spinach (or one kale and one baby spinach)
a large banana (can add an extra one if you want to – this will make it sweeter)
250ml of milk (or milk alternative)
4-6 large ice cubes
Optional – a tablespoon of flax seeds, a few soft dates/a teaspoon of honey or alternative sweetner
I bought a watermelon and of course it was too big for our small family to eat it all, so I decided to see if my two-year old and hubby would enjoy a watermelon smoothie or slushie.
I put about 600g of cubed watermelon in a blender with seven or eight strawberries, then I added a few sprigs of fresh mint (actually I keep mine in the freezer, so it was frozen fresh mint!) I put the whole lot in the blender and whizzed it up. It was still a fairly thick consistency so it was fine to put into the pouch. To be honest I didn’t know if the little man would drink this, but I presented it to him and he really liked it! (I do think the Super Squish pouches help make any blended fruit seem exciting).
You need:
600g watermelon
a good handful of strawberries with the cores removed
a few sprigs of mint (optional, but it does give an extra dimension for the grown ups I think!)
You will need:
