Pea and carrot cubes

Fish pie

Recipes:

Apple and pear rusk porridge: steam the apple and pear together with some vanilla and blend with a small amount of water. Break down a few baby rusks of whatever flavour and mix these in.

Pea and carrot cubes: Blanch the peas and carrots in butter and water. Drain most of the water and blend with a bit of milk or cream.

Fish pie:

Cooking time: 45 minutes,

Preparation time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:

Cod, potatoes, leeks, parsley, flour, butter, milk.

Method of Preparation:

Get your fishmonger to debone the fish. Cook in milk and a pinch of pepper until it is flaky. Sautee the leeks in some butter and put in the bottom of an oven proof dish.

Mix the flour and butter together until they form a smooth paste. Add the milk in drop by drop until you have a smooth sauce, stirring all the time. Add the parsley to this sauce. Cook the potatoes until tender and mash very smoothly. Assemble by putting the fish in with the leeks and pouring over the parsley sauce, and then put the mash on top. Bake this in the oven for about 15 minutes.

Few cubes of cheddar cheese and carrot sticks with some hummus

Chicken curry

Recipes:

Apple puree: Steam the apple with some vanilla or cinnamon. When soft and tender, mix with some apple juice as thin or thickly as you want it and served with mixed cereals.

Hummus: Buy a smooth shop-bought variety, or make your own with chickpeas, garlic, and salt and pepper.

Chicken curry:

Cooking time: 40 minutes, Preparation time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

Chicken, onion, carrots, celery, mushrooms, green pepper, curry powder, flour, chicken stock.

Method of Preparation:

Cook the chicken and remove from the bone. Sautee the pepper, onion, carrots, and celery in a little butter until translucent. Sprinkle over the curry powder and flour and cook for a little longer. Cover with chicken stock and stir. Add the chicken and simmer slowly for 15 minutes. Towards the end of cooking, thinly slice the mushrooms and add these raw into the mixture and cook for another 5 minutes. Serve with baby rice. Blend for younger babies and leave chunkier for older babies.

Finger food ham sandwiches and cucumber sticks

Vegetable stew

Raspberries as finger food if still hungry

Feeds/formula as necessary.

Recipes:

Weetabix and mango puree: Steam the mango, removing the stone. Warm the Weetabix and thin it out with the milk. Mix the two together well.

Finger food sandwiches: Use thin sliced wholemeal bread from a 400g loaf.

Vegetable stew:

Cooking time: 25 minutes, Preparation time: 20 minutes

Ingredients:

Leeks, cauliflower, broccoli, onion, carrot, potato, cumin, butter, chicken stock.

Method of Preparation:

Finely chop the onion, carrot, and leeks. Sauté them in some butter. Cut the broccoli and cauliflower into florets and add these into the pan. Chop the potatoes into cubes, and add these into the pan. Cover with the chicken stock and cook for 20 minutes or until the potatoes are tender. Blend or leave whole for older babies.

Sweet potato and parsnip cubes

Macaroni cheese

Sandwich fingers if still hungry

Feeds/formula as necessary.

Recipes

Berry puree

Cook all the berries together in a saucepan with a sprinkle of sugar and some apple juice until the fruit is still holding together but not disintegrated.

Sweet potato and parsnip cubes: steam the sweet potato and the parsnip for about half an hour until tender and then mash with a fork.

Macaroni cheese:

Cooking time: 15 minutes, Preparation time: 5 minutes

Ingredients:

Flour, butter, milk, cheese, macaroni pasta.

Method of Preparation:

Make the sauce with equal parts flour, butter, milk, and cheese. Mix the flour and butter together until they form a paste. Add in the milk drop by drop, stirring all the time until you have a smooth paste/sauce. Stir in the cheese and a pinch of pepper until all of the cheese has melted. Boil some small macaroni and cook until very tender, serving with the sauce stirred through. You could also put grated cheese on top and put under the grill.

2 or 3 ice cubes of apricot and peach puree

Red pepper risotto

Couple of rice cakes as finger food if still hungry

Feeds/formula as necessary.

Recipes:

Toast and yoghurt: Use thin wholemeal bread, preferably from a little 400g loaf. For the yoghurt, try Petit Filous.

Apricot and peach puree: Lightly boil the apricot and peach in some water. You could add a bit of vanilla to the water. When tender, hand blend.

Red pepper risotto:

Cooking time: 30 minutes, Preparation time: 15 minutes

Ingredients:

Celery, shallots, carrot, onion, risotto rice, red bell peppers and mushrooms.

Method of Preparation:

Finely chop all the ingredients. Heat some oil in a heavy bottom pan and sauté the celery, shallots, carrot and onion until tender. Add in the rice and stir round. Put on some chicken stock to warm in a separate saucepan. When the rice is almost crackling, add in the stock a ladleful at a time.

Finely chop the red pepper and fry off in a separate saucepan with oil and the mushrooms. Stir this in at the end. When the risotto is soft and the rice is tender you can remove it from the heat. Alternatively, you could all of the ingredients and serve over the baby rice.

Check out Annabel Karmel’s Weaning Guide for more useful tips on Weaning.

An easy way to make a puree, any puree, is to peel and chop the vegetable or fruit and place it in a steamer until tender. Then, puree with a hand blender or mash with a fork depending on the age of your baby. You could thin this out with a little water or breast formula if needed.

Please remember that all babies are different, and what your friends baby likes might not necessarily be what your baby likes. If your baby doesn’t like something, wait four days and then try again.

All recipe quantities have been left blank for you to use as much or as little as you need.
Weekly menu:
Day one:

• Banana baby porridge
• 2 ice cubes spinach, carrot, pea puree
• Caribbean pork casserole
• Carrot/cucumber sticks as finger food if still hungry
• Feeds/formula as necessary.

Recipes:

Banana baby porridge: Mush up a banana with the back of a fork. Add this into your normal baby porridge mixture. You could also use baby rice and make it into banana rice pudding.

Spinach, carrot, pea puree: Steam the carrots and spinach until tender. It is easiest to use frozen peas, so blanch these in hot water for 5 or so minutes. Blitz everything together. You could also add something like a sprig of mint.

Caribbean pork casserole:

Cooking time: 20 minutes, Preparation time: 10 minutes

Ingredients:

Pork, onion, sweet potato, courgette, carrot, apple juice, tin of chopped tomatoes.

Method of Preparation:

Use about 200g of each vegetable and 500g pork. Use 150ml apple juice.

Lightly fry the onion in sunflower oil. Add the pork until browned. Finely chop the rest of the vegetables and add back into the pan.Add the tomatoes. Cover with the apple juice and simmer until the other vegetables are soft. Serve with baby rice.

Blend to a puree or a lumpy mixture.

Author is an expert article writer contributes for Free Indian Recipes and other recipes.

Ingredients:

• 60g chicken (use breast as it’s less sinewy)
• 30g grated cheese (use cheddar)
• 2 or 3 broccoli florets
• 2 or 3 cauliflower florets
• 1 carrot
• 15g butter
• 1 tbsp. plain flour
• 125ml milk

Method of Preparation:

For this weaning recipe, put the vegetables in a saucepan full of boiling water. If you would like flavour, try a tiny bit of chicken stock, but use proper chicken stock and not a cube as these are salty.

Cook this until tender and not hard. It needs to be soft to puree properly.

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Add the flour in and mix together to form a paste. Pour in the milk slowly, stirring all the time, until everything is fully combined and not lumpy.

Take this off of the heat and mix in the cheese. It will melt on its own.

Mix the chicken and the vegetables in the sauce. Make sure they are cut into small pieces, if you are pureeing this for a very young baby, 4 months to 7 months. It makes it much easier to puree if they are in small pieces already.

If you are serving this to a baby over 7 months, you can keep the chicken and vegetables whole, but chopped up small.

You could also try substituting the chicken for turkey. It is similar texture and taste to chicken, but a slightly different flavour. It is as lean as chicken. Again, use breast meat as it is less sinewy.

You can serve this cool, or you can serve this warm. Try it with warm rice for those slightly older babies, and if you want to incorporate a carbohydrate for the smaller babies, you could puree some cooked rice in with the chicken mixture, or you could puree a small new potato or two to thicken out the mixture.

Another variation is to try a couple of different ingredients. You could add a few chestnut mushrooms, or maybe try some small amounts of spinach.

This uses Indian spice and herbs. You could experiment with different flavours and different spices to get more Asian themed dishes. With this dish you will not be using jams, but you could use a fruit like pear, or passion fruit, or pineapple. This is called kheer. You could add chopped nuts to the top, or mixed through the dish for some more flavour.

Ingredients:

• 250g pudding rice or short grain rice
• 1litre whole milk
• 3tbsp sugar (this doesn’t seem like much, but the flavours make up for it)
• Pinch of saffron
• 1 tsp. cardamom powder
• A good handful of nuts, whatever you fancy
• Good handful of raisins if you like them
• 1 tsp. ghee

Method of Preparation:

Heat up the ghee in a saucepan. Add the nuts and raisins and cook them through till the raisins are plump.

Add the rice to the saucepan and cook for a few minutes. This will absorb the nutty flavour.

Pop the milk in and give it a mix around.

DON’T LET IT BURN! If the milk burns, it is really not nice and you will have to start again.

Mix the sugar back through.

Reduce the heat and cook slowly until the milk has halved in volume, it will be thick and creamy by this stage.

This will take around thirty minutes.

Add the spices and about half of the nut mixture, and stir this round.

Pour this into your serving dishes and add more sprinkled nuts on top. You could add a couple of raisins on top too.

Have this hot or cold, up to you! You could also give it a quick sprinkle of cardamom on top.

A lovely way to serve is to also add some edible gold leaf, or silver leaf. You could also brush the nuts with the gold leaf and serve these on top of the rice pudding – you can also keep these in an airtight container and use in future on top of other desserts. Instead of cardamom powder, you could infuse the milk with a couple of open cardamom pods for a fresher flavour. Add vanilla, and infuse for about half an hour, careful not to let the milk burn.

Author is an expert article writer contributes daily for Free Indian Recipes and other recipes like Homemade Recipes.

Try adding chocolate chips, which will melt for a delicious flavour. You could also put a spoon of jam in the bottom before baking for a lovely fruity surprise at the bottom. For a very decadent take on the dish, you could add a couple of sweets like Rolo’s, or a mini Mars in the bottom of the dish, and this will melt and give you a delicious creamy texture and chocolaty finish!

Ingredients:

• 110g of pudding rice or short grain rice
• 500ml evaporated milk
• 500ml whole milk
• 40g brown sugar, or muscavado sugar
• 1 nutmeg
• 25g sugar
• 2 egg yolks

Method of Preparation:

Easy. Mix the milks together.

Mix in the sugar, and rice, and pour into your ovenproof dish or dishes.

A nice touch is to beat the two egg yolks together and stir this through the mixture, it makes it extra creamy and rich

Grate the whole nutmeg over the top – this seems a lot, but the dish does need it.

Dot the butter up into little flecks and sprinkle on the top.

Cook for thirty minutes in the top of an oven at 150C. Mix everything through, and then put back in for another half an hour. Stir again. Leave in the oven for another hour, with no stirring.

This will be lovely, creamy, with a yummy skin on top! If you don’t like the skin, just stir it through and it will get rid of it.
Variations:

This is lovely served with compote fruit. Chop rhubarb roughly into segments, add a good shake of sugar to cover – this isn’t exact measurements, use however much you want. Cover with a little bit of water – a nice thing to do is cover it with strawberry juice. Cook slowly for about an hour. You could add some cinnamon, or a vanilla pod to this. Cook until stewed and thick. Spoon this on top of the rice pudding to serve, or spoon the rice pudding out of the bowls to serve runny.

You could also serve this with cake. Seems like a strange combination, but it makes a lovely alternative to using cream or custard.

At first he will start with different vegetables puree, as carrots, pumpkins, sweet potatos, and spinach. At this stage, you can also add some fruits, like banana, apple, pears or peaches.

Always consult with your pediatrician or your health care professional before incorporating a new ingredient to the baby’s diet.

There are many weaning recipes this one is one of those simple recipes which is really easy to prepare:

Tri-colored purée:

Ingredients:

• ½ potato
• ½ sweet potato
• ¼ pumkin

Preparation:

Boil the potato, the sweet potato and the pumpkin in vegetable broth (if you do not have broth, boil the vegetables in simple unsalted water) until they are tender.

Once dried, mash them until you get a very soft purée. The first time, make sure there are not big pieces of the vegetables. Once the baby is used to the purée, near his 8th or 9th month, you can leave some so he can taste different textures.
Add little oil or cream cheese to make it more creamy and taste.

If you like, you can prepare the same recipe but with the whole vegetables. Place the purée in very little recipients (like those for preparing ice cubes) and freeze them. You can then use them one by one.

Banana and Muffin purée:

This is a must. All babies like it. It is simple to prepare and very nutritious in potassium.

Ingredients:

• 1 banana
• 1 medium vainilla only muffin
• 1 dinner spoon of Formula or breast milk.

Preparation:

Mash the banana and the muffin together making a very smooth puree. Add milk for soften. It is not necessary to add any sugar. The muffin is sweet enough.

Fruits mix and yoghurt

A very sweet and colorful recipe with plenty of vitamin c and calcium.

Ingredients:

• 2 apple dices
• 2 peaches dices
• 2 pears dices
• 1 tea spoon white sugar
• ¼ tea cup of natural yoghurt

Preparation:

Cook the fruit dices in a pan with soft heat. Add the sugar and some water until they are tender and the sugar have melted into the water. Mash the preparation until no big pieces are seen. Add some natural yoghurt.

Green chicken puree

This is a very nice start with meats. Chicken is taste, easy to digest, and easy to cook.
Your baby can start with chicken near the seventh month.

Ingredients:

• 1 chicken breast
• ½ lemon juice
• 1 small potato
• Handful spinach

Preparation:

Marinate the chicken breast in the lemon juice and some (but not too much) salt for 5 minutes each side. Bake or roast the chicken breast until it is well done (all parts of the breast must be white).

Boil the potato in unsalted water. Dry and mash until it is smooth. Add a little bit of oil to soften. Steam the spinach for a few minutes. You can put it over the potato or do it separately. Dry and mash too. Mix the two purée and add some cream cheese.

Chop the chicken breast in very small pieces and mix it with the purée.
If your baby is nine month old or older add some parmesan on top.