Dairy free puddings for a CMPA baby - rice pudding recipe

I've previously written a post on breakfast ideas for a CMPA baby - but lately our head scratcher has been puddings.

We mainly give Harry fruit for pudding - it's naturally dairy free, because I'm doing Slimming World we always have lots in and he is happy with it. However, because of our tricky start with weight gain owing to the undiagnosed CMPA fruit isn't great in terms of calorie density. Over the past 6 months I've experimented with the following:

• Refined sugar free banana muffins - I thought they were too dry, Harry loved them
• lots of coconut yoghurts - as per this post Coyo has been our favourite, but the poor love seems to have been coconut yoghurted out! 
• The occaisional rusk - I know they're full of sugar, but they're dairy free, portable and before Harry's teeth came through (oddly since the top 2 came in he's lost interest in them) he loved that he could suck them
• Fresh fruit - chopped up grapes, bananas (slightly constipating), dried prunes soaked in apple juice or water, blueberries, kiwi fruit, apple and pear slices have all been favourites. 
• Stewed fruit - prune, apple and pear is his absolute favourite - I've stirred this into yoghurt lots for him. I don't add sugar to this.
• Homemade wholemeal toast with almond butter and mashed banana

All of these can either be given as a loaded spoon, heaped onto the highchair tray to be eaten with fingers, or are already finger food.

Just lately a growth spurt and the onset of cruising and an odd, head-led crawl have meant that Harry's weight gain has slowed again. Keen to avoid the wrath of the Health visitor (a well known phenomenom in these parts) I thought we'd better up those calories so have been making individual portions of baked rice pudding.

We use Oatly creamy oat for rice puds - it has a mild taste and although the packet says it works like single cream, I've had no problems with it splitting.

Dairy free rice pudding (makes 4 baby-sized individual portions)

50g short grain or pudding rice
250ml carton of Oatly creamy oat (found in Waitrose or Holland & Barrett)
100ml almond milk (or whatever you use as a dairy free milk substitute. I have made this with nutramigen and whilst I thought it was disgusting Harry ate it quite happily)
1/4 tsp vanilla extract
Lots of grated nutmeg on top

You could add sugar, but I didn't as I prefer to not add sugar - if Harry had hated it I'd have made it again with about 10-15g but as it was, he was very happy with this

Preheat the oven to 150 degrees
Wash your rice until the water runs clear. I would never do this normally, but when I was asking around for recommendations everyone said to wash it!
Lightly oil (I used coconut) small individual pie pans - I use these ones from Lakeland 
In a jug, mix the rice, almond milk, Oatly and vanilla extract.
Separate the pudding between the four individual pans
Grate lots of nutmeg over the top - I have to say I went with my tastes on the nutmeg front and luckily Harry loved it- you might want to be a bit more cautious! 
Bake in the oven for half an hour, or until set with a bit of wobble

Allow to cool, tip out of the tin and either slice or break up as a baby led weaning pudding, or spoon feed if that's how you do things. I sometimes top it with some stewed fruit - but it does make a lot of mess! 

Next up on our pudding journey is going to be an attempt to recreate an amazing dairy free ice cream I had at a Lakeland summer event. I think I've found the recipe. I'm not sure I'll be sharing it with Harry though!