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!

Simple Summer Essentials: Patriotic pavlova

So there's been a bit of a hiatus in my Simple Summer Essential series owing to the end of my obsession with the Olympics, good weather (the irony, I know!) and a few days working away from home. However, I'm back on track now, with plans for some simple preserves.

At the end of last week I decided to tackle pavlova. The arrival of the much loved K-mix has meant that meringue is so much more straightforward to make. Discussion on twitter ensued after my photos went up, and it has been decreed that marshmallows will be my next K-mix adventure. Hurrah!

Now, where was I? Oh yes, meringue. So 'everyone' has a recipe for meringue. I knew I didn't want a crispy one - you know the ones you buy from the supermarkets that just seem to be all air and nothingness? I hate them. With a passion. Meringue to me needs to have a chewy middle and a crisp outside.

I toyed with the idea of making blousey overblown meringues a la the one's you see Ottolenghi windows, but as this was my actual first ever attempt at meringue I thought I'd take the easy option and make a pavlova base. With a difference. You see, I love pavlova, the combination of softly whipped, barely sweetened vanilla cream, tart and sweet fruit with the crisp, chewy meringue. It's a cacophony of contradictions, and a summer pudding I just can't get enough of. Truly. It's probably a good thing I've only just tried making it or my diet, well, not so much.

However, courtesy of M's mum (and for her via her Aunt I believe) I discovered a way to twist pavlova - to take the traditional flat base, and make it even better. How do you make it even better? Make it hold more of course! So, when making pavlova:

• Put a large baking tray on your worktop
• centre a cake tin, upside down on the baking tray
• cover that in a dome of baking parchment
• Cut out a big circle and pleated it around so that it made a kind of teepee shape, flattening the top
• Lay this over the cake tin.
• Use a spatula to liberally cover this with your meringue before putting it in the oven

So, now for the pavlova recipe - again courtesy of M's mum. You know, some things don't need a chef or a celebrity to tell you how to make them - a way that's worked wonderfully for years is what you're after.

M's mum's meringue - used as the basis for Patriotic pavlova

4 egg whites
8oz caster sugar (I used regular white granulated as that's what I had)
1 tsp malt vinegar
1 tsp cornflour
Pinch cream of tartar

Preheat the oven to 190 degrees C, and move your oven shelves around so that you can get a big meringue in
Beat the egg whites until stiff (this took considerably less time in the K-mix - I'm not boasting, just gleefully announcing!)
Add half of the sugar whilst still beating, then when that's mixed in and the mixture has started to go glossy, add the rest of the ingredients - continue to beat until you have a beautifully shiny, white mixture
Pile onto the dome of baking parchment using a spatula (try not to press it down too much)
Put in the oven and cook for 3 minutes (use a timer) at 190, then without opening the door turn the oven down to 120 degrees and continue to cook for an hour

Take out and leave to cool, then peel off the parchment and fill with softly whipped cream, and berries - I used blueberries, strawberries and raspberries for the red, whites and blues of the Union Flag.

Eat in front of the closing ceremony of the Olympics. Or y'know, just as you like! I used a pint of double cream, and large handfuls of raspberries, blueberries and strawberries and this made buckets - easily enough for a pudding for 4-6 people

 

Simple summer essentials: How do you solve a problem like overripe fruit?

This is the last post in the Simple Summer Essentials series - it's been fun planning, prepping and cooking my way through the fruit and vegetables that Asda kindly sent me. Such a lovely selection of seasonal produce that has really lifted and inspired me over the past couple of weeks.

One of the things I find with the soft fruits that summer brings is that they ripen too fast. I have an ongoing battle with nectarines and plums, hard as rocks one day and complete and utter smush the next. There is no logic! But being the thrifty cook and blogger that I am I do a couple of things I wanted to share with you how I prolong the life of soft fruit, and then how I use it when it's just tipped over that past it's best peak. 

First off ditch the plastic! get rid of that plastic wrap, and instead I gently lay kitchen towel on top. Now I'm not sure as to the science behind this, but fruit releases gasses as it ripens and by absorbing these the kitchen towel stops the fruit ripening too fast. Now this may be an old wives tale - I wasn't particularly good at paying attention during science classes, but I would swear that it does in fact work.

Note from M, the resident scientist: he thinks it's letting the gasses escape but stopping light get to the fruit and so slowing ripening? Your suggestions on a postcard please...

The second part of ditching the plastic is to also get rid of the box.  I'm old enough to remember when fruit came in cardboard punnets, with no cellophane wrapper. Soft fruits last much longer out of the plastic that supermarkets sell them in.

Now, when fruit has moved into the overripe territory I mush it up, adding a bit of lemon or lime juice and stir it into yoghurt - for me, normally 0% fat greek style. This then makes a fantastic pudding, or breakfast. If I'm having it for pudding I'll add a pinch of vanilla extract. it doesn't need any sweetener, is plenty sweet enough the way it is. 

The other thing to do is to turn it into a fruit fool - I did this with frozen berries regularly a few years back - but it would be just as effective and tasty with some overripe soft fruits. 

Check back tomorrow for a round up of my Simple summer essentials, and your chance to win £50 of Asda vouchers.

Simple Summer Essentials: Peach melba - musical theatre style

 

 

 

The Simple Summer Essentials series is coming to an end - along with this (all too brief) spell of hot weather. The last recipes I have for you are all sweet - today's peach melba, a patriotic pavlova and a way to use up overripe soft fruits to make a fool.

Peach Melba was originally a pudding created by Auguste Escoffier to honour the soprano Nellie Melba. Vanilla ice cream, peaches and raspberry sauce combined with an ice sculpture of a swan (as a nod to the opera she was singing in) to make an outstanding dessert, recreated time and time over. by the time I became familiar with peach melba it had been diluted into one of those little pots of yoghurt, that along with Angel delight were standard pudding fare in the 1980's. Not quite what escoffier had in mind I'm sure!

Growing up, peach melba seemed impossibly glamourous and fancy. The type of thing one would have at a posh restaurant. Little did I know, that the combination of peach and raspberry I loved so fiercely in my little pots of yoghurt was an easily recreated dessert, one that could easily be done and done diet style as well.

So today's post is Peach Melba - musical theatre style (that is to say less overblown than opera) Consider this the Rent to La Boheme, or Miss Saigon to Madam Butterfly of the pudding world.

Serves 2

100g 0% fat Greek yoghurt (I use Total)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
100g raspberries pureed
2 peaches
1 tsp dark, soft brown sugar

Split your peaches in half, and remove the stone. Sprinkle the cut side with the soft, dark brown sugar and put under a hot grill until the sugar starts to bubble.
Meanwhile, mix the vanilla extract into the yoghurt and leave to stand. You could sweeten if you wanted, either with a sweetener or sugar. I don't find I need it and avoid artificial sweeteners as a rule, but you should make sure it tastes lovely for you.
This is an ideal way to use up ripe raspberries - either mush them up in a bowl, or (if you're being fancy) push them through a seive.
Then either, stir the puree into the yoghurt and top the grilled peaches with this (as I've done in the pictures). Or top the grilled peaches with plain yoghurt and drizzle with the raspberry puree

It's such a simple pudding, but grilling the peaches makes it slightly different as the peaches take on a fantastic caramelly flavour from the sugar and grill. This method of cooking them would also work on a barbeque if you're planning on one last hurrah with yours this weekend.