Spiced plum and apple crumble: dairy free, vegan

I love crumble, it's one of my favourite puddings - up there with my 10 minute syrup sponge pud. This recipe is gently spiced with the Pumpkin pie spice mix from  I made last week - partly as I wanted another excuse to use it.

This is a dairy free, vegan recipe - replacing the butter with a dairy free spread, and my usual honey with a date syrup. I discovered date syrup courtesy of another blogger and really, really love the depth of flavour and natural sweetness it gives dishes. I found mine in our local health food shop, but I'm sure you could find it in a bigger supermarket.

As we don't have puddings often, I wouldn't mind Harry having a little of this. I know there's sugar in it, but a little is fine and he doesn't really have anything else with sugar in it. I tend to work on the basis that if they're not having sugar all the time, once in a while won't hurt.

Historically I've used the Nigella recipe for crumble, but today I mixed it up a bit. This would be lovely served with some Birds custard made up with almond milk. Did you know that Birds custard was invented because the inventor Alfred Bird's wife had an egg allergy so it's perfect for my CMPA bubba with an egg allergy.

Spiced plum and apple crumble
Dairy free, vegan

One punnet of ripen at home plums - about 7, quartered
3 eating apples, peeled, cored and cut into eighths
1 tsp pumpkin pie spice - this could be replaced by 1 tsp cinnamon
1 tablespoon date syrup, mixed up with 2 tablespoons of water
80g plain flour
20g porridge oats
1 tablespoon demerera sugar
70g dairy free spread - I used Pure but Vitalite or an own brand would work too

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees C
Quarter the plums and put into the dish you're going to bake the crumble in - you want everything to fit quite closely
Peel the apples, cut into eighths and nestle them amongst the plums
Sprinkle over the spice
Mix the water and date syrup together and pour over the fruit
Mix everything up well and make sure the plums are skin side down
Pop into the oven for 20-30 minutes. Keep an eye, you want everything soft, not caramelised.
While the fruit is baking, make your crumble
Mix the oats, flour and sugar together in a bowl
Rub in the dairy free spread until the mixture resembles breadcrumbs
Top the baked fruit with the crumble and pop back in the oven for 20 minutes

Enjoy with that custard. Because there's nothing better.

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!

Brioche and apple pudding

Growing up a real treat for us was my mum's bread pudding - done in the slow cooker, we'd come home to the fug of cinammon and nutmeg and know that pudding was on the menu. I realise now it was mainly a thrifty way to use up stale bread, but in my head it was manna from heaven. Really one of my favourite things. I've never made it as there's no 'real' recipe for it, more a kind of - well we do this until it looks a bit like this... which isn't helpful for you or I.

A couple of weeks back the people at Pasquier brioche asked if I'd like to have a go at trying some of their brioche and creating a recipe with it. Bread pudding was the obvious choice (well, obvious to me) I just needed the time and my wonderfully velcro baby to let me have some time in the kitchen.

The interweb is awash with recipes for bread and butter pudding, yet bread pudding seems to be a less common bake - maybe the fact that it's unfashionably retro - has none of the twee appeal of other more traditional bakes, or the fact that it is a dense pudding. I'm not sure I still love it.

Making the pudding with brioche made for a much lighter texture, and adding cooking apple from the garden cut through the sweetness. Otherwise it's a fairly traditional recipe that I've worked up.

Brioche and apple pudding

500g (1 loaf) brioche - whizzed into breadcrumbs in the processor or chopped up roughly by hand
500g dried fruit - I used a mix of sultanas and currants as that's what we had. You could use anything you have to hand.
100g cooking apples, peeled, cored and grated
1.5 tablespoons sweet mixed spice
1 teaspoon cinammon
1/2 nutmeg grated
1 pint milk
2 eggs, beaten
140g soft brown sugar
100g melted unsalted butter
2 tablespoons demerera sugar

Preheat the oven to 160 degrees, and butter and line a square, deep dish cake tin (I use the one I use for brownies and similar)

In a big mixing bowl combine the breadcrumbs, dried fruit, grated apple, spices and sugar.
Mix the milk and eggs together
Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and using your hands make sure that everything is really well mushed up
Leave to stand and soak for half an hour or so (it doesn't matter if you leave it for longer)
Melt the butter and pour over the ingredients. Make sure it's well combined.
Pour into the cake tin and bake in the preheated oven for and hour and a half, covered with tin foil. 30 minutes before the end remove the foil.

Serve warm with ice cream, custard or cream. Or leave to cool and have in a packed lunch.

Thanks to Pasquier for sending me the brioche - the rolls were excellent sustenance for the 10am feeds! 

Pretty in pink: Rhubarb rhubarb

I love rhubarb. Stewed rhubarb on yoghurt is one of my favourite breakfasts (when temperatures aren't arctic) I wish daily that I'd made more of the rhubarb and ginger jam as I ended up giving it all away. However, that's pretty much all I do with rhubarb, which isn't very exciting.

Early rhubarb is beautiful, it's rosy blush cheers me up every time I see it and makes me hopeful for spring, for sunshine and longer, warmer days. Of course this year that's gone to pot - I'm still in thermals, with 3 extra blankets on the bed, holding hot drinks to try and warm my freezing fingers.

Flavour wise I adore pairing rhubarb with ginger - be it crystallised or stem ginger the pairing just seems to work. However, this time I tried something new. I poached the rhubarb in a splash of Shloer - the new Rhubarb and raspberry flavour. This, splashed over the chopped stems as they gently cooked through on the hob made for a sweet and fresh base to the crumble. 

Rhubarb crumble

1 pack rhubarb - about 400g
200ml Rhubarb and raspberry Shloer
120g plain flour
90g butter
90g caster sugar
1 tsp ground ginger
Demerera sugar to sprinkle

Cream, custard or ice cream to serve

Preheat the oven to 170 degrees C
Rub the butter, sugar, ginger and flour together until you have a mixture that resembles breadcrumbs
Lay the cooked rhubarb on the bottom of a pie dish
Sprinkle the crumble mix on top and bake in a preheated oven for 30 minutes (or so)
Serve with cream, custard or ice cream

Syrup sponge pudding - in 10 minutes flat

I love M, really I do. His penchant for nursery food is all part of the attraction - central to this being his love for gooey pud. To you and me? Syrup sponge pudding. When we go to visit his parents it's inevitably on the table, and that's fine - but it has to be steamed - which means, the hob on for aaaages. And aside from the time element, I've only got 2 pots big enough for steaming, and one of them is my maslin. 

So, it was clear this needed to be adapted so that it was tiny galley kitchen friendly. Nope, I had no idea how to go about that either. And then at a Guide sleepover, one of our leaders knocked up some steamed puddings in the microwave. No, me either! So that got me thinking - seeing as it's M's favourite, and we have a microwave, I should probably be the good partner and knock one up for him. 

The first time I made it - it was dry, getting it cooked through without the top being crunchy was clearly more of an art than I'd hoped. This time I put a couple of tablespoons of water on top of the sponge mix and then covered the basin with cling film which I then pierced. 

Gooey pud a la ping (serves 4) 

2oz softened butter
2oz caster sugar
2oz self raising flour (weigh out and remove 2 tablespoons)
2 tablespoons custard powder
1 large egg
2 dsps double cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
4 tablespoons golden syrup

Beat the butter and sugar together until light and fluffy 
Add the egg and vanilla and continue beating (add a tablespoon of flour if it looks like it's going to curdle)
Fold in the flour and custard powder
Add a couple of dessert spoons of milk/ cream (whatever you've got around really) 

Pour the golden syrup into a pudding basin or microwaveable bowl (I only have one and it's really too big, a 1 pint pudding basin would be perfect for this quantity)
Top with the sponge mixture
Microwave on full power for 5 minutes
Remove and peel the cling film away from you as there's lots of steam
Cut into quarters and serve - it's super hot so it doesn't hurt it to sit around for a minute or two

Serve with custard, cream or ice cream

The custard powder lightens the sponge, which being cooked in the microwave, helps immeasurably, and the cream helps keep it moist without loosening it up too much. I've tried milk, but as we only have skimmed it didn't help as much as I hoped - semi skimmed or full fat milk might do better. 

Now, I'm not saying this is haute cuisine, or anything particularly fancy - but as a Sunday night pudding after a roast, it's yummy. Comforting, sweet (but not tooth-achingly so) and home made.