Lemon Drizzle Cake

This is pretty lemony, 2 of my boys love it, 2 of them can’t stand it to be honest, but it’s one of my favourites and it’s really quick to whip up!

Ingredients:

150g softened butter

150g caster sugar

150g self-raising flour

2 eggs

4 tablespoons milk

grated zest of 1 lemon

2 tablespoons icing sugar

juice of 1 lemon

Method:

1: Preheat the oven to 180 degrees celsius.

2: Beat the butter and caster sugar together until creamy.

3: Add the beaten eggs to the mixture gradually.

4: Add the lemon zest and sift in the flour. Mix in the milk.

5: Put the mixture into a greased loaf tin. Use a knife to spread it flat.

6: Bake for 40 minutes until the cake is light brown and the top is springy to the touch.

7: Mix together the icing sugar and lemon juice. Using a fork, prick the top of the cake all over and pour the lemony mixture over the warm cake.

8: Leave the cake to cool for 20 minutes, and then turn out onto a wire rack.

Basic White Bread

I think a lot of people are put off making their own bread because they’re worried it’s really tricky and time-consuming, when in actual fact it’s pretty easy, and the results are seriously yummy!

With 4 growing boys, we get through an awful lot of bread in our house! I typically make bread in my breadmaker (up to twice a day!), but I also love to make it by hand. This recipe makes one medium sized loaf, or 12 rolls.

Ingredients:

500g strong white bread flour (substitute 100g of the flour for the same weight of brown flour if you fancy a ‘Best of Both’ loaf!)

300ml hand warm water

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 sachet dried yeast

1 teaspoon salt

Method:

1: Place all the ingredients in a large bowl and mix together until combined.

2: Leave the bowl in a warm place, with a damp teatowel over it if you like, for about 45 minutes until it’s doubled in size.

3: Turn dough out onto a floured board and give it a good pummeling for 5 minutes. Go on, take out all those frustrations!!!

4: For a loaf, put the dough into a greased bread tin or onto a greased baking tray. For rolls, divide mixture into 12 pieces and place on 2 greased baking trays making sure each piece has plenty of room to grow!

5: Leave the dough for about another 45 minutes until it’s doubled in size again.

6: Preheat oven to 220 degrees celsius and put the bread in. The loaf will take about 30 minutes, the rolls about 15. When cooked, the bread will be risen, golden brown,and sound hollow when tapped from the underneath.

7: Take out of the oven and leave for 10 minutes before turning out onto a wire rack to cool.

8: Resist for as long as you can before smothering with butter and devouring!

Slow and Steady…

Serial dieters wake up on a Monday morning resolved to change all their eating bad habits instantly. Their plans rarely work: lack of planning and trying to do too much too quickly, equates to failure every time. The same can be said of trying to change your Picky Picker’s eating habits. It’s not going to happen overnight! Baby steps are required. Focus slowly on introducing new tastes, whilst gradually cutting down on anything you feel they eat too much of, or shouldn’t be consuming at all. Each new taste will need to be tried many, many times before it’s accepted as regular food, and not as something strange and alien.
There is absolutely no point in putting a plateful of completely unfamiliar food in front of your Picky Picker and expecting them to polish off the lot. They won’t, and it will cause them, and probably you, an awful lot of unnecessary stress.
It can be heartbreaking to have a lovingly prepared meal picked at unenthusiastically, or turned down completely, so try serving a small portion of something new, combined with a larger helping of something familiar. Ask your child to eat at least one proper mouthful of the new food. Hopefully the next time you serve it, they’ll eat more of their own accord and, after a while, you can serve a bigger amount of the new food, and you can move on to the next food you’d like them to enjoy!

Christopher’s Ultimate Strawberry Trifle

Makes a massive trifle, plenty for 12.

Trifle’s a bit of a funny one for Picky Pickers – I certainly wouldn’t have gone anywhere near the stuff as a kid! Getting them to help make it might encourage them to taste, and I’d make sure they’ve tried the ingredients individually first!

This recipe was developed by my eldest son for Daddy’s birthday. He looked at several trifle recipes on-line and picked out and put together the bits he liked the best!

PLEASE NOTE: DUE TO THE TIME IT TAKES FOR THE JELLY TO SET, YOU NEED TO START MAKING THE TRIFLE AT LEAST 6 AND A HALF HOURS BEFORE YOU WANT TO EAT IT!

Ingredients:

1 packet strawberry jelly
1 punnet strawberries
300 ml tub double cream
500 ml tub fresh custard
1 pack trifle sponge biscuits

Method:
1: Make up the jelly according to the instructions on the packet.
2: Cut the sponge biscuits in half length-ways and spread with jam before putting the halves back together again. Make a layer of sponge biscuits on the bottom and up the sides of a large bowl.
3: Cut up some of the strawberries and put a layer of them on top of the biscuits.
4: Pour the jelly in the bowl and put the bowl in the fridge for at least 6 hours until the jelly is set.
5: Pour the custard on top of the jelly.
6: Whisk the cream until thick.
7: Put the cream in the bowl.
8: Top the trifle with lots more cut up strawberries and serve.

Give a Little…

Be prepared to give in a little to your Picky Picker sometimes! When I was little, I’d eat baked beans, but only if they were served in a separate bowl to my other food, and with just the tiniest bit of sauce left on them. This way they couldn’t ‘infect’ my toast! But who cares? The important point is that I ate the beans. My demand caused very little inconvenience, and made me feel I had some control over what went in my body. Now I eat baked beans normally, ‘infecting’ anything they like!
If your child wants some of their food separated, my advice would be to just do it. It’s really not a big deal and it means their food gets eaten. If you’re concerned, and your Picky Picker is insisting upon absolutely everything on their plate being carefully segregated, you could always gradually move non-liquidy foods closer together (even my 7 year old self would doubt that a fish finger could do much to a boiled potato if they dared to touch!).
These funny whims will most probably all be grown out of given time. If not, with a bit of luck their university flatmates will tease them so mercilessly, they’ll give up their fads then!

Time to Digest

Just imagine how you’d feel if you were sitting enjoying your supper, when suddenly someone appeared at your shoulder and started nagging you to ‘Hurry up!’ and ‘Get a move on!’ because you have to ‘leave in two minutes!’

It wouldn’t be very pleasant, and would certainly ruin your meal. Yet this is what many, many parents frequently do to their children at breakfast on school days in particular, but also notably at teatime when they have to hurry out to after school activities.

So, what can be done to make food time less rushed? The most important thing is to leave plenty of time to both cook the food and to allow it to be enjoyed. There’s no point blaming the children if you forgot to put the tea on in time! If you’re running a bit late, it’s better to whip up a sandwich or some scrambled egg on toast than attempt something more and leave them with little time to eat it.

Even if you’re not eating with your children, try to take the time to sit down and chat to them about their day as they eat. Or at least potter around tidying or getting things ready in the same room.

It takes a while for a young child to eat a meal, and there’s no point rushing them! If you really do feel they’re being unnecessarily slow just explain when you need them to have finished by, and that they won’t have time for pudding if they don’t get a wiggle on. Seeing a sibling get their yogurt first can be a big incentive to eat up!
If they’ve had ample time, but still haven’t finished and you really have to leave, just take the plate away and get them ready. Maybe they’re just not hungry, but if they are still peckish, they’ll eat quicker next mealtime!

Spinach and Carrot Risotto with Basil (baby puree, 4 months +)

I have a particular fondness for this recipe. I created it for my eldest son when he was about 5 months old and entered it into a competition run by Cow and Gate. It ended up winning my husband and my a lovely honeymoon!

If the basil taste is a little much for your baby, just leave it out!

Ingredients:

75g frozen spinach

2 large carrots, peeled and diced

50g baby rice

2 tsp apple juice

4-6 fresh basil leaves, finely chopped

Method:

1: Mix the baby rice and the apple juice.

2: Boil the carrots in a pan of water for 10 minutes until soft.

3: Turn the heat off the carrots and add the frozen spinach.

4: Leave for a couple of minutes and then strain the vegetables (you could add some of this liquid to the mixture at the end if it’s a little thick).

5: Whizz the carrots and spinach up in a food processor and then add the baby rice mixture and the basil.

6: Blend until smooth, add some extra liquid if necessary before serving.

Pop leftovers in an ice cube tray and freeze for easy-peasy meals.

 

Late Night Tastings

Allow me to let you into a little secret: nothing encourages a Picky Picker to try a new food more than being told the food is for a special grown-up supper later and it’s time for them to go to bed!

Oh, the excitement of being put to bed and smelling gorgeous foody smells wafting up the stairs, only to have Mummy or Daddy pop their head round your bedroom door ten or fifteen minutes later with the words, ‘The supper we’re having is amazing, would you like to come down and have a taste?’

Would any child stay in their bed given an opportunity like that?

A couple of weeks ago, our two eldest boys came into the kitchen whilst my husband was cooking for the pair of us. They were on their way to bed, but begged to be allowed to try the fresh crab we were having for our starter. They did so, trying four different combinations of the crab with various add-ons to see which they preferred. Half an hour later, they were invited to come down and try our rainbow trout (having first been told in gruesome detail about all the bits that squirted out of it whilst we were filleting – they’re boys, they love that stuff!) with spinach, lentils and pancetta. They loved it all, and had to be shooed away from our plates before they woofed down the lot, yet neither had tried crab, trout, or that particular type of lentil before. What a result!

3 Reasons That Your Kid Is a Fussy Eater

Some great pointers…

How do you decide what to feed your kid? In an ideal world, kids will eat everything that’s put in-front of them but unfortunately, that’s not the case now is it. If you are one of those parents with child who’s a fussy eater, then this article is for you.

The truth is that we don’t know if controlling our kids’ food choices will result in food issues when they become teenagers and adults. But we can be sure that subsisting on processed food isn’t good for their growing bodies.

Here are some of the reasons people end up with children who don’t eat well:

1. Parents are afraid to say no. It’s not just that they don’t want to create an ice cream binger. It’s also that feeding our children is a way to nurture them and show our love. It is so tempting to give them treats like…

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Super Speedy Tomato Sauce

This is really garlicky and perfect for when you need to get tea together in a rush! It tastes amazing with meatballs and homemade tagliatelle. I often make it when I’ve been writing and discover I only have half an hour before we need to leave for Judo!

Serves 4 little ones

Ingredients

1 400g tin chopped tomatoes

1 large garlic clove

pinch of salt

1 tsp sugar

1 tsp tomato puree

1 tsp olive oil

3-4 fresh basil leaves torn into little pieces

Method

1: Heat the olive oil in a pan and add the garlic. Let the garlic sizzle gently for a moment, making sure it doesn’t burn.

2: Add the tomatoes, salt, sugar, and tomato puree.

3: Let the sauce simmer gently for 10 minutes, adding the basil for the last couple of minutes.

4: Serve onto pasta or rice.