breakfast

Banana pancakes

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pancakebanana

Serves 4.5

This is a bastardisation and bananaisation of a Nigella recipe, with the salt and sugar removed and banana and cinnamon added.

2 tablespoons melted butter

225g self raising flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

2 eggs

300ml whole milk

3 crushed bananas

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Put the butter in a pan to melt, then combine the flour, baking powder, eggs and milk in a bowl. It doesn’t need to be a really smooth batter,  just make sure there are no pockets of flour. Stir in the banana, cinnamon and melted butter.

Use a piece of kitchen towel to rub any vestiges of melted butter onto a hot frying pan and put dessert spoons of the batter in. When they start to bubble turn them over. It’ll take a couple of minutes on each side to get them golden.

Yours are nice with maple syrup. Sorry Bert.

Root veg cakes and sausages

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rootvegcakes

…and a poached egg for me.

I suppose this is a bit brunchy for dinner, but in a world where we sleep in a pair of woolly tights, on all fours, with our bum in the air and reject milk but eat dried dog food, anything goes.

Serves 1.5 very generously (2 if you count the dog as a second half person)

A selection of root veg – we used a small carrot, 4 small potatoes and a quarter of a small celeriac

A dessert spoon of flour

1 egg

A grating of black pepper and nutmeg, a sprinkle of dried or well chopped fresh sage

A large dessert spoon of butter

Sausages

An egg

Peel and chop the veg into pieces – about the size you’d do for roasting – and parboil them for 5 minutes. Meanwhile, put the sausages in the oven or under the grill. Grate the veg (using a food processor means you can do it hot) and combine with the flour, herbs and egg. Get the butter frothy in a hot pan and put small spoonfuls of the veg mixture in – if they’re small it makes them a bit more manageable and less fragile. Push them down a bit with the spatula till they sizzle. Fry till golden on both sides, then poach or fry an egg for yourself to go on top. No reason why a baby can’t eat an egg, but self feeding and runny yolks are an extravagant combination, wet wipes wise.

Eggy bread

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eggybread

Serves 1.5

2 slices of bread, the airier the better – sour dough’s good or white sliced

2 eggs

60 ml whole milk

Knob of butter

Sprinkle of cinnamon

Mix together the eggs and milk and decrust the bread. Soak the bread in the milk and egg mixture, one slice at a time, turning after a minute or so. Melt the butter in a reasonably hot pan – you want the bread to cook fairly quickly but not to burn before it cooks through – and pop in the first slice. You can start soaking the second as you cook, turning the soaking one as you turn the one in the pan. Cook till golden brown on both sides. It should feel reasonably firm under the pressure of a spatula, meaning the egg’s cooked through. Sprinkle with cinnamon or serve  your own with crispy bacon and maple syrup and watch your baby’s little face contort with jealousy.

Yoghurty fruit

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fruit yoghurt

This is pushing the definition of a recipe a bit.

While I fully expect to be throwing chocolate eclairs at a reclining Bert while he watches endless How I Met Your Mother reruns in a few years, at the moment I’m mostly avoiding sugar and artificial sweeteners.

Greek yoghurt has more protein, and is thicker so it clings to the fruit a bit better. (That also makes it a better choice for spoon fed yoghurt – feeding runny yoghurt to a child by spoon is a job for a more patient woman than me.) Serves 0.5 as I assume fully grown adults have better puddings at their disposal.

Serves 0.5

1 strawberry, quartered

1 kiwi fruit, in bite sized chunks

1/4 teaspoon of fruit puree or low sugar jam (I use Superjam)

3 or 4 teaspoons of yoghurt

Stir the jam into the yoghurt and coat the fruit with it. Watch it get stuffed into a damp face. In the picture, Bert’s combined it with his own snot – that’s optional but adds a salty tang.

Cinnamon and raisin porridge

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2015-02-21 08.52.02

I used to eat porridge with double cream and brown sugar, but this is how me and Bert eat it now. Well, I eat it with a spoon, he grabs handfuls of it from the table and shoves it in his mouth.

Serves 1.5

1 cup porridge oats

1.5 cups whole milk

Large handful raisins

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

Combine all the ingredients and cook over a reasonably low heat, stirring, until it’s thick and creamy. Stop at the consistency of softly scrambled eggs point.