snacks

Chocolate orange cookie-cutter biscuits

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cookie

Mostly we just snack on fruit – more because Bert’s appetite for sweetness is insatiable than any principled rejection of sugar. And let’s face it, he’s already a well padded boy. But everyone could do with a biscuit now and then and these are more fun to cut out than play doh is.

We used the letters B, E, R and T and some random animal shapes. Use all the letters of the alphabet for the opportunity to offer someone a snack and insult them at the same time.

Makes about 30 small biscuits

250g plain flour

125g butter

80g icing sugar

Tablespoon of cocoa powder

Finely grated zest of an orange

Juice of an orange

Rub the butter into the dry ingredients by hand, or put them all into a food processor until they start to look like breadcrumbs. Add the orange juice till the mixture comes together and then bring it into a ball and chill.

Roll out on a floured surface to about 5mm thick and cut out your shapes (or encourage a child with still developing hand-eye co-ordination to do the same – you may lose some cookies to raw tasting). Put on a lined baking sheet and cook at 160 degrees (I did it on the bottom rung of the roasting oven with the cool shelf two shelves above) for about 10-12 minutes.

I see this is the first time I’ve tagged ‘chocolate’ as an ingredient. How restrained I’ve been.

Oat and raisin cookies

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oat cookies

Makes about 24

100g raisins

150ml vegetable oil

100g golden caster sugar

2 tablespoons apple sauce

1 egg

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

140g plain flour

¼ teaspoon bicarbonate of soda

300g oats

Soak the raisins in 50ml of boiling water – the soaking plumps them up and stops them from burning in the oven. In a food processor, beat the oil and sugar together then add the remaining ingredients. Flatten dessert spoonfuls of the mixture on a lined baking sheet and cook at 180 degrees (or the grid shelf on the floor of the Aga roasting oven with the cool shelf two rows above) for about 13 minutes.

The apple sauce replaces some of the sugar so these are pretty worthy, as cookies go. We have these as an afternoon snack with milk, or an easy, filling pudding when Bert’s in a carb avoiding mood. I grabbed three for breakfast on the train this morning, too. Sorry Bert, that’s just the way it crumbles, cookie-wise.

Cheddar and sweetcorn fritters

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cheeseandsweetcorn

A cheese and sweetcorn version of the pea and parmesan pancakes.

Serves 2.5 (Daddy’s home!)

100g self raising flour

150 ml whole milk

1 egg

A couple of handfuls of grated strong cheddar

1 small tin sweetcorn, most of the liquid drained out

Strangely, this makes a lot more than the eight that the pea and parmesan mixture makes – I think the extra liquid from the sweetcorn and extra cheese explains it.

Combine all the ingredients and pop dessert spoons of the mixture in a hot pan that’s been greased with a smigeon of butter. They need a couple of minutes on each side till they’re golden and feel firm under a spatula – you don’t want uncooked batter in the middle, so wait till they feel a little springy under pressure.

Also lovely with a thinly sliced leek that’s been sauted in butter in place of the sweetcorn.

Little orange and almond cakes

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orangecake

This is a version of a Tom Kerridge recipe. I’ve reduced the sugar and fiddled around with the quantities to make little cakes and to avoid the scales, as cups and tablespoons are a bit less fiddly when a two foot tall person is tapping at your knee. I like a pudding that’s an excuse to get a bit of protein in Bert (egg and almond here), and a lot of the sweetness comes from the orange. In a baby free life, simmering an orange for two hours would be a bit limiting, but if you’re hanging around at home anyway while someone drops small plastic balls into holes, then why not?

Makes 4 small cakes

1 orange

1 cup ground almonds

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 tablespoon soft brown sugar

2 eggs

1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground ginger

Cover the orange with cold water, bring to the boil and simmer for about one and a half hours till it’s soft. Blend it, skin and all, into a pulp then combine with all the other ingredients. Butter four holes of a muffin tin and fill each nearly to the top. Bake at 160 degrees (or on the grid shelf on the floor of the Aga roasting oven with the cold shelf three rows down from the top) for about 20 minutes, till golden and firm.

I had mine with Greek yoghurt with some honey stirred through. Bert had his naked.

Oat and cheese biscuits

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oatandcheese

Cheese hob nobs, I suppose. Biscuits to throw at a baby in a panic when you want it to eat quickly and then have a lunchtime nap. It would make a pretty balanced and splash-free portable lunch if you added a couple of sticks of cheese and some fruit.

I’ll be honest – there are days when we mostly eat biscuits.

Makes around 25

150g oatmeal

100g wholemeal flour

100g butter, cut into small pieces

1 teaspoon baking powder

75g grated cheese – I used half parmesan, half strong cheddar

30ml of milk

Weigh out the dry ingredients and then rub in the butter – by hand or by whizzing it in a food processor. Stir through the cheese and then the milk – it should start to clag. Gather into a ball and clingfilm, and put in the fridge for half an hour.

When it’s chilled, roll it out between two floured pieces of cling film to about 3mm thick and cut out discs with a small cutter or a champagne flute. I have no cutters – who needs them when the kitchen’s full of circular items? Bake at 180 for 11-13 minutes, or, with an Aga, on the grid shelf at the bottom of the roasting oven with the cold shelf two rows up.

These keep in an air tight container for a week or two, though I don’t think home-made biscuits ever get as far as going off.

Date digestives

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biscuit

A digestive meets a fig roll and has a gariboldi baby.

The more indulgent version has a bit of salt, twice the sugar, no dates and the tops brushed with melted chocolate.

Makes about 25

125g wholemeal plain flour

125g oatmeal

40g soft brown sugar

40g chopped pitted dried dates

3/4 teaspoon ground ginger

1 teaspoon baking powder

125 butter, cut into small pieces

30-50 ml milk

Put the dry ingredients into a food processor and pulse to blend. Add the butter and pulse till you get the ‘breadcrumbs’ look. Add the milk little by little until the breadcrumbs start to, er, clot. Bring together into a ball and put in the fridge for about half an hour.

Then roll your biscuit ball out between two floured sheets of clingfilm to about 3mm thick. Cut into small discs – a champagne flute’s about the right size. And cook on a baking sheet at 180 degrees for 11 minutes. They should be lightly golden brown.

Or, if you’ve got an Aga, on the grid shelf on the bottom of the roasting oven with the cold shelf two rows up.

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.