Now I know that there’s a lot of carroty recipes here, but the reason that I have added this is because I think that this is quite a nice base for most muffin recipes, and as such, becomes quite flexible. If you were to take this recipe and minus the sugar and juice, you can make this into a savoury recipe with grated cheese and courgette for example. Or minus the sugar and add sultanas and perhaps a little chunky apple and its a very acceptable sugar free muffin.

But, I digress.

My kids love muffins. Hot and fresh from the oven muffins. So I often make them on a weekend morning when the pace is a little slower, but realistically, with three kids, any baking needs to be done swiftly!  These went down a treat this morning. My middle daughter did the ‘yummy yummy muffin’ dance whilst munching. I did the Chandler Bing victory dance secretly behind the fridge door.

Ingredients:

75g unsalted butter

250g self raising flour. (if you can get wholemeal, all the better)

25g ground almonds, or any ground nut of your choice.

1 tsp cinnamon

75g caster sugar

100mls orange juice

100mls yogurt

2/3 very finely grated carrots

1 egg

orange zest

In the magimix finely grate the carrots. (I made the mistake of not finely grating so some questions were asked. I assured them that it was fruit and DEFINITELY not a vegetable). Into the mix add the flour, ground almonds, cinnamon and sugar and mix again.

Melt the butter and set aside. When cooled, add the yogurt, orange juice, zest and pour into magimix.

Quick blitz (you don’t want it over mixed) and into lined muffin tins.

Bake at 200 until risen and golden.

Enjoy!

This is a lovely and easy recipe for fishcakes. Not too fishy and a nice soft texture due to the mash, so ideal for very little ones too.

A friend once made fishcakes when we went round for a kids tea one afternoon and to my surprise my fussy little fusspot wolfed them down.  I gave it a go at hiding some veg and she did eat them. My younger daughter loves these and now has them regularly in her lunch box. Baby boy happily munches away on these too…

They are quite adaptable, and I have made them with both salmon and tuna, and both have been accepted. Or even a mix of both works. The colour of the salmon hides any trace of carrot.

Ingredients

These are very simple – one tin of salmon or tuna. (If using both, and whole tins double potato quantity and be very careful of bones in tinned salmon).

One small/medium sized potato

One spoon of mustard

breadcrumbs (roughly from 1 slice of bread)

1 peeled carrot.

Method:

if you have time, this works best with classic mashed potato. If not, a quick blast in the microwave until soft will do the job.

Begin by getting the potato cooking. Blitz up the carrot as finely as possible.

In another bowl combine the now cooled mashed potato with the fish and mix very well. Add the carrot and a teaspoon of mustard.

Roll into little balls and set aside.

Take 3 bowls and into the first put some plain flour, the next bowl a beaten egg and into the last bowl, the breadcrumbs.

Take one of the fishcake balls and coat in the flour. Into the second bowl and cover with egg. Into the final bowl and coat with the breadcrumbs. Then fry. Deep or shallow is entirely your choice.

Good luck x

By popular demand, I am posting the recipe of avocado chocolate mousse.

This could not be easier. I used to make this when my children were quite small and it was usually demolished quickly. It’s a great recipe that has no call for raw eggs or added sugar.

In the early days I used to make this with honey as a sweetener, but in the end I found that the honey just could not stand up to the bitterness of the cocoa. Frankly I may as well have just tipped in a barrel of sugar with the amount of added honey.  So, I switched to medjool dates instead and it made a massive difference to both texture and sweetness. The dates firmed it up like a mousse and it became not so jaw achingly sweet.

The kids love this and nutritionally, it’s got a great hit of avocado in it, and it is without the addition of refined added sugar.

So here goes!

Medjool Dates, probably about 8, pitted.

1/2 cup cocoa powder

1 or 2 large whole very ripe avocados

water if needed to loosen the texture

Put everything into the processor and blitz.

Scrape down and turn into bowls and leave in the fridge until you want to use them

For optional nutrition, add a teaspoon of smooth peanut butter.

Enjoy!

So here’s the thing.

My elder child loves chocolate. And she likes chocolate cake. So, I had a little think and came up with a plan.

And it worked like a charm. Because with this recipe, the natural colour of chocolate hides the green of spinach. And hooray! I must admit that I did do a little dance around the kitchen when she ate it.

Anyhow, this is an adaptation of a lovely banana cake recipe that I found a few years ago.

So here it is:

Ingredients :

90g softened butter

50g sugar

50g cocoa

3 ripe bananas

1 egg

85mls of milk or yogurt (your choice, whatever you have in the fridge)

150g self raising flour.

3 balls of frozen chopped spinach.

I ball of cooked/ready to eat beetroot *optional

Method

Line an 8″ pan with either tin foil or just simply grease the tin with butter.

Defrost in a microwave on a medium temperature the chopped spinach and then squeeze to get the excess water out.

With a handwhisk, cream the banana and butter together.  Break the egg in and mix in the milk or yogurt.

Fold in the flour, cocoa and sugar and combine gently and add the spinach.

Pour into the tin and bake at 200 until a skewer comes out clean.

Voila and good luck!

You can also do this in a muffin tin to make breakfast muffins for the kids.

Variation : If you have little ones who resent banana, then you can omit the banana and add a large handful of raisins instead.

Variation 2 : If you wanted to blitz up some beetroot in a magimix and add this to the final step, then i have done this too and it also works!

Note : If you do 200g self raising flour and omit the cocoa, you have a lovely banana cake that is naturally sugar free.

Meat can be a bit touch and go with kids. Often the texture can be tricky for them to cope with, so these meatballs are a good one because they are very soft and not so intensely meaty. Also good for little ones just starting out as they are very soft.

Plus, you can make them in the magimix which makes it all satisfyingly easy for washing up.

Ingredients:

A pack of mince meat – I have found that whichever quantity of meat I use, larger or small packs, the result tends to be the same. Obviously the bigger the pack, the more meatballs you get…

2 slices of bread – whichever you prefer. White, brown. (I have also made these with blitzed up ricecakes, matzo meal, spelt flour. It all works) If using flour, then probably 2 tablespoons will do.

Carrots

1 garlic clove

2 eggs

Salt & Pepper (Optional if you prefer. I always season meat with cinnamon as I find it brings a seasoning that salt and pepper don’t quite reach). 1 teaspoon of cinnamon if using.

Put the onion and carrots into the magimix and blend until very fine. Tip the rest of the ingredients into the mixer and pulse until it all comes together.

When the mixture has formed a ball, with a small teaspoon (or fingers) create round balls (you can choose the size you like, I personally prefer around 1 inch sized balls.

You have two options here – you can either bake them at 200 degrees until they are browned, or you can drop them into a tomato sauce. Be aware that baking them makes them much less soft than the sauce method below. Still delicious though. Often if I’m baking them I shape them into little ovals so they are more kofte like and serve with pitta.

To make the tomato sauce use either: A batch of very veg tomato sauce, or a bottle/can of passata. I would normally suggest a tin of chopped tomatoes, but for those with fussy bambinos, like mine, the chunks of tomato in the sauce are seemingly poisonous so I stick with passata. In a measuring jug I prepare a portion of Reduced Sugar and Salt Bisto Beef stock powder as directed, and tip this into the passata. This makes the sauce quite thick and a little gravy like without need for flour thickening. This is also a great place to tip in some of the Very Veg Tomato Sauce for extra hidden veg.

Drop the meatballs into the sauce and let them cook on a medium heat until they are fully cooked through.

Sprinkle a good amount of grated cheese and serve over rice or pasta.

Pizza used to be a tricky one. My younger loved it, my elder hated it. So my younger never got it unless in restaurants, and even then we would often get the kids a plate of something to share and it was usually pasta.

It’s not really macaroni cheese in the traditional sense. But that’s what my kids call it. In fact, you can use any type of pasta you like. Problem was that my kids would eat the old ‘mac n’cheese’ in a restaurant, but the minute I suggested pasta and cheese sauce at home, like the one in the restaurant, the idea was rejected outright. When I made pasta and cheese sauce at home but called it macaroni cheese, they ate it happily.

I often find that if you find the right combination of words, the food can seem more appealing. Bizarrely. But, I digress.

So, we call it ‘mac and cheese’. And its still eaten by my kids in restaurants, thankfully. Except that the restaurant does not contain my secret ingredients, which are cauliflour and white fish (any white fish). Cheese is an excellent form of protein, but the fish gives it a bit more. So here goes and good luck.

Start by making a white sauce, which will be the base of your cheese sauce.

I often use this recipe –

25g white flour

25g butter

150mls milk.

Cauliflour heads (I normally use about 8, but your choice how much)

White fish (I would normally use 1-2 frozen fillets but it’s your choice)

Grated cheese

*******************************************************************

Put a saucepan on to boil and cook up some heads of cauliflour until soft.

In a small saucepan poach the fish in the milk until soft . Remove the fish and set aside.

In the meantime, melt the butter over a low heat, add the flour, mix well and leave to cook a few minutes.

Pour in the poaching milk to the butter and flour mixture and (ideally with a whisk to remove lumps) stir. When it thickens you have your sauce. Feel free to add some nutmeg or cinnamon but beware they leave little specks. Mine notice this immediately. Obviously.

Add the fish and the cauliflour to the white sauce and blend either with a hand blender or with magimix. Finally add a LOT of cheese. This will mask any taste of fish (which somehow it doesn’t taste of anyway) and cauliflour.

You could add a final sprinkling of cheese and grill for a minute to form a crust.

Serve over pasta and hope for the best.

TIP: If you are able to find the tricolore pasta, often they contain spinach and tomato powder. Let’s be realistic and suggest probably not that much, but certainly better than nothing if your kids will eat it.

My goodness. Its been over a year since I blogged. That’s embarrassing!

So things have changed. Just a little! With the addition of a now weaning baby boy in the household, I have had to go back to the old drawing board, and once again, I am thrown into a world of sugar and salt free, honey free and baby friendly. It’s hard to even know where to begin to start with all the different demands that come with 3 kiddies.

Thankfully, My eldest child, also my fussiest, has begun, slowly, to exit the fussy phase and is emerging through the other side. It has been a very frustrating process but we are getting there bit by bit. My younger daughter, thankfully, remains far less fussy and happy with her food and veggies. We live in hope that my son will be just as easy, but am prepared for what’s in store if he isn’t.

I’m not going to lie, however. There’s been a LOT of bribery involved in this process with unfamiliar foods and new tastes. But in the process, I have learned a lot. Loads in fact. Mainly that there is a lot of truth in the rule that if you put it on a child’s plate again and again and again, eventually, it will be eaten. It’s not a faddy rumour, it works. A few beans or peas here, a piece of broccoli there, nothing wasteful. Enough to acknowledge (or not) that it’s on the plate. But extreme patience is required.

With my eldest, I started to think and make mental notes of what she would eat, and how I could somehow adapt it to include something wholesome and nutritious without my child ever suspecting. There wasn’t a huge variety of food, so I had to make the best of what I could with her. I also had to be very careful of her noticing anything in case she stopped trusting me with what I put in front of her.

The first on the list was pasta…

Hello hello

I should really introduce myself. My name is Talia, I’m a full time mum living in North London, with my husband and two small people. Life is busy and often chaotic and I seem to spend most of my time on the go.

I spent many years cultivating an interior design career, until my first child came along, and am now a busy Stay At Home Mum. Although a trained designer,  I’m fundamentally a baker at heart, always have been. I love to experiment, I love to cook and this is where my journey begins.

So, after much encouragement, I decided to create a food blog. BUT, this is a food blog for parents of children who absolutely refuse to eat their fruit or veggies.

So here’s the deal:

I have two young daughters, one eats beautifully. The other, reluctantly.

I hold my hands up to it. My elder child is a terrible eater.

I wish that she would just eat what I put on the plate in front of her. Really, I do. But the reality is that it’s just not going to happen. Not anytime soon, anyway. I’m that mother who collects her child from nursery and the workers very apologetically smile and say ‘she ate nothing’. Admittedly, she has got better in recent months. People tell me that their kids went through phases of only eating white bread, or fish fingers, that were seemingly endless. They all laugh about it now. I hope one day I will be one of those parents who looks back on what their child used to eat.

But whilst I’m still in this seemingly never-ending phase, it feels as though I have tried everything. Since my child decided that (in particular) vegetables are the food of the devil, and no more shall they pass her lips, I have tried all alternatives. The old ‘disguising vegetables in pasta sauce’ trick, (to be honest I’d be happy if she ate sauce at all) and ‘vegetables blended into meatballs/bolognaise’. Forget it. She’s onto me….I recently purchased the book of a well known children’s food guru that was aimed at fussy eaters, and all I could gain from it with was the assumption that all children eat pizza, and all children eat hamburgers and chips. Except mine.

So, I took a new course of action. Firstly, I relaxed.

Secondly, I started to experiment. Really experiment. (we’re not talking Heston style, but crazy and imaginative ideas.)

I found recipes, played with them, adapted them and put things into them I would never imagine.

And you know what. They work. So, I decided to share my journey.