To kick start our new category of recipes (due to one of us having a baby who’s now eating solids), we thought we’d share this apple, cinnamon, carrot and courgette muffin. It uses a flour and banana base – the banana’s there to add some extra sweetness. All our baby recipes will be sugar and salt free, and as our baby has cow’s milk allergy, we’re using margarine (Pure, to be specific, as recommended by the GP). This recipe is inspired by the courgette muffin recipe from BBC Good Food.

Also, with our baby recipes, as all mamas are probably running low on time, we’ve gone for the method with the least amount of prep work. In this case, we’re doing as much as possible in the blender. You’ll still get a nice and fluffy texture following these steps!

These make a nice batch of 12 muffins. The prep takes around 5-10 minutes, and it cooks in 25 minutes.

Ingredients
300g of white self raising flour1 heaped tsp of baking powder
1 tsp of ground cinnamon
A touch of ground vanilla pod
1 apple
1 clementine
1 banana
50g of courgettes
75g of margarine/butter
1 egg
50g of grated carrots

You’ll also need some oil to grease the tins.

Step 1: set the oven to 190 degrees and allow it to preheat.

Step 2: mix the flour, baking powder, cinnamon and vanilla in a large mixing bowl and set aside.

Step 3: cut out the core of the apple, peel the clementine and banana, place these into the blender with the courgette and do an initial blend – it’s OK if there are still larger pieces left.

Step 4: add the egg and margarine/slightly softened butter into the blender and blend until there are no more lumps.

Step 5: pour the blended mixture into the mixing bowl with the flour, then add in the grated carrots and mix until smooth.

Step 6: brush some oil onto your muffin tin and fill each at least 3/4 of the way full, then pop it in your preheated oven and bake for 25 minutes. Remove from the oven and it’s ready to be tasted!

You can also choose to grate the courgette to give the muffins a bit more texture, but I’ve chosen to only use grated carrots because you can buy carrots pre-grated (e.g. from Asda) – just to save a bit more time.

These muffins are subtly sweet, and just soft enough for babies to chew on. They also keep well in the fridge and can be reheated in 20-30s in the microwave. I use it as a substitute for bread sometimes for my baby. How about you?

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