Blueberry Muffins for Breakfast

We bought the oven as a newly married couple with many plans of baking recipes in our minds, but in actual fact it stayed idle expect for that occasional chocolate muffin baking off and on. Most of the time my oven works more as a microwave heating up food than a convection but not now! Times and Tide have changed...for the better I must say.

Motherhood brings a lot of joy, hardwork and new explorations. I have been using the oven to make pies, pasta and muffins for my little bub on weekends. So the beep beep pre heating signal goes off more often now compared to 2 years ago.

It is amazing how this little human  brings changes to our lives. When we had all the time, baking was something that we saw as...hmmm I would say rare. Well this blog is all about Blueberry Muffins and how yummy they actual are. From the main picture above you roughy have an idea how my little girl took liking to it immediately. The shot was taken right after the muffins came out fresh from the oven.

Here you see her picking her melted blueberries and enjoying every bit of it. It was a magical food that got her so focused and seated without moving. It was actually pretty hilarious to see her finally sitting so still enjoying her food. Well mummy was brimming with satisfaction seeing her little girl enjoying her home baked muffins. So good things must be shared and here is the recipe that I am sure will be a hit among your little ones

There are two parts to it, the wet bowl and dry bowl. Let me start with the dry bowl. It is really very simple and can be done under 20mins excluding baking time.


Dry Bowl
35g of baby oatmeal
85g of unbleached flour
Half tsp of baking powder
Half tsp of Soda Bicarbonate
1 tsp of Ginger powder
1 tsp of Cinnamon powder
1 tsp of Salt

Wet Bowl
1 ripe banana
4 tsb of Maple Syrup
1 egg
30g of melted butter
2 tsb of brown sugar
2 tsb of Vanilla Essence

Mix the ingredients of the wet bowl with the dry until all is even and then fold in the blue berries. Preheat the oven to 180C and bake for 14 minutes. (Optionally you can throw in oranges and apple cuts as well).

The muffins kept well over the weekends refrigerated and made a great outing snack as well. I served this for breakfast  on Sunday morning with yogurt and oranges. Must say it was the best brekkie ever for her.  Happy baking mummies

Healthy Food for Babies and Toddler

Comfort Food

Last weekend, my little girl was down with low grade fever and a throat infection. When I picked her up from the nanny's I was told that she refused all her main meals and only drank perhaps 4 oz of milk for the whole day, on top of that she was very restless, cries easily and wanted to be carried all the time. All these signs of abnormal behaviour. We had a short chat and perhaps thought it was just a phase of teething.

So I drove back with her in the car seat, reached home and decided that we should see a doctor to rule other possibilities. We drove to our neighbourhood paediatrician to have reassurance that everything was alright. Well, a quick checked showed that she had a very red throat and a raising body temperature. The reading was 38c, since the infection was bad antibiotics had to be prescribed (not a fan at all to ABs) but in this case, if her throat does not heal fast the longer the whole food and milk refusal will take place. The last thing I want is a needle for drips in her hands.

So we came back, I prepared a bowl of cold fresh milk and threw in some bananas and tried to feed her, luckily she eat some, poor girl was hungry but just could not eat. Mummy had a broken heart seeing  her bubs hungry but unable to eat. All these explained the weird night waking and crying. I have read from Baby Centre that if there are unusual awakening it can be an onset of a milestone of sickness, for my case it was the later.

So what do you feed a toddler that cannot eat? Food still needs to be healthy for a toddler and has to be appetising as well. So this is what I prepared, hoping that she will eat and she did.

Preparation for Pumpkin Mushroom Soup

Ingredients
One medium piece of pumpkin
Few florets of broccoli and cauliflower
3 Fresh Brown Button Mushrooms
Dice them up finely and blend.

To sautee with a little bit of Olive Oil
Little garlic and onions
Fresh oregano

When the oregano releases its aromatics, add in the blended mixture and add some cool boiling water.
Wait for the mixture to boils, add in fresh cow milk and low down the stove to a slow simmer. In my case, since my bubs was not feeling too well, I let it simmer longer than 30mins to really soften everything.

This is how it looks like before adding milk

Thickening with fresh milk

Below is what I fed her for the whole day when it was meal time. So mummies with sick pups out there, you might want to give this a try. Happy feeding!