Mini Savoury Muffins and my rave about Baby-Led Weaning

We've basically been following the ideas behind baby-led weaning and I'm loving it! Getting Roman to sleep for every nap and every night is a total battle, so it's nice to be able to sit back and let him take the lead with his meals.

The main idea with baby-led weaning is to give your baby a choice of healthy things to eat and let them pick them up, smoosh them around and eventually put them in their mouth and eat them. It skips the purees and spoon feeding and goes straight to finger foods. It's great for their development, their appetite and their desire to do things for themselves and is said to produce children who will eat anything. Another benefit of baby-led weaning is that you don't need to prepare or buy special baby foods, they can just eat a bit of what you're having. While I mainly follow this, every now and then, I do like to make something up specially for Roman, such as these muffins. They are packed with good things for babies - veggies, cheese and healthy fats and are the perfect size for little hands. If you want to make these for grown ups, season to taste with some salt.


Mini Savoury Muffins
makes 24

2 cups plain flour
1 tbsp baking powder
1/2 cup grated cheese
2 eggs (please make sure your baby is not allergic to eggs first)
1/4 cup olive oil
1/2 cup milk (cows milk/breastmilk/formula)
1 - 2 cups veggies*

*Use a mixture of whatever your baby likes, or is lurking in the fridge, such as chopped spinach, grated zucchini, grated carrot, chopped herbs, sundried tomatoes, diced mushrooms or diced capsicum. I know they're not veggies, but you could also add ham, salami or tinned tuna to these if you want to add a bit of meat.

For these muffins, I used grated carrot and zucchini.

Preheat oven to 180°C. Lightly spray a 24 hole mini muffin pan with cooking spray.

Sift flour and baking powder together. Give it a quick stir to make sure the baking powder is evenly distributed. Stir through veggies and cheese.

Pour oil and milk into a jug then crack the eggs into the jug and whisk it all together. Make a well in the centre of the dry mix and pour in the liquid. Mix until just combined, giving you a thick batter.

Spoon batter into muffin tray and bake in the oven for 15 - 20 mins, until the muffins are nice and golden on top. Remove tray from oven, and cool muffins in tray for 5 mins, then turn out onto a rack to cool. 

These can be served warm or cold and freeze really well. I just take a couple out of the freezer the night before I want them and put them into the fridge in a container ready for Roman's lunch the next day.