Chuck-it-all-in Baby and Toddler Balls! – Chicken, Carrot and Beetroot Balls for Babies and Toddlers

When I started Sidney on finger food he was pretty fussy about what he would and would not eat. While he always enjoyed the cooked food I prepared for him for spoon feeding, he wasn’t interested in plain foods to eat himself. Mainly he would just eat bread. Everything else would be dropped, piece by piece, on to the kitchen floor. He especially disliked vegetables and fruit, which would be accompanied by a curled lip and look of sheer disgust as he picked up the offending item between thumb and forefinger and tossed it over the side of the highchair.

It soon transpired that I have a little gourmet on my hands. He was happy to eat finger food as long as it was lovingly cooked by me, having blended all the ingredients into unidentifiable pieces, and arrived on his highchair table in tidy single portions (he’s not one for clutter).

My solution was balls – veg balls, chicken balls, fish balls – which have many, many benefits for a busy mum on 4 hours’ sleep.

Let me extol the virtues of balls:

• They’re quick to prepare (especially in the food processor – I soon invested in a second-hand Magimix and never looked back)
• They take no time to cook
• You can hide all sorts of healthy things inside and baby will never know
• They’re brilliant for using up leftovers
• You can make one big batch and freeze them for later

The only downside is the washing up. But then we also invested in a dishwasher.

You don’t really need a recipe for balls. I throw pretty much everything in (see below!) You just need to make sure you’ve got something to bind the mixture with (usually egg), and something to absorb the moisture from the vegetables (usually bread). After that, pretty much anything goes. If the mixture is a little loose, fry them gently and use a couple of teaspoons to ease them back into shape if they start to fall apart in the pan.

I used flour to coat these ones, but you can also coat them in breadcrumbs – just dip them first in flour, then in egg and then roll them in the breadcrumbs before frying. If you want really crunchy balls, double-dip them. You can also bake them in the oven, rather than frying, but I tried this on several occasions and Sidney (and I) much preferred the flavour of the fried versions. They also hold together better in his hands.

Babies will eat almost anything this way, but there has been the odd occasion when the ingredients have been too bland and Sidney has refused his food, especially as I don’t add salt to enhance any of the natural flavours. Chinese five-spice and garam masala spice blends have worked well for me. They give lots of flavour without heat and turn something boring into something really delicious. I use them a lot in our food, too.

One other thing – these are called balls, but mine almost always end up cubes. It’s easier to seal all the sides if you let them flatten a bit and life’s too short to worry about geometry in the kitchen.

I made these with the chicken I shredded from the carcass after cooking Labneh and Sage Roast Chicken, so they had all the additional flavour from that recipe. I literally chucked everything into these, but you can, of course, limit the ingredients to something more sophisticated. Chicken and dried apricots is a good combination, turkey with coriander and soy sauce is delicious and introduces herb flavours, salmon and frozen peas always goes down well, eggy rice with veg… the list is endless.

And remember, if your baby or toddler is feeling a bit poorly or is just off his food, make uneaten dinners into balls and freeze them for another time. There’s no need to waste a good dinner just because baby’s not in the mood. You can do the same with your dinner if you think it’s something baby would like but the textures aren’t quite right. Just keep an eye on the salt content. I usually cook without salt and add it later once I’ve removed Sidney’s portion.

Build up a selection of balls in the top draw of your freezer and whip them out for quick lunches or for days when baby just won’t eat their dinner (even though they loved it last time!). Defrost in the fridge overnight if you’re planning ahead, or on the defrost setting in the microwave if you’re in a rush, but break them open to let all the steam out before you serve them because they’ll be far too hot inside to eat straightaway.

Here’s how I made these balls. Sorry, they’re not too pretty, but they were devoured in minutes! 2 or 3 balls should be plenty for one meal.

Chicken, Carrot and Beetroot Balls

Makes about 14

leftover cooked chicken

leftover ham hock

2 carrots

2 cooked beetroot

1 celery sticks

2 slices bread

3 garlic cloves

1cm piece ginger, peeled and chopped

1 egg

1 tbsp chicken stock

dash of soy sauce

1 tablespoon Chinese five spice

4 chopped dried apricots

4–5 tbsp plain flour

1 tbsp olive oil, for frying

Chop or grate all your ingredients into small pieces and mix together in a bowl or food processor. Younger babies may need the ingredients blended more than older babies and toddlers. It’s good for older children to have a few bits to bite into to help them get used to textures. If the mixture is a little wet, add more bread or a spoonful of flour and stir it in to absorb some of the liquid. If it’s too dry the balls won’t stick together so add a little more stock or some water, a teaspoon at a time.

Spread the flour out on a flat plate.

Scoop up balls of the mixture and form them into balls between the palms of your hands, pressing them together to firm up. Roll the balls in the flour so that the mixture is completely covered with a fine layer. Transfer to a flat plate or tray and pop in the fridge for at least 10 minutes to firm up. This will help them to keep their shape during cooking.

Heat the oil in a frying pan over a medium heat. Once the pan is hot, carefully place the balls in the pan and cook for 4–5 minutes, turning them to make sure every side is nicely browned and the balls have some structure to them. You may need to do this in batches. Alternatively, place the balls on a baking tray and bake in an oven preheated to 200°C/180°C fan/gas 6 for 20–25 minutes until lightly browned.

Remove from the pan onto kitchen paper to absorb the oil and leave to cool enough for baby to handle. Remember the centres will stay hot. If baby is hungry, break them open and give them in pieces.

Cool the rest of the balls completely and freeze in freezer bags. Write the key ingredients on the bags and the date you made them so that you can serve different balls based on the ingredients and make sure they don’t stay in the freezer too long. They should be good for up to 3 months.

Strained Yogurt and Labneh

We’ve been making our own yogurt for a while now, and while most of the time we eat it as it comes, there’s plenty more you can do to make it something a little bit different.

A few years ago, in our pre-Sidney days, we travelled to Jordan and Israel. It was an incredible holiday and we saw so many extraordinary places. One of the things we remember most fondly is the food, particularly the hummus, falafel and labneh that we treated ourselves to daily.

I’m a big fan of eastern Mediterranean and Middle Eastern breakfasts; give me a plate of labneh or goats’ cheese, salty olives, a boiled egg and a flatbread and I’m a happy lady. In Jordan, in particular, the labneh was creamy, smooth, and there they sprinkle it with za’atar – a genius spice mix with wild thyme, marjoram, oregano, sesame seeds, salt, and sometimes sumac, that they also serve in little paper wraps with loaves of soft bread in Jerusalem – and drizzle it with olive oil to make the perfect dip for flatbread.

You can buy labneh here from specialist shops, but it’s actually very easy to make with runny yogurt (even better if it’s homemade). You simply season the yogurt with a little salt – start with ¼–½ teaspoon for 500g yogurt and adjust up or down to your taste the next time around – and then strain it through a cloth for several hours to drain away the whey (I use one of Sidney's old muslins). You’re left with a thick yogurt that looks just like cream cheese – a light straining will give you a smooth yogurt perfect for dipping, a longer strain results in a firmer yogurt that can be spread on bread or rolled into balls and stored in oil to use later in salads, tagines or just slathered on toast. It’s exactly the same principle for Greek yogurt, but you don’t need to strain it for quite as long, or salt it.

For labneh balls, you can season your oil with all sorts of delicious things. Traditionally it’s just plain olive oil, which gives you the option of adding flavourings later, depending on what you're making. This is quite handy for fussy young eaters because they won’t be put off by anything unusual. You can, of course, leave out the salt if you prefer.

For flavourings try bay leaves, peppercorns and herbs such as oregano or rosemary. You can add a couple of peeled garlic cloves and lemon slices or chopped chilli. To this pot I added lemon balm and rosemary from the garden, with a few peppercorns and flakes of dried oregano. As the balls are quite delicate it helps to pour in the oil gradually, covering each layer before adding the next. Simply leave the jar in the fridge for a couple of days to let the flavours take hold, then spoon out your labneh balls whenever you need them.

Another option is to serve them as canapés. Roll them in sesame seeds, crushed pink peppercorns or chopped herbs and they won’t make too much of a mess. You can also flavour them with harissa for a spicier version, or honey for something sweet. Replace the salt with a little sugar and/or fruit purée and you can make sweet versions that can be rolled in chopped nuts or grated dark chocolate.

And don’t forget to use the whey strained from the yogurt. You’ll be amazed how much you’re left with and it’s magical, protein-rich stuff. I use it to replace the water for pancakes or bread; it makes them lighter and fluffier and that much better for you. Or I add it to stocks and soups, or to Sidney’s meals if they need a little thinning out, for the added flavour and protein. Remember there’s salt in the whey if you’ve made labneh. You can also freeze it.

Smooth Labneh will keep in the fridge for up to a couple of weeks. Here I've seasoned ours with za'atar and drizzled it with olive oil. Labneh balls in properly sterilised jars should last at least 6 months and up to a year. It might seem like too much effort to make yogurt or labneh into balls, but it really is worth it. It doesn't take much time and you'll have a pot of delicious soft cheese to dip into whenever you need an additional creamy element for a pasta dish, something simple to spread on pancakes, or a cooling counter to a hot curry.

Prune, Banana and Oat Cookie Biscuits

I’ve made a lot of biscuits in the last year or so. Sidney eats a lot of fruit for his snacks, but you can’t beat a biscuit for satisfying little tummies, and they don’t have to be sugar-laden – there are plenty of healthy biscuit recipes out there. Often I cut the quantity of sugar in recipes by half or even less. I just don’t think everything has to be so sweet all the time and fortunately the taste buds of my family agree.

The great thing about biscuits, apart from their simplicity, is that you can often make up a dough and freeze half to bake another time. Batch cooking saved me a lot of time when Sidney was very small and meant I almost always had something in the freezer for emergencies. They’re also really handy for days out, and I usually bake a batch to take on holiday, or if we visit Sidney’s grandparents in France, so that I know he’s got healthy snacks if we’re on the move.

My go-to book for biscuit recipes is Miranda Gore Browne’s Biscuit. It has a range of recipes for grown-ups and little people, and Miranda bakes for her own children, so the sugar quantities aren’t crazy and there are lots of relatively healthy recipes in there.

Miranda appeared in the second series of Bake Off and I haven’t baked a dud recipe from her book yet. Some of my favourites include the Marmite Morsels, which are made with wholemeal flour, cheese and Marmite, and which were probably the first biscuits I started making for Sidney; the Honey Oatcakes, made with wholemeal flour and oats; my current favourites, the Seriously Seedy Biscuits, which I made with pumpkin, sunflower, chia and sesame seeds and which make the most delicious, light crispy biscuits; the Elegant Pistachio Puffs, which the French in-laws loved so much they took the recipe back to France with them; and the super handy Honey Biscuits, which are so simple and quick to cook from store cupboard ingredients you can have light, crumbly honey biscuits whipped up and baked in 15 minutes.

Sometimes, however, you just want to whip something up with what you have to hand. This recipe was inspired by a packet of prunes I’d bought for Sidney that had somehow been contaminated and were covered in mould. I cleaned off all the mould and figured they’d be fine to eat (I watched a BBC programme recently that said mould on fruit will pretty much never do you any great harm, and I would rather clean off mould rather than waste good food whenever possible), but I was still a bit nervous about giving it to Sidney, so I thought I’d bake it into a biscuit.

The thing to remember about making up recipes is that if you stick to the general ratios, you’ll rarely go too far wrong. The standard ratio for a biscuit is 1:1:1, or 1-part flour, 1-part fat, 1-part sugar. For a cookie it’s 3:2:1, or 3-parts flour, 2-parts fat, 1 part sugar. Vary the ratios and you’ll get a slightly different texture, or flavour.

These are more like chewy cookies than crisp biscuits. I used bananas because, again, I had them to hand. If you’ve got more bananas you’ll get a gooier dough, so cook the biscuits on a lower heat for longer to help them dry out. The dry ingredients are oats, ground almonds and desiccated coconut, which also adds to the sweetness along with the fruit. The good thing about chewy biscuits for toddlers, especially young ones, is that they tend to hold together during the eating. You might get half a crumbly biscuit into the mouth of a small person, the other half left in a trail of crumbs from the kitchen, through the living room and out into the garden (Sidney likes to eat on the move). Keep it a little bit sticky and you’ve got a much better chance of getting it into their bellies.

Here’s my very simple recipe.

Prune, Banana and Oat Cookie Biscuits

Makes about 16

2 ripe bananas (about 150g)

100g prunes

100g oats

50g ground almonds

50g desiccated coconut

¼ tsp salt

Preheat the oven to 180°C/ 160°C fan/gas 4. Line 2 baking sheets with silicone mats or baking paper.

Put all your ingredients into a bowl and mix together with a wooden spoon. Roll up teaspoonfuls of the mixture into balls, then space them out on the lined baking sheets and press down with your fingers until they’re about 5mm thick. They can be a little thicker, but they’re quite wet, so you want them thin enough to dry out in the oven.

Bake for about 25 minutes, checking them after 20 minutes or so to make sure they’re not catching at the edges. If you want dryer biscuits, just leave them in a little longer. They should be nice and brown once they’re cooked, with a slight crunch on the top. Transfer to a wire rack to cool and store in an airtight container.

 

Miranda Gore Browne blogs here. Biscuit is published by Ebury Press.