Sunday 18 August 2013

Breast Milk Baking for Baby....

Before anyone says 'euuww gross!!' I made these for my BABY! (hence the word 'baby' in the title!), not other members of my family, not my friends, not other people's babies, not the general public!

For those people who still think it's gross I'm guessing you think breastfeeding is also gross so I suggest you find another blog to read! This is intended for people who support breastfeeding (which should be the entire human race since we'd be extinct without it but that's another discussion!) and would like to hear about it's benefits!

One benefit that is perhaps not as obvious as it should be is that it can be used in cooking! So, since I had some left over milk and didn't want it to go to waste, plus I've recently started weaning my baby I decided to try out the recipe below:

Soft Banana and Spinach Cookies

  • 2.5 cups plain flour
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • 0.75 cups soft dark brown sugar
  • 0.25 teaspoon ground cinnamon
Mix together in one bowl
  • 0.5 cups vegetable oil
  • 1 egg
  • 0.75 cups breast milk
  • 1 ripe banana mashed
  • 2 tablespoons honey/maple syrup/date syrup
Mix together in another bowl, then boil:
  • 3 balls frozen spinach
in a small pan, strain and ix it into the wet ingredients.  Then add the wet to the dry ingredients, mix together and use a spoon to put drops of mixture onto a baking tray. Bake at 180C until they start turning brown.



I decided to add spinach to make them more healthy! I boiled frozen spinach for a few minutes, strained it and stirred it in. You could also use fresh spinach, make sure it's soft and cut into small pieces you don't want anything that could pose a choking risk in there like a long leaf...

The original recipe didn't have it in, actually it didn't have breast milk in either but normal milk, but I didn't see why I needed to treat it any differently to normal milk, apart from the fact that it's sweet so you'd need less sugar. Also some people might not feel comfortable putting honey or date syrup (it's not recommended for babies under 1 due to the small risk of botulism) so you could put maple syrup instead, apparently this does not have a botulism risk as the method of collecting it includes boiling. However, some people also say maple syrup is not good for babies for a reason I'm not sure of, but then again refined sugar isn't either but you have to give them something!

Anyway, my baby liked them and he ate one and half, yay! Now I just need to figure out what to do with all the rest since I doubt he'll be able to finish the all my himself... I guess I'll have to help him eat them, they actually taste quite nice! You could make them for yourself and just put normal milk of course!

2 comments:

  1. Thats a really good idea sis. I think its 100% better to make the treats for you baby and still give them ingredients that are nutritional and beneficial for your baby.

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  2. Thanks Salwa, it's good cos you know exactly what's in it and you ca vary the ingredients and you don't have to pay a fortune for special baby cookies! they also seem to make a lot less mess than rusks for examples as they're not very crumbly...

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