Mini Sweet Potato, Apple and Lentil Muffins for Baby

 
 
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I recently started my 6 month old daughter on solid food and so far it isn’t going great. She really doesn’t seem to be too interested. I had the same issue with my third little guy, who also took some time to warm up to the idea. The key here is to be consistent and just keep trying without adding pressure or showing baby that you are getting frustrated. Every time I have introduced my babies to complimentary foods, I have waited until the 6 month mark or pretty close to it and started with purees. With my oldest, who is now 9 years old, guidelines around introducing top allergens was a little different, but with the exception of that, they all started out on purees but quickly moved through textures and increased variety too. With my 4th little one, I had planned to approach this time in the same way I always have, but I think she has different plans for us. Although, I always offered finger foods early on and encouraged my children to self feed, I never really embarked on the Baby Led Weaning (BLW) method of starting solids. I have nothing against this method at all, I’ve just always been more comfy with starting with purees first. This time around, seeing that my little one doesn’t seem too keen on purees, I thought this might be a good time to consider using BLW to see if self feeding larger pieces of food is more to her liking. So far, she seems to like the texture of pieces of food more, rather than having it pureed and she enjoys feeding herself. I’m not sure that I am ready to abandon the idea of offering her purees but I think I am going to take a hybrid approach and do both.

This weekend I made her some sweet potato and red lentil puree which I plan to serve as a meal but also wanted to experiment with using the puree in another recipe. As you know, we love muffins here, so I decided to make her mini muffins using the sweet potato and lentil puree. I added applesauce for sweetness and cinnamon to add more flavour. These little muffins are a good source of iron thanks to the lentils and boast a good amount of fibre as well and that is due to the whole wheat flour, sweet potato and the lentils. They have no sugar added and only the tiniest pinch of salt.

Try these out for your little ones! They are a great way to introduce new flavours and textures to babies while allowing them to feed themselves.

Mini sweet potato, Apple and Lentil Muffins for baby

Makes 24 mini muffins

Dry Ingredients

2 cup whole wheat flour

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

pinch of salt

Wet ingredients

1/4 cup oil

1/2 cup milk (any kind)

1/2 cup sweet potato and red lentil puree (see below)

1/3 cup applesauce

1 egg

Sweet Potato, Apple and Red Lentil puree

1 medium apple, chopped

1 medium sweet potato, cubed

1 cup red lentils, dry, rinsed

2 cups water

  • Bring sweet potato, apple, lentils and water to a boil, reduce heat to a simmer

  • Simmer until sweet potato is cooked through

  • Mash with a fork or puree with immersion blender until smooth

Directions for muffins:

  • Preheat oven to 350 degrees and grease mini muffin tin

  • Combine dry ingredients in a small bowl and set aside

  • In a separate medium bowl, combine wet ingredients and stir until smooth

  • Add dry ingredients to wet and stir to combine

  • Portion into muffin tin

  • Bake for 15 minutes or until a tester comes out clean

 
 
Breakfast, Snackmelinda lamarche