Apple-Squash-Turkey Meat Muffins

If you haven’t checked out the site wholesomebabyfood.com, you should! This is the best site I’ve found for a huge variety of information and recipes on baby and toddler foods. For older babies and toddlers, check out their Baby Finger Foods section in particular.

Sly loves their sweet potato fries and broccoli-and-cheddar-cheese nuggets. I also do my own version of their apple-turkey loaf — the original is listed in the finger foods section linked above.

Apple-Squash-Turkey Meat Muffins
1.25 lb ground turkey
1 whole egg or 2 egg yolks, beaten
1/2 cup canned (preferably organic) butternut squash or pumpkin
1/4 cup applesauce
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/4 cup bread crumbs
pinch of basil

The original recipe calls for pureed carrots instead of the pumpkin or squash, and wheat bran instead of wheat germ (I usually have wheat germ on hand, but not wheat bran; both add an extra nutrient boost to the recipe). Using the canned organic puree is easier than cooking and pureeing a bunch of carrots, unless you already have pureed carrots on-hand. I’ve also doubled the bread crumbs if I’m out of wheat germ, but obviously you miss out on some of the extra nutrients if you go that route.

This list of ingredients works out perfectly with 1.25 pounds of ground turkey (which for some reason is the size of one package at my local grocery store) — you’ll probably need to bump up the dry ingredients slightly if you’re only working with a pound of meat.

Mix everything together and then bake it for 40-45 minutes at 350 degrees. I use a regular sized, unlined muffin pan to make this, after coating it with cooking spray first.

A 1.25-pound package of ground turkey makes about 11 meat-muffins, and they’re just right for a toddler-size serving! I cover the pan with tinfoil before baking it, otherwise the tops end up tougher and chewier than the rest of the meat, especially after being frozen and re-heated. A butter knife or large spoon works well for getting the cooked muffins out without destroying the shape.

I made a batch of these last night using canned organic pumpkin and froze all but one, which Sly had for lunch today. She ate every bite!

Favorite Baby/Toddler Cookbooks

When I’m looking for a new meal idea, or just an interesting combination of flavors to try, these are the baby/toddler cookbooks that I use. I found plenty of books at my local library, but these are the ones I liked enough to buy and reference regularly.

1) Superfoods for Babies and Children by Annabel Karmel. Her website has a bunch of recipes and other tidbits, too. She’s a UK author, so she takes a slightly different approach in terms of what’s “allowed” at what ages, FYI. Annabel Karmel has various baby-toddler food books out, but there’s a lot of overlap in recipes from one book to another. This is the one I like the best.

Also note that despite the similarity in title, this is NOT Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron. I know a lot of people who rave about that book, but I found it a PITA to use and her attitude on meats was completely unhelpful — basically, that they are “not super baby foods,” shouldn’t be in a baby’s diet and therefore she’ll only give like three recipes. Gee, thanks so much.

2) Cooking for Baby: Wholesome, Homemade, Delicious from Williams Sonoma. (I have the 2008 edition with a pea puree on the cover, but apparently there’s a new one for 2009 — no idea how it compares.) This book has some off-beat flavor combinations for infants (green beans with mint, edamame and yogurt puree, roasted red pepper and goat cheese) and a focus on using unusual grains (quinoa, amaranth, millet) that I haven’t seen in other baby cookbooks.

The toddler recipes are equally adventurous: things like lentil burgers and chicken and mango quesadillas. Man, flipping through this book right now reminds me that I should use it more!

3) Mommy Rescue Guide: Toddler Meals: Lifesaving Recipes and Advice for Making Fun, Nutritious Food, by Shana Priwer and Cynthia Phillips. This pocket-size book is stuffed with recipes for different age ranges: 9-12 months, 12-18 months, 18-24 months and 24-36 months. Obviously you can pick and choose, but it’s nice to have a place to start. They list a minimum recommended daily toddler diet (hugely reassuring on those days when your toddler doesn’t eat much, because it’s a reminder that really, they don’t need a ton of huge meals) and I like the conversational-but-factual tone of their advice-on-feeding chapter.

The type of recipe ranges from no-brainer basic (egg noodles plus peas) to intriguing: peachy sweet potatoes, Hawaiian poached pork. They also have a bunch of easy recipes for items you wouldn’t normally think to make yourself: grape juice, graham crackers and yogurt, to name a few. LOVE this little book!