Food delivery and pumpkin spice muffins

I have two people in my life recovering from surgery at the moment!  So some cooking and food delivery was in order.  I made a giant tuna and vegetable pasta bake, and two large dishes of rice pudding.  These were dispatched to their deserving recipients today:

Now, Tabitha only wants to feed herself, even when the food requires a spoon, such as yogurt or porridge.  At first I was nervous about relinquishing control - she has done her own spooning for a long time, but now she wants to dip and scoop herself, controlling the spoon AND the bowl!  The results are a little messy - see below - but I am very impressed at how well she can manage to eat, dipping the spoon and getting some food into her mouth.

Has anyone else noticed that pumpkin is always on sale lately?  I bought a whole pumpkin, and roasted half of it, then cooked and mashed the other half into a rough puree.

I recently read Mrs Jerry Seinfeld's wife's cook book, Deceptively Delicious.  The book revolves around sneaking fruit and vegetable purees into all sorts of dishes - spinach into brownies, cauliflower into hot chocolate, and some more straightforward ones like pumpkin into mac and cheese, broccoli into meatballs etc.  I've seen Mrs S criticised quite a bit - and I disagree with her use of margarine instead of butter, but that's a rant for another day - but I actually quite like the book. Importantly, she stresses that you must still serve proper veggies with the meals (e.g. sneaky meatballs but with a side of carrots and some beans), so that children still learn to eat veggies, but at least you can relax and not stress (a major principal of Baby Led Weaning), knowing that your kiddo is still eating some fibre, veggies, fruits, and is actually getting used to the tastes of these foods, even if they aren't keen on eating them.

Inspired by the book, I made a batch of pumpkin spice muffins - I made up the recipe in my head, which is always a little risky when baking, but these are just lovely.  Moist and spicy and healthy.  Here is the recipe - very easy:

Pumpkin Spice Muffins

1genorous cup of pumpkin puree (about 300g or so cooked, then mashed with a fork or masher.  You might need to add a smidge of liquid to get the right consistency, depending on the pumpkin.  You want a loose-ish puree rather than a mash)

60g butter

1/4 cup sugar

1/4 cup treacle (90g)

2 eggs

375g self raising flour

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg (preferably freshly ground)

1/2 teaspoon ground ginger

1/4 teaspoon allspice

1/4 teaspoon bicarb soda

Cream the butter with the sugar and treacle.  Beat in the eggs and pumpkin.

Fold in the flour, bicarb and spices, mixing very gently but thoroughly.  Don't overmix - you will get touch muffins!

Bake in 12 - 16 muffin tins (greased or lined with paper liners) at 200 degrees for around 15 or so minutes - until just cooked inside (really, it's easiest to break one open and check.  Then you get to eat it!).  You want to keep them moist.

Note - you could happily add some chopped dates or sultanas to these, or some nuts (finely chopped if they are for young 'uns).  You could also sprinkle some demerera sugar on the top before baking if they're not for babies.

Like most muffins, these will freeze really well.  Muffins' enemy in freezing is air, so I cram them into a snap-lock bag, then use a straw to suck the air out, essentially shrink-wrapping them!

Someone asked me the other day, 'how do you manage to cook so much with Tabitha?'  Well, I generally let her 'help organise' the tupperware draw.  My tupperware draw is 1.2 metres long, and very deep.  There is a whole lot of stuff in there to play with!  It now looks like a permanent shamozzle, but it keeps her happy: