One of my favorite aspects of having an older baby is making baby food. For several months, that primarily involved making purees, a very simple process my friend Laura explained well here. We have a Baby Bullet that was given to us by a dear friend, and I typically used a steamer basket to cook her food before pureeing it to a smooth consistency. (Recently, I’ve had several friends ask me about introducing solid food to babies, so I think I will compile that information into a blog post soon, too.)
Now that Audrey is getting older and eating finger foods, I have spent a lot of time looking for healthy, homemade recipes. Not only are homemade foods cheaper to make, they are also much healthier for your children because they don’t have added sugars, salt, chemicals, and preservatives. I’ve found quite a few recipes that are simple, tasty, and healthy for the whole family.
Enjoying a homemade treat!
Baby/Toddler Food Recipes We Like
Spinach Gnocchi for Babies - This is a wonderful recipe from Weelicious (if you haven’t checked this site out already, it’s a great resource for baby food and family recipes). I made these gnocchi balls with homemade ricotta, and they were very tasty! I had to use more flour than the recipe called for to get the dough to roll well into balls. Andrew and I really liked these too!
Spiced Carrot Cauliflower Soup - This recipe is also from Weelicious, and Audrey loved it! She really likes strong spices, such as cinnamon and curry, so this soup was perfect for her. We all enjoyed it!
Homemade Teething Biscuits – These teething biscuits turned out great! I love that the recipe doesn’t include sugar, salt, or rice cereal. Many teething cookie recipes that I found had lots of unhealthy ingredients, which I think defeats the purpose of making things from scratch. These cookies are sweetened with pureed prunes rather than sugar. I used cookie cutters to shape them instead of slicing the dough, as the instructions suggested.
Homemade Baby Finger Snacks – These are very similar to a puff-snack, but they don’t quite melt in your mouth. I’ve made these twice, and she really liked them! For one batch, I rolled the dough out on a cookie sheet and cut them into crackers. For another batch, I used a cupcake injector to make small pieces that I then rolled into balls. It was much faster than trying to make dough balls in a uniform size on my own.
Sweet Potato Crackers – Audrey loves sweet potatoes, so these crackers were a big hit! I don’t usually prefer sweet potatoes, but I enjoyed them too.
Gluten-Free Graham Crackers – I like to try gluten free recipes once in a while, and these were absolutely fantastic. I think Andrew and I liked them more than Audrey did, though she definitely liked them as well!
Have you made any of these recipes before? What other baby food or family meal recipes do you like? I’d love for you to share them in the comments!
- Diana
