Making Baby Snacks

I have been making my own baby food as long as I have had babies.  However, I always bought the teething biscuits, mum mums Zwieback toast etc.  When it came to that type of baby food I was clueless.  Until now.  I found this lovely site.  They offer so many great recipes for little ones.  I decided to try these oat and naner drops.   Here's the recipe.

1 c quick oats


1 c ground oats (grind oats and make a coarse oat flour)

1/4 t salt

1/4 t cinnamon or ginger or cardamom (we'd try it with all 4 spices.)

1/4 t nutmeg

1 t baking powder

1 c (~2) overripe bananas, mashed

1 t vanilla extract

3 T oil of choice (I used sesame oil)


Here's what you need to do:

First: preheat the oven to 350.  Grind your oats to make the flour (mentioned above).  The you should mix all your dry ingredients together in one bowl - oats, flour, baking powder, salt, nutmeg and spice of your choice (I just used cinnamon).

Next:  mash your bananas well.  Mix together all your wet ingredients in a separate bowl - bananas, vanilla, oil (I used sesame oil and this worked really well)

 

Then: mix your ingredients together

 

Now:  place some parchment or wax paper on a cookie sheet so you can avoid adding unnecessary grease.  I chose to form these into more of a bar shape than the drop shape suggested in the original recipe so they're easier for little fingers.

Next: pop these bad boys into the oven and wait about 12 - 15 minutes

I actually ended up waiting about 15 minutes but when they are done they don't look any different than they did to start so don't wait for these to brown before you take them out or you've just burnt them.

Here's our finished product:

Next, take them to the experts for a taste test......

He's putting a lot of thought into this one, testing consistency, flavor, durability...

He likes it!!!!

Mama likes them too!  The sesame oil added a really neat flavor that went well with the bananas (and sounded better than olive oil, which was the only other option, yikes)  They also weren't very messy.  My kids have had biscuits that cover all their face and clothes in some bizarre goop or crumbled instantly into a million pieces. These are less mess and less work for mom.  So my take on these is that they are Eco-friendly baby snacks since I don't have to wash 7 baby shirts a day or vacuum the floor after every single snack session.  They contain no wheat or eggs and my version is vegan friendly thanks to the sesame oil.

They get two enthusiastic thumbs up from me, and Cypress!

What are your favorite baby friendly recipes?  We can never have too much variety for this little chow hound!  I'd love to hear any tried and true recipes you have.