K is for Karmel…Annabel Karmel.

Or, as the Other Half likes to call it, ‘The Baby Feeding Cult’.

It is certainly true that the majority of Mums seem to have heard of Annabel Karmel and her suggestions for how you might wean your baby onto eating solid foods and beyond. Not only does she have a large range of cookery books which cover purees, finger foods, family meals and toddler snacks; but she’s also featured often in baby themed magazines, and attends baby shows to pass on her advice. So I can see why the Other Half might have the idea that there is some kind of feeding cult thing going on.

But there’s good reason for it, in my opinion. Although we haven’t followed the weaning plan, and the purees aren’t much use for us as we are going the Baby Led Weaning route (some of the purees do make really tasty soups for adults and children alike though!), there are still plenty of great recipe ideas and suggestions that we’ve been happy to give a go.

Banana bran muffins from the 100 Finger Foods book are a firm favourite in this house, and the Wee Man will happily stuff his face with several in one sitting, given a chance. As a family we all love the ‘Orzo Risotto’ recipe from the top 100 pasta recipes, and a modified version of Annabel’s hidden vegetable pasta sauce is the Wee Man’s ultimate favourite dinner. I’m looking forward to giving Bubby D her first try of ‘Fruity Curry’ as well, made with butternut squash and dried apricots which give it a lovely sweet and spicy flavour that we all really enjoy, so hopefully she will too.

The Complete Baby and Toddler meal planner has a bolognese recipe we all love, and the potato and leek puree from Top 100 Purees features regularly as our all time greatest soup, served with fresh crusty bread warm from the breadmaker and proper butter (I’m drooling at the thought…).

Having done most of the recipes to death in all my existing books, I was very happy to come across ‘Top 100 Meals in Minutes’ not least because although a good number of the recipes in my other books are fairly quick and simple to make, some of them do take a fair number of ingredients and a longer than average amount of time. That’s often because they use naturally flavourful ingredients such as herbs, spices and a variety of vegetables to make meals tasty rather than just using additives, salt and sugar, so I’m perfectly happy to spend that little bit longer preparing them in general – but as any parent will know when you’ve got a hungry and whiny child snapping at your ankles demanding their dinner and you’ve had one of those disorganised days (that seem to be a regular occurrence in this house at the moment) where you’ve not got anything done in advance, it’s not ideal to tell them they have to wait an hour.

So I was interested to see what new recipes are on offer. Spotting a carrot, apple and sultana muffin recipe (we do like muffins), I thought I’d give it a go.

True to the title, they did only take minutes to prepare. I’m a great fan of recipes that only require you to use one mixing bowl, and a wooden spoon. The less washing up the better, I reckon! (Ok, so I did use a grater and a knife too…but all in all the kitchen equipment requirements were extremely minimal).

Here they are about to go in the oven:And here they are after they came out:And here they are 10 minutes later…

Ok. there is no picture of them 10 minutes later. That’s because muffins in our house get hoovered up so quickly, I didn’t even get the chance to whip out the camera. So I’d say that was a Annabel Karmel cult success – a great recipe I think will become another family favourite in no time. The book has a recipe for chocolate and courgette muffins too, and since the Wee Man likes chocolate and also likes courgettes I think that’s worth a try.

So back to the baking! Why not give it a go? 🙂