Cheesy Pasta Baby Bites
This is my take on an easy ‘mac and cheese’ weaning recipe I saw when Oscar turned 10 months are we moved to slightly lumpier food for him to start chewing. The original recipe used cauliflower and broccoli, but honestly I think these are pretty versatile and you can add a range of vegetables so use whatever you have in, fresh from the garden!
You can either serve these are little muffin bites or reheated and mashed down for little fingers to pick up (great for perfecting the pincer grip), or even spoon fed.
It’s a super quick recipe to make, you just need two saucepans and some muffin cases, give them a go today.
INGREDIENTS
90g margheritine soup pasta
45g spinach (roughly chopped)
300ml milk (whole)
30g unsalted butter
40g plain flour
100g peas or petite pois (frozen or fresh)
60g full fat cheddar cheese
1 egg
METHOD
Preheat the oven to 180 C
In one pan boil the pasta (usually takes about 10minutes, but make sure it is more on the overdone side of things). Add the peas to this pan to boil together
In the other pan make the cheesey white sauce. Melt the butter gentle, and then stir in the flour to create a thick, lumpy paste
Reduce the heat and gradually add the milk to the butter and flour mixture until it is smooth - keep stirring to avoid lumps
Add most of the cheese, and keep stirring until the sauce thickens
Put the spinach in the bottom of a colander and drain the pasta and peas over it so it wilts
Off the heat, combine all the ingredients in one saucepan, coating everything evenly in the sauce. Add the egg and mix together
Spoon into muffin cases or ramekin dishes (depending on how you will serve it), and bake in the oven for 18 minutes until bubbling slightly, golden and slightly firm
