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Growth Spurts – How To Cope

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We are just coming through the other side of a growth spurt. Chloe has also just cut another tooth. I’ve been feeling unwell all week and I think it’s pretty much entirely down to the fact that I’m tired and drained.

Growth spurts in the first year are typically supposed to occur:

Between 1-3wks
Between 6-8wks
At 3 months
At 6 months
At 9 months

But this is just a guide and each baby is different. Chloe has had all of hers around 4 weeks early and I do wonder if this is because she was overdue?

Most growth spurts last a few days but can be longer. Our last one was roughly 8 days and it was hard. Possibly the hardest one so far. Chloe fed like a newborn and I really struggled with it. Last night she slept for 6.5hrs straight through without a feed for the first time in ages. I feel like a new woman today..well almost.

Tips to get you through a growth spurt:

1. Drink plenty. If water bores you then get juice, flavoured waters, decaffeinated tea etc etc. You MUST increase your fluid intake or you will feel awful.

2. Eat plenty. Don’t diet through a growth spurt. I’ve tried and it’s not fun. You need extra calories if anything so eat healthy and generously sized meals with snacks in between and of course ..puddings or cake.

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3. Sleep whenever you can. Or rest. Your body is effectively running a marathon at this time and it needs to recuperate.

4. Have long, lazy baths. Have your partner bring the baby into you for a feed and take him/her away when finished. Relax. If your baby wants more milk then you feel you are producing a warm bath can stimulate milk production.

5. Sore nipples? Put some flannels in the fridge to cool and use them to soothe your nipples. Also Lansinoh is great.

6. Treat yourself. Buy yourself a good book to read during feeds or watch a rom com and eat something delicious.

7. If your baby is on solids get them lots of small, heathy snacks to chew on if you absolutely need to get something done but try not to avoids feeds as a growth spurt is baby’s way of increasing your milk supply to cope with their growing demands.

8. Don’t give up on your worst day. Wise advice from a good friend of mine. Last week saw me once again close to wanting to stop breastfeeding. I didn’t and I’m glad. We are 8 months in and I’m thrilled we have done so well.

9. Up all night feeding? Go on social media and chat to other mums who are going through the same thing. Search for breastfeeding hashtags, growth spurt or zombie mums. There is ALWAYS someone to talk to. I’m @writingforfun if you want to follow.

10. Remember it does end. It doesn’t feel like it but it does I promise.

Any other tips? Let me know and I will add them to the list.

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Banana, Coconut and Dark Chocolate Traybake

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Am I the only person who deliberately leaves bananas go bad so that I can bake with them? I’m a lover of banana bread, peanut butter and banana muffins and now this.

Banana, Coconut and Dark Chocolate Traybake

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This is a combo of a few different recipes I have used over the years for banana bread and tray bakes with some extra bits like coconut added in.

I love tray bakes as they are so easy. Typically the recipes us an all in one method so you’re not faffing about with creaming butter/sugar etc and they can be cut into squares so easy to serve and store. Great for parties or just to munch on at home.

You will need:

2 very ripe bananas
150g plain flour
150g caster sugar
100g butter
30g of sweet desiccated coconut
3 tbsp milk
100g dark choc bar bashed to pieces
1 tsp bicarb of soda
1tsp baking powder
2 large eggs ( free range)

Grease your baking dish. I use a rectangular pyrex dish. Preheat oven to gas mark 3.

Firstly chop or bash your dark chocolate – I use a heavy rolling pin to break it up whilst still in packaging to avoid mess.

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Then put all ingredients into a mixing bowl or electric mixer. I use an Andrew James mixer which is similar to a kitchen aid.
If mixing by hand use a wooden spoon and beat well. If using a mixer turn to the highest speed and blend for 1-2minutes.

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Bake for 30-35 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the middle comes out clean. Turn onto a cooling rack ( if you don’t want the rack impressions turn it to the correct side – I like them so I don’t) and leave to cool.

Once cooler chop into squares – the size is up to you! If you eat it while still warm you will get some gorgeous chunks of melted choc,

You could top with melted dark choc and coconut – this would be lovely if making for an occasion. I like it just as it is.

The sweetness of the banana works so well with the bittersweet chocolate. One of my favourite bakes already and I’ve only made it three times.

Really Lemony Lemon Cake

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If I were to choose a slice of cake to indulge in then normally it would be chocolate cake. My OH however isn’t a massive fan of chocolate cake and seeing as it was his birthday this week I thought it would be nice to make something special for him. Unfortunately as with all good plans something came up.. Or lots of things actually. Spots. My oldest daughter has chicken pox and is suffering with it so my time for baking has been limited.

I would never let him have a birthday without a homemade cake so at 11.30pm a few nights ago I was still hard at work in the kitchen making a fairly simple but tasty cake. It’s not extravagant or perfectly decorated but its definitely indulgent!

For the cake:

You will need..
4 Large eggs (pref free range)
225g Golden caster sugar
225g SR flour
2 tsp baking powder
225g softened butter
Zest of one lemon
1tsp lemon extract ( not essence! I used Sicilian lemon from Morrisons)

Preheat your oven to gas mark 4. Grease and line two sandwich tins (20cm)

Place all ingredients into your mixing bowl or food mixer and either beat with a wooden spoon until smooth or mix at a high speed for a few minutes until lump free and a smooth consistency. Divide between two tins and bake for 25 minutes or until golden and will spring back when pressed lightly. Remove from tins carefully and cool on a wire rack before filling and icing.

For the buttercream filling and topping:

125 g soft butter
250 g icing sugar, sifted
Juice of 1 small lemon
50g of dark chocolate

Beat your butter until smooth and gradually add in your icing sugar then your lemon juice and blend well.

Use half as a filling and half to top your cake. Grate some dark chocolate over the top.

Enjoy.

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Drum roll please. Special guest post & Maple Pecan cake recipe from Rachel Allen

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Earlier this year myself and Izzy won an amazing prize from Plum baby to attend a cookery course run by the very lovely Beverly Glock and one of my favourite chefs Rachel Allen.

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It was fantastic and I met some lovely mums including obviously Rachel Allen who is not only a great chef but a genuinely nice lady (and fellow mum) who has very very kindly agreed to share a recipe with us so I’ll stop waffling and leave you to read why Rachel likes this recipe:

Maple Pecan cake – perfect for Thanksgiving

I absolutely adore Maple Syrup, one taste of it always brings me right back to when I was younger and used to visit my grandparents in Canada. Maple syrup and pecans are a classic combination and work particularly well together in this delicious cake… I hope you enjoy:

Ingredients

200g (7oz) self raising flour
1/4 tsp salt
200g (7oz) soft light brown sugar
125ml (4&1/2fl oz) buttermilk
200g (7oz) butter, melted plus extra for greasing
50ml (2fl oz) maple syrup
2 eggs, beaten
75g (3oz) pecans, finely chopped

For the praline:

50g (2oz) caster sugar
50g (2oz) pecans

For the icing:

300g (11oz) cream cheese
25ml (1fl oz) maple syrup
200g ( 7oz) icing sugar, sifted

Method:

Preheat the oven to 180°C (350°F/ Gas 4), then butter the sides of the cake tins ( 2 x 18inch) and line the base of each tin with a disc of baking parchment. Sift the flour and salt into a large bowl and mix in the sugar.
In a separate bowl, whisk the buttermilk with the butter, maple syrup and eggs. Add the wet ingredients to the flour and sugar, mixing together to combine, then fold in the chopped pecans.
Divide the batter between the prepared tins and bake for 20–25 minutes or until golden on top and springy to the touch.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes. Loosen around the edges using a small, sharp knife and carefully remove each cake from its tin before transferring to a wire rack to finish cooling down.
Meanwhile, make the pecan praline. First line a baking tray with a sheet of baking parchment, then place the sugar in a non-stick frying pan or saucepan and scatter the nuts over the top. Cook over a medium heat until the sugar turns a caramel colour.
Do not stir the pan, but carefully ‘swirl’ it to allow the sugar to caramelise evenly and to coat the nuts in caramel. Alternatively, you could just toast the pecans instead.

For the icing: Whisk together all the ingredients until smooth. Place one cake upside down on a plate and spread over some of the icing, so that it’s about 5mm thick.

Place the other sponge on top, right side up, then cover the whole cake with the icing, using a palette knife dipped in hot water to smooth the surface. Decorate with the caramelised or toasted pecans to finish.

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Thanks to Rachel for the above recipe which can be found in her new book called Cake, I bought mine from Amazon

You can also watch her new tv show Cake diaries on the Good Food channel, although its worth having a slice of cake to watch it with as you will get hungry!

For all you tweeters you can find Rachel on @rachelallen1 she’s very involved and seems to reply to every tweet she can so any baking questions you have it’s worth asking. She’s also pretty damn good at wordswithfriends 🙂

I will be trying this recipe out next week so I’ll let you know if mine turns out as well 😉

The Hungry Caterpillar 1st birthday cake

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Firstly apologies, I’ve been meaning to write this post for weeks and Izzy is now 13 months old!

Anyway here it is! I had wanted to make Izzy a Hungry Caterpillar cake for her first birthday since spotting one on Pinterest when she was only 3 months old, when she was a little older her aunty & uncle bought her The Hungry Caterpillar pop up book and she LOVES it so it was definitely a go.

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The cake I saw on Pinterest is here and that’s more or less what I was planning to do. I made a batch of cupcakes and then my piping bag broke and well I got really annoyed and frustrated as it was the night before her party and ended up rethinking the whole idea and what I ended up with was this:

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And I actually preferred it this way in the end although as someone who is far more into the taste of food than the look of food I did find it harder than it needed to be but I enjoyed it.

Heres how I did it:

You will need :

The ingredients for one Mary Berry traybake ( recipe can be found here ) I added green colouring to my traybake to make a vibrant green flesh for my caterpillar.
500g of fondant icing sugar
Icing colour ( I bought red red and kelly green from Hobbycraft)
Basic buttercream using icing sugar and butter with vanilla extract (Nielsen Massey is best) – I used leftovers from cupcakes I was making for the party so unsure of quantity.
1 cake board or piece of cardboard covered in white paper.
Cadburys chocolate fingers
Chocolate sprinkles

Follow instructions for traybake and when cooked leave until completely cooled.
I cut out a basic caterpillar body and head from my traybake – reserve the leftover sponge in case of errors or just to munch on later.
Mix up 1/2 of your fondant icing following instructions on packet and split into two, using a cocktail stick put green colouring into one 1/2 of the icing and knead to mix the colour through making one a dark green and the other 1/2 paler. Roll out and cut into strips. Spread a little buttercream over your cut out caterpillar body and then wrap in your green icing alternating between the darker and lighter colours. Reserve any leftover icing for extra decorations such as fruit for your board.
Mix up the rest of your fondant icing and split into two, use your red colouring to make a very vibrant red icing for your caterpillar head and leave the rest white.
Spread some butter cream and wrap your caterpillar head in red icing and attach to body using more buttercream if necessary. Use cadburys fingers to make legs and antenna as well as the body for your butterfly. Use leftover icing to make fruit, leaves and a butterfly as well as to make name or message for cake. I used chocolate sprinkles to make the seeds on my strawberries and my apple stork. Use dark green icing to make eyes and a chocolate chip for the nose.

To make your cake have a little sheen brush on some lemon extract or juice with a pastry brush.

I used some leftover sponge and buttercream to make a patch of grass but I don’t think it’s necessary.

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She did like the cake although looked a little shocked at first, and kept wandering over to look at it every chance she got:

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All in all it was a success although far from perfect which you will notice if you look closely but I loved the fact that I made her a special first birthday cake. I’m guessing as the years go on I will have to become more elaborate!