35 Muffins Baby Led Weaning Parents Can Make at Home
Baby led weaning muffins are perfect finger foods made with a variety of fillings and baked in a muffin tin.
They can be highly nutritious, easy for babies to pick up and eat independently and a useful way to introduce new flavours (or hide foods babies don’t like!)
In this blog I’ll give you my top tips on how to make them, serve them and 35 fabulous combinations to try with your little one.
Benefits of Homemade Muffins for BLW
Muffins are a perfect early finger food for babies. Why? Their bite-sized nature is easy for tiny hands to grasp, and their soft texture ensures they are gentle on those young gums.
Homemade muffins allow you to control the ingredients, ensuring there’s no added sugar and that they’re tailored to your baby’s dietary needs. Whether you’re using whole wheat flour, going gluten-free, or integrating fruits like banana and blueberry, there’s a muffin recipe to suit every need.
Texture Exploration:
Muffins come in a variety of textures – from soft and fluffy to slightly crumbly. This helps your baby explore different textures and getting them used to a diverse range of foods.
Nutrient-Rich Ingredients:
Muffins can provide a diverse range of nutrients when prepared with nutrition in mind. Whole grains, fruits, vegetables, healthy fats, and protein sources can all find their place in a muffin, ensuring your baby gets a well-rounded meal following my baby meal planning guidelines.
Self-feeding practice:
Muffins naturally fit perfectly in tiny hands, encouraging self-feeding and independence from an early age.
Flavour palette:
Muffins come in an array of flavours, allowing your baby to embark on a flavorful journey. From sweet to savoury, the options are boundless.
Convenience for Busy Parents:
We understand that time is precious for parents. Muffins can be baked in batches and frozen, ensuring you always have a healthy snack or meal component at the ready.
Dealing with Allergies and Intolerances
When introducing muffin recipes to your baby, it’s essential to be aware of allergies as the typical wheat flour or egg bases are both allergens and this is before you even start to think about the flavours or extra ingredients that you’re going to use.
If your baby is very new to solid foods you might still be at the stage of introducing the allergens one by one in which case you might need to think about offering a very basic muffin such as the ABC muffin (includes egg and wheat allergens) and begin to include more ingredients as you tick off the allergens as you progress with weaning.
If your baby has already been diagnosed with an allergy or you think they might have an allergy but are waiting for your appointment with a dietitian to find out what food they can eat, muffins are easy to adapt to exclude allergens.
How to Serve Muffins to Your Baby
How much is a portion?
When you serve a muffin to your baby, the portion size is usually going to be a muffin!
For a younger baby that’s new to weaning I’d try to not to worry too much about how much they’re eating and think more about that experience that you’re giving them in their first food journeys.
As they get more established with solid foods you might like to have a bit more guidance on how much they should be eating and you might find my portion size guides useful here.
What size and shape muffin should you serve?
How you serve a muffin to your baby will depend on their age and their developmental stage in weaning.
When introducing finger foods from 6 months, the muffin should be larger than your baby’s fist. They should be able to grab hold of the entire muffin and bring it to their mouth to nibble bites off. It needs to be large enough so that they cannot fit the whole muffin in their mouth as this would be a choking risk.
As your baby progresses with weaning and becomes more competent at biting off chunks of food and moving these around their mouth you can start to serve the muffin as quarters or in strips.
Key ingredients for baby led weaning muffins
Baby muffins have gotten really popular in recent years and there are some really creative and healthy recipe ideas out there.
I like to try to make my muffins into a balanced meal by including different food groups.
Whole Grains:
Choose flours like whole wheat, oats, or quinoa to boost fibre and nutrients in the muffins. Many recipes will use wheat flour as the base so opt for wholemeal in place of white.
Fruits and Veggies
Incorporate a rainbow of colours through pureed or finely chopped fruits and vegetables. These provide not only the vitamins and minerals but also taste, texture, colour and can help to turn the muffin into a sensory weaning experience. Sweet potatoes, blueberries, and spinach are just a few options.
Healthy Fats:
Fats are an essential part of a baby’s diet with around half of their calories each day coming from fat. Avocado, coconut oil, or ground flaxseeds introduce healthy fats crucial for brain development and oily fish is an important source of omega-3 fats readily absorbed by the body.
Protein
Protein is essential for building muscles and tissues. Greek yoghurt, eggs, meats and beans are excellent sources of protein to support your baby’s growth.
Dairy
Dairy foods are an important source of calcium, iron, protein and energy for young babies. Many muffin recipes will include milk so you could use your baby’s normal milk, but otherwise choose whole milk to make sure that there is enough fat and energy for your baby.
Natural Sweeteners:
If you’re making a sweeter muffin, opt for alternatives to table sugar such mashed ripe bananas, stewed apples or soaked dates to sweeten and add nutritional value to the muffin.
Tips for Success when introducing Baby-Led Weaning Muffins
Creating a positive mealtime environment
How you feed your child is just as important as what you feed your child and this starts right from when you start to introduce nutrition to your baby.
Your role is to make mealtimes as fun and reassuring as possible. Sometimes babies can feel a little unsure when they have something new put into their mouths, as they won’t know what to do with that food initially.
Sitting with your baby while she explores the food and offering lots of positive interaction is so important.
I like to recommend that families start to follow the division of responsibility in feeding to help their little ones grow up to be happy and confident eaters.
Serve the fillings as whole foods
A big part of weaning is about exploring the sensory experiences that come with food, what it looks like, what it smells like, what it feels like when I touch it and what it tastes like.
If food is bound up hidden inside a muffin babies miss out on these important sensory experiences.
Make sure to always offer foods in its whole form at other mealtimes so that your baby learns how it looks.
The 35 Muffin Ideas for BLW
Egg muffin recipes:
- Spinach and Cheese Egg Muffins
- Broccoli and Cheddar Egg Muffins
- Sweet Potato and Spinach Egg Muffins (omit the salt from the recipe)
- Zucchini and Feta Egg Muffins
- Tomato and Basil Egg Muffins (omit the salt from the recipe)
- Kale and Mushroom Egg Muffins (omit the salt from the recipe)
- Green Veg Egg Muffins (omit the salt from the recipe)
- Bell Pepper and Onion Egg Muffins (omit the salt from the recipe)
- Mixed Vegetable Egg Muffins (omit the salt from the recipe)
- Asparagus and Swiss Cheese Egg Muffins (omit the salt from the recipe)
- Smoked Salmon and Dill Egg Muffins
- Corn and Black Bean Egg Muffins (omit the salt from the recipe)
- Turkey and courgette Egg Muffins (use baby’s usual milk or whole milk)
- Avocado and Tomato Egg Muffins (omit the salt from the recipe)
- Pumpkin and Sage Egg Muffins
Flour muffin recipes:
- Banana Oat Muffins
- Sweet Potato Muffins
- Carrot and Apple Muffins
- Wholemeal Fruity Muffins
- Pear and Almond Muffins
- Pumpkin and Vanilla Muffins
- Banana and Spinach Muffins
- Egg-free Fruit Muffins
- Ruby Red Beetroot Muffins
- Strawberry and Banana Muffins (omit the salt from the recipe)
- Cheese and Courgette Muffins
- Christmas Dinner Baby Muffins
- Kiwi Muffins
- Dairy-free Blueberry Muffins
- Vegetable Savoury Muffins (omit the salt from the recipe)
- Spinach and Cheese Muffins
- Fruit and Veggie Muffins
- Salmon and Broccoli Muffins
- Sweet Corn and Chive Muffins (omit the salt from the recipe)
- Banana and Raspberry Muffins
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I freeze baby-led weaning muffins?
Absolutely! Freezing muffins is a convenient way to have a nutritious back up in the freezer. Allow the muffins to cool completely before individually wrapping them so that it’s easy to take out exactly what you need without the muffins sticking together. Place these inside a freezer bag that you’ve labelled and dated. Make sure that the muffins are fully thawed and reheated until steaming hot before serving to your little one.
How long can I store muffins?
Most muffins can be kept in the fridge for up to 3 days. It’s important to be mindful of your baby’s still maturing digestive system and so it’s very important to follow food safety advice.
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