A lot has been happening in our house recently. Alexander is coming on leaps and bounds. Gone are the days when I didn’t know what he wanted or was saying within his little “eeehhh eeeehhhh’s”. Now we have full on conversations all day long. All be it that they are about planes in the sky and how barbies ring is gone (he think he lost his dolls ring, when in fact I have it hidden for emergencies). And now when we come home from creche he tells me that he wants to paint or bake. So I happily comply, having said that, painting and baking last thing before bedtime might give cause to some tantrums as a tired child does not understand waiting for things to cook in the oven and cool before getting to sample them. But look, I am just happy that I can do it, so I do it. I’m probably getting it all wrong, and sleep training/routine has gone out the window as he is incredibly clingy at the moment and I just cannot give him tough love and let him cry it out. It has always been my weakness…

Anyway like I said, leaps and bounds! We now occasionally use the toilet at his request and tonight during falling asleep, I kid you not, he counted to 10 all by himself. He turned to me and said “I want count”, I started him off with “1” and he continued from 2 all the way to 11 without help. I’m sure many a parent says this, but my child quite literally is a frickin GENIUS!!!

Last week we did some baking. We made breakfast muffins with raspberries and some banana oat bars. Alexander got a little confused and rolled his words into one and came out with Boat bars (banana + oats = boats). So our new favourite snack was born and named.

LITTLE ALEXANDER’S BOAT BARS

These are a really great simple bar to make. One thing I find when baking with kids is they have a great desire to lick the batter spoon. I freak out at this, over thinking the worst case scenarios, but with these bars, it doesn’t matter. There are no raw ingredients that have any issue being eaten as is, dairy free, gluten-free etc. Just natural edible ingredients that allow for our little taste testers to lick the spoon to their heart’s content.

• 1 1/2 cups of gluten-free rolled jumbo oats
• 1 cup of a mixture of pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds and chopped hazelnuts
• 1/4 cup of ground super seed mix (golden linseed, hempseed and chia seed : available at Lidl)
• 2 large ripe bananas (or 3 smaller bananas), the riper the better
• 1 heaped tbsp of crunchy almond butter
• 1/4 tsp cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp nutmeg
• 30 g mini dark chocolate chips or finely chopped dark chocolate

  

THE HOW

Heat the oven to 170 C (fan oven) and line a relatively small tin (maybe 7.5 inches x 7.5 inches, depending on how much mixture your kids actually don’t eat and don’t spill all over the kitchen) with baking paper.

Put all the oats, various seeds (and seed mix), nuts, cinnamon and nutmeg into a food processor and blitz for about 15 seconds. Just enough to break the oats and pumpkin seeds down. If you want to give this to younger kids (mine has just turned 2 years old) then blitz a littler longer so avoid any choking. Empty the oat mix into a large bowl.

Mash the banana. heat the almond butter in the microwave for about 10 seconds, just to help loosen it  and stir into the banana.

Add the banana mash to the dry ingredients and stir well. Taste test if you so wish.

       

Pour the mix into the lined tin and sprinkle with the chocolate. Press down the top with the palm of your hand to squish the chocolate in and to firm the mix for baking.

Pop into the oven for 20 minutes. Remove from oven and cool before slicing.