Five-a-day treats: Courgette After Eight Cupcakes

Chocolate and courgette cupcakes with a mint and cream cheese icing: good way to use up the overflow of courgettes and mint from the garden. We only have the latter, and the Little Chefs loved picking the mint leaves (and picked almost none of the neighbouring strawberry leaves...)

 For 20 cupcakes

Ingredients:

5 tbsp butter, melted
2 eggs, beaten
200 g caster sugar
1 cup yoghurt
340 g self-raising flour
50 g cocoa powder
2 medium courgettes, grated

200 g soft cheese
100 g caster sugar
40 mint leaves

chocolate chips, to decorate

Method:

- preheat the oven to 180'C/fan 160'C and place the butter in a heat proof bowl in the oven to melt
- beat the eggs with the sugar, the yoghurt and the melted butter
- mix the flour and the cocoa powder
- stir the dry ingredients into the egg mixture to the count of 10
- add the courgettes and stir 3 more times - don't worry if you can still see bits of flour
- line two muffin trays with cupcake cases and fill them up to two thirds with the mixture
- bake in the oven for 20 minutes
- let them rest in the muffin tray for 5 minutes, then allow to cool on a rack before icing

- while the cupcakes are cooling, prepare the icing: mince the mint leaves with a stick blender, then stir in the cream cheese and the sugar
- use a piping bag to ice the cupcakes and sprinkle with chocolate chips

And a few tips:
- the chocolate and courgettes cupcakes work really well on their own too, without icing, as the courgette makes them really moist
- when you're icing, make sure you press down the mixture in the piping bag, so there are no bubbles

*The bold text in the recipe shows the steps that the Little Chefs did (with supervision).*

Five-a-day treats: Polka dot asparagus tarts

Ok, so the tarts don't have polka dots on the photo. The point is that this recipe has the potential to have polka dots, but you might have to do the relevant bit yourself and not leave it to your toddler. The Little Chefs got a bit heavy handed with the asparagus bits, but on the plus side, the less than perfect look did not stop them from eating up all these healthy treats!

For 24 tarts

Ingredients:

250 g plain flour
125 g cold butter
1 egg yolk
Pinch of salt
Cold water

Or 250 g shop bought shortcrust pastry

300 g asparagus
300 ml double cream
2 eggs, beaten
100 g Gruyère cheese, grated

Method:

- cut the butter into cubes and mix with the flour with your fingers until it looks like breadcrumbs
- mix in pinch of salt and egg yolk until it comes together as a ball of dough - add a drop of water if necessary
- chill in the fridge for 20 minutes
- or remove packaging from ready made pastry

- preheat oven to 180'C / fan 160'C
- place paper muffin cases into the holes of two muffin trays
- roll out the pastry and cut out circles with a pastry cutter larger than the holes of the muffin tray
- place a pastry circle in each paper case and press them down so they come up at the sides and form a pastry case
- blind bake for 15 minutes

- in the meantime, steam the asparagus for 5 minutes
- puree about half of the asparagus with a stick blender
- chop the remaining asparagus into 1 cm slices
- mix the cream, cheese, eggs and asparagus puree
- spoon the mixture into the blind baked pastry cases
- place a few asparagus slices in each tart, so that the cut (round) ends face upwards
- bake for 20 minutes until golden on top

And a few tips:
- my way of blind baking the tarts was to place baking beans in paper muffin cases and put one on top of each tart - this recipe is pretty fiddly if you do it from scratch, so don't expect your toddler to be eager to participate throughout the whole process: it might be a good idea to make the dough together and then leave it in the fridge and do the filling later
- I'm not sure it's entirely necessary to blind bake: please let me know if you have experience doing it without
- the asparagus has quite a delicate taste, so it works well if you add some extra strong tasting ingredients, such as red onions or bacon - I would fry these before you add them to the filling

*The bold text in the recipe shows the steps that the Little Chefs did (with supervision).*

Five-a-day treats: Carrot muffins

In the next few weeks we'll be trying out a few vegetable based recipes, all of which hopefully will be fun to make and to eat. This week we started with carrot muffins - for added attractiveness we baked them in butterfly- and bug-shaped cake moulds. 

For 8 muffins

Ingredients:

200 g self raising flour
175 g light brown sugar
2 teaspoons mixed spice
Zest of 1 orange
2 eggs, beaten
150 g melted butter
200 g grated carrots

Method:

- preheat the oven to 180'C/fan 160'C and line a muffin tray with paper cases
- mix the flour, sugar, mixed spice and orange zest in a large bowl
- mix eggs and melted butter in another bowl
- add egg mixture to dry ingredients, mix till just about combined, then stir in grated carrots
- spoon equal amounts of batter into each muffin case and bake for 20 minutes

And a few tips:
- butternut squash works equally well instead of carrots
- toddlers don't tend to overmix the batter - make sure you let them do the mixing, the lumpier the mixture, the lighter your muffin will be

*The bold text in the recipe shows the steps that the Little Chefs did (with supervision).*