Charlotte’s Baby Oatcake Recipe!
Healthy snack options
For a while now I’ve been looking for healthy snack ideas for my 1 year old. There are of course plenty of great options to choose from, but sometimes I’m looking for a quick, grab-able fix, that I can take out and about without needing to keep it cool….it’s actually a little harder than you might think.
What I had been using for a while was oatcakes as they are so portable and Raffy loves them. However, I looked a few times and I was unable to find any “low salt” ones from the supermarket (anyone else?).
Salt intakes!
The ones I was using had 0.15g salt per oatcake – which isn’t too bad and is amber on traffic light coding. But I was aware that, combined with other foods throughout the day, it could quite easily add up.
Additionally my nutritional analysis package listed oatcakes as having 0.26g salt per oatcake, which is quite substantially higher and suggests that on average oatcakes available in the UK may have higher levels of salt than the ones I’ve managed to find.
Using this figure however, I worked out that adding a couple of thin spreads of butter and a chunk of cheese to two oatcakes would result in an infant having a salt intake over 1g from that snack alone. And, even though I usually offer Raffy his oatcakes plain, he does have cheese, bread and many other foods throughout the day that also contain salt.
(I’ve written recently about “How much salt should a baby have?” so feel free to check this out for more information on this topic.)
As a result, I decided to have a go at making my own oatcakes. So I did some research and found out that it was SUPER easy….So here is my oatcake recipe…
Charlotte’s Baby Oatcake Recipe –
Ingredients:
- 110g rolled oats (I choose to use organic oats)
- 30g wholewheat plain flour
- 1 pinch of baking powder
- 35g butter or plant-based spread
- 30-40mls hot water
- Any additional ingredients of your choice (see below for my recommendations!)
Method:
- Pre heat the oven to 180℃
- Add the rolled oats to a bowl along with the baking powder and the flour
- Add the butter/spread and rub the mixture together well with your fingers until all the ingredients are combined well and the mixture looks similar to breadcrumbs. (Don’t forget to add some extras to the mixture too if you want to try out some different flavours with little ones.)
- Add the hot water gradually so as not to add too much. You want the mixture to make a nice, fairly firm dough that is not too wet. See picture below.
- Once you have a nice dough, sprinkle some flour on a flat surface and roll out your dough until it is around 1cm thick. Use a cake cutter or a glass to cut your oatcake shapes and lay them on a baking tray before popping them in the oven for around 20 minutes or until they go brown.
Please bear in mind that I intentionally add no salt and no sugar to these oatcakes as Raffy is an infant and doesn’t need these added to his diet. For an adult (including myself) the oatcakes can therefore taste a little plain. Raffy still really enjoys my oatcakes as his palate is as yet not adapted to a high salt or high sugar diet. However if you’re looking for ways to jazz the oatcakes up and add some flavours, there are plenty of ways to do that too. For example, you could try serving them with dips such as hummus, veggie dips, peanut butter or cream cheese or you could try experimenting with some different flavours added to the oatcake recipe as you start mixing the ingredients. Some of my favourite ideas for a little flavour kick include:
- A small handful of lavender
- A sprinkling of herbs
- A few squirts of lemon or the juice of half a lemon (you may need less water if you try this…)
- A teaspoon or so of cinnamon
- A tablespoon of peanut butter (you may need less water if you try this…)
- Some fennel seeds
- A thumb sized grating of ginger
- A teaspoon of ground mixed spices
And so on and so on!
Please let me know if you try these out AND if you have any wonderful snack ideas of your own?