What Baby’s Eating: 9 months old
Baby eating his first Valentine
See Also: 5 to 6 month, 6 to 7 month, 7 to 8 month and 8 month feeding ideas.
It is amazing just how many new skills babies learn at this age! In the past month my son has started saying words, standing up, walking around furniture and clapping. As you can see from the picture above, he also now puts everything in his mouth! However, he especially loves eating fish, eggs and cheerios. In last month’s post I suggested some ways of incorporating beans and chicken into baby’s diet as good sources of protein. This month I’ve added eggs and fish to my son’s diet and started serving them in small pieces instead of just as part of a puree.
In researching the appropriate time to introduce eggs to baby’s diet, I found many differing opinions and conflicting advice. Most of the advice seemed to boil down to this: Â 1. Egg yolks are much less allergenic than whites and therefore can be introduced earlier, 2. Unless there is a family history of egg allergies, egg yolks can be introduced by 6 months and whole eggs by 9 months. I have fed both the yolk and white to my son, since we have no family history of egg allergies, but I know that many parents may want to be more cautious, so I have only included egg yolk in the recipe below. My aunt gave me this wonderful recipe for egg yolk carrot custard. I substituted roasted squash puree seasoned with some cinnamon for the carrots and my son loved it! These custards are great because they are easy to prepare and can be kept in the fridge for several days and just reheated when needed. Also, it’s easy to substitute any vegetable puree for the squash making these very adaptable.
As for the baby fish cakes in this post, I used potato and greek yogurt to bind the cakes together, avoiding the use of eggs or wheat entirely. The greek yogurt also adds an extra dollop of protein. One note on the fish cakes, if you are planning on making these for the whole family, you may want to add 1/2 teaspoon or so of salt for extra flavor. I avoided adding salt since extra salt is not good for babies under a year, but these are quite bland to an adult palate without it.
Cinnamon Squash Custard
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup cinnamon squash puree
- 1 egg yolk
- 1/4 cup milk
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together all the ingredients until well-combined.
- Pour the custard mixture into two custard cups or 8-ounce ramekins. Place ramekins in a baking dish and fill bottom of dish with about 1-inch of water.
- Bake in preheated oven for 30 minutes or just until set. Refrigerate until ready to serve. Can be kept refrigerated up to 3 days.
Ingredients for baby fishcakes: Spinach, tilapia, parmesan, greek yogurt and baked potato.
Fish, potato, spinach mixture for fish cakes
Babycake fish cakes with steamed carrots
Ingredients
- 1 teaspoon olive oil
- 1 white fish fillet
- 1/2 russet potato, baked and cooled
- 1/2 cup baby spinach, coarsely chopped
- 1/4 cup greek yogurt
- 1/4 cup parmesan cheese, finely grated
- 2 - 4 Tablespoons butter for frying
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the fish in a glass pie plate or other small baking dish and brush lightly with olive oil. Bake in the preheated oven for 15 minutes or until cooked through and flakes easily with a fork. Cool for a few minutes until cool enough to handle.
- Flake the fish into small pieces and place in a mixing bowl. In a separate bowl, mash together the potato, cheese and yogurt until smooth. Gently fold the flaked fish and spinach into the potato mixture until well combined.
- Melt 2 Tablespoons butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Working with 2 Tablespoons of fish mixture at a time (1/4 cup for larger cakes), form all the fish into small patties.
- Fry the fish patties in the heated skillet under golden brown and firm, about 4 minutes per side. Add a little butter as needed to keep the fish from sticking to the pan. Drain cooked fish cakes on paper towels. Can be refrigerated for a few days.
- To freeze: Freeze cooked fish cakes on a cookie sheet until firm. Place frozen cakes in a ziplock bag and keep frozen up to 2 months. Thaw in the refrigerator for 24 hours before serving.