Mel Boothman
Mel is passionate about healthy delicious food sourced locally. She runs Penylan Pantry, the Cheese Pantry, and the Secret Garden cafe in Cardiff, where she sources salad from less than 50m away!
Mel’s Squash, Blueberry & Orange Bundt Cake
Mel Boothman
Featuring:
Effort:
Complexity:
Cost:
In season now
Serves: 8
Prep time: 35 mins
Cook time: 50 mins
Ingredients:
4 medium eggs
225g light soft brown sugar
300ml light olive oil
zest of 1 large orange + 1 tablespoon juice from the orange
1/2 of a medium-sized butternut squash, finely grated
300g gluten-free self-raising flour (or plain if not gluten-free)
1 teaspoon gluten-free baking powder (or regular if not gluten-free)
1/2 teaspoon gluten-free bicarbonate of soda (or regular if not gluten-free)
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
pinch salt
200g blueberries (or any soft red berry in season)
Icing:
juice of 1/2 an orange
300g icing sugar, sifted
Recipe donated by Mel Boothman (Penylan Pantry) for Veg Power. Food photography by Claire Wright | addsomeveg.com
A perfect recipe for using up soft over ripe berries, and squash. It’s also a really lovely way of adding veg into sweet treats, and thinking differently about baking and the ingredients that can be used.
Method:
Preheat the oven to 180C/160C fan/gas 4.
Grease a 23cm Bundt tin with olive oil (a 23cm round tin also works well if you don’t have a Bundt tin).
Place the eggs and sugar in a bowl and whisk with a hand whisk. Slowly add the olive oil, orange zest and juice, then fold through finely grated squash.
Sift in the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda, salt and cinnamon through a sieve. Gently stir through the blueberries, then pour the mixture into the greased cake tin.
Place on the middle shelf of the oven, and bake for 50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the middle of the cake comes out clean.
Squeeze the juice of half the orange onto the warm sponge, whilst still in the tin. Allow to cool for 30 minutes, then remove from the tin and cool completely on a cooling rack.
Add the sifted icing sugar into a bowl and squeeze the remaining juice from the orange into it, then beat until smooth and thick. Dribble liberally over the cake and sprinkle with orange zest.
ENJOY (best eaten on the day of baking).
Engaging Kids
Kids who engage regularly with veg through veg-themed activities, such as arts and crafts, sensory experiences, growing and cooking are shown to be more likely to eat the veg they engage with. Encouraging kids to engage and play with veg is the handy first step to them developing a good relationship with veg and life-long healthy eating.
Kids in the kitchen
Children love baking, and it’s a popular way for them to get involved in the kitchen. There are so many things for them to do this with this cake, from weighing, sieving and mixing, to washing the blueberries and squeezing the orange. They can taste as they go along, to help teach them this crucial part of cooking.
Activities
While getting kids to interact with veggies for real and using their senses to explore them is best, encouraging hands off activities like arts & crafts, puzzles & games or at-home science experiments can be a great start, particularly for those who are fussier eaters or struggle with anything too sensory. Use these veg-themed activities as a stepping stone to interacting with the veg themselves. We have loads of crafty downloads here, puzzles here, and quirky science with veg here.
Sensory
Once you feel your child is ready to engage a little more, you can show them how to explore the veg you have on hand with their senses, coming up with playful silly descriptions of how a veg smells, feels, looks, sounds and perhaps even tastes. Find ideas, videos and some simple sensory education session ideas to get you started here.
Serving
The moments before food is offered can be a perfect opportunity for engagement that can help make it more likely a child will eat it! Giving children a sense of ownership in the meal can make a big difference to their feelings going into it and the pride they take in it. You know your child best, but if you aren’t sure where to start, we have some fun and simple ideas for easy roles you can give them in the serving process over here.
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Effort:
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Complexity:
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Cost:
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