A Slippery Issue - Dealing With Finger Foods

An issue that crops up fairly often when introducing finger foods to baby is the fact that many of them are just so slippery!

Avocado and banana are prime examples and are almost soap-like after a little handling – it can be a real battle for your poor baby to actually get any into his mouth!

We already have a couple of tips on our site for dealing with this frustrating problem – we find that coating the food in crushed cereal or wheat germ makes it much easier to grasp (plus wheat germ adds a very welcome boost of extra nutrients).

Another tip is to cut food using a ‘Crinkle Cutter (Amazon)‘ , which gives it a ridged surface that will help your baby get a grip.

But we wanted to share a tip with you that we received via e-mail from Amy in New Zealand. After watching her son struggle with steamed veggies, she hit upon a simple solution!

Jaden has never had purees as I decided to follow the Baby Led Weaning approach.

When he was around 7 months I started given him chunks of steamed vegetables like carrots, but he was finding them slippery and kept dropping them – he was very patient about picking them up and trying again but I felt sorry for him!

So I started baking his vegetables instead – I just cut up a carrot or sweet potato, sprinkle it with a little olive oil and cook it in the oven until it is soft. I find that it develops a sort of ‘skin’ on the outside that makes it easy for Jaden to hold, but it is still lovely and soft inside. It’s really helped!

Thanks Amy – that’s a great tip and the nice thing about cooking veggies in this way is that it gives them a great flavour, too – our little ones always preferred vegetables that had been oven-cooked!

If you have a handy finger food tip to share, please leave a comment or contact us with your suggestion!