Wheat-free baking

When I started feeding Sprout solid food, I decided to wait until he was about a year to feed him wheat. Along with all the other things you're advised to wait on, like nuts, strawberries, shellfish, citrus, etc, this makes for a rather limited diet. Kind of annoying when doing baby-led weaning, as the whole point of that is not to have a totally separate set of food for the baby, but to feed the kid more or less what you're eating. These limitations have led me to discover the wonders of quinoa, millet, spelt & kamut. I'll definitely be eating more of those in the future, even when we don't 'have' to.

Today we went to Sprouty's friend Jack's first birthday party & the star of the show (other than little J) was the cake: gluten-free, made with beets & yams, among other ingredients. That may sound a bit odd, but it was a moist, sweet, yummy cake. Better than most birthday cakes I've eaten. Sprout loved it too. This cake inspired me to bake something for Sprout from the millet flour I bought a couple of days ago. So I made us some really simple baking powder biscuits. I added a touch more baking powder, but just substituted millet flour for wheat flour & added a bit of grated cheddar. I didn't add any xanthan gum (apparently that helps with binding, as millet lacks the gluten which helps wheat dough have that elastic quality & makes baked goods fluffier) or anything else to adapt the recipe.

Just a few minutes later, the biscuits were out of oven. They didn't rise at all, but they didn't flatten either. Very crumbly but really light & fluffy texture. Probably wouldn't travel well & they fall apart if you try to slice them in half to butter them. They taste a lot like goldfish crackers & Sprout gobbled them up. Looks like millet biscuits are a win!