Ice cube trays for purees

[NoTeaForMe]

Hi,

I'm hoping to make and freeze some purees for my baby. I'd like to make quite a few in one go and although I originally looked for some little pots I guess this will work out quite expensive! So ice cube trays....when you put the frozen cubes into bags do they not freeze and stick together? Can I use the rubbery ice cube trays so it's easier to pop the food out?

Thanks

I have never had a real problem with them sticking together. They might a bit but you just tap the bag gently like you would say with frozen peas.

Rubbery trays are easier I think. Some of the plastic ones can snap more easily (my cheap ones did!)

You can buy great rubber trays in IKEA and larger ones with yoghurt pot sized compartments when baby gets a bit bigger. Cheap too...

Freeze in small batches so that if they do stick together - and some do - you can use the food without so much waste.

FWIW I gave up on home pureeing when I read an article about the bugs that live in even a very clean home. The article said that it was safer to give jars of food because the environment in a babyfood factory is totally sterile and tested for all bugs every two hours 24 hrs a day! I couldn't compete with that, so I just bought organic babyfood jars thereafter! It was a lot less work too.

uby some silicone mini muffin trays on ebay. Very cheap and very easy to use. Altho mine have hardly been used since ds turned out to be a spoon refuser.

about sterile baby food jars. How do they recommend one protect yr baby from the nasty bugs the rest of the time they're in yr non sterile home??

candleshoe I have to say I'm shaking my head in despair at your post. Your choice obviously and rightly so, but the implication that we cannot safely prepare food for our babies in our own home is frightening. How on earth did the human race ever survive?

And how is anyone meant to raise a child in a totally sterile environment? There's probably a phalanx of published evidence out there that proves it is a very unhealthy thing to do anyway. We evolved in a non sterile environment and our bodies are made to cope with it. Show me one baby that hasn't licked the carpet/pram wheels/cat bowl and not survived to tell the tale.

BLW !

Use silicone trays as they're easy and don't snap when you flex them to get the frozen block out. Pop them into big tubs or bags and just give it a shake to separate, they shouldn't stick too much.
I did this with loads of dif foods for dd when she was weaning and it was a genius way of avoiding having to puree stuff all the time.

Oh and the sterile thing, well the baby has to live in your house all the time so they are subjected to the same germs etc that are present when you cook. A few germs are a good thing as they've actually been proven to increase immunity.

I did this with ds1 (and to a certain extent with ds2 and ds3, though mainly I pureed a bit of what the rest of the family were having, if I recall correctly).

I never had a problem with getting the cubes of food apart, and I liked the fact that I could spend a day cooking and pureeing a load of different things, and then he could have a selection of different tastes in one bowl, just by choosing a cube each from several bags.

*Candleshoe - I think your dire warnings about sterility are a bit OTT - by this stage a baby will be touching things in their home and sucking their fingers, or even shoving things in their mouths - plus the food you are going to freeze will previously have been cooked, which should kill most bacteria.

Also - you are going to feed the baby with a spoon that comes from your unsterile home - and even if it has been through the steriliser, it will not actually be sterile (in order to achieve this, the sterilizer would have to go up to 140 degrees centigrade and 40 pounds-per-square-inch of steam pressure). Even if it was properly, surgically sterile to start with, it would become unsterile as soon as you touched it with your unsterile hands.

Just don't do what I did!!!!! Decided to get the freezer ice bags! Cooked and puréed to my hearts content, thinking how clever I was......puréed food does not fit through the tiny gap water does! Lol

Rubber trays worked fine though!

Hmm, thanks for all your replies. I bought some new trays in as we only had the bags! They are quite small but I guess that's no bad thing!

Candleshoe my baby is rolling and licking the carpet, clothes, etc nothing is sterile and her body needs to learn to cope with germs. Nothing stays sterile, as soon as you open your jar of baby food you let germs in not to mention the spoon! We have only been sterilising her bottles, spoons and bowls are just washed in hot soapy water!

Thanks for all your advice!