As your baby's tastes develop Heinz Farley's Rusks can be crushed up and added to fruit or vegetable purees. Or for a tasty dessert, how about adding yogurt or custard. These Banana Bread rusks start out as a sweet, dense banana loaf and go on to become deliciously crunchy hunks of dunking joy. The process of slowly drying out the rusks fills your house with the sweet aroma of toasty banana bread for several hours (which my husband found so torturous he claimed he had to leave the house as he couldn’t get any work done.) That is indeed the most difficult part of the recipe, enduring the long wait while the rusks have dry out and then cool. Your reward? A hot cuppa with the perfect companion! Ingredients: Here is our favourite recipe. It makes 100 melt-in-your-mouth biscuits that are perfect on their own or as an alternative in US baking recipes: I quite like oats as a base for baby biscuits, as they are naturally relatively high in iron. I also choose sweet potato (or Orange Kumara as we call it here in New Zealand) as a main ingredient as it too is a vegetarian source of iron, and is typically well-liked by babies. They’re made of a basic dough that usually consists of cake flour, salt, sugar, eggs, melted butter and a leavener like baking powder or sometimes yeast.

Rusks going soft? Make sure you keep them in an airtight container. Rusks with nuts in them may last for a shorter time period than those without. You can also dry them out again in a low oven. Social Media Rusks are relatively simple to make – the dry ingredients and wet ingredients are combined. As always with flour, don’t overmix or they’ll be tough. Bake for 1 hour or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean.*Chef’s Tip: If the top becomes too dark during the baking, cover with foil. STEP TWO: Roll or press out the dough and cut according to how baby likes them. If cut into long pieces, you’ll get about six. Cut them smaller to get up to 12.This piece was inspired by our baking contributor and food blogger extraordinaire, Katelyn Allegra of The Kate Tin. She recently posted a recipe for Maltabella rusks and it got me thinking that we don’t really play around with flavours and ingredients in rusk-making as much as we could! Apart from commercial varieties (have you seen the banana bread rusks on sale at Woolies? and of course there were the Lemon Cream flavoured Ouma rusks that made an appearance on shelves a few months ago). These biscuits from My Everyday Champagne use baby cereal and oat flour along with a combination of spices and pureed pear. We can’t think of a healthier (or yummier) combination to solve your little one’s teething problems! You can even substitute the pear with any other fruit puree that your baby likes. It is one of the best teething biscuits for 6 months. 10. Prune Baby Biscuits This banana teething biscuits recipe from The Road to Loving my Thermo Mixer is super easy, with just 2 ingredients! The technique of baking them for a while before cutting them into rusks and baking again is just genius! You get the perfect amount of hardness required for a teething biscuit. 4. Sweet Potato Teething Biscuits We have a whole treasure trove of recipes to get little tastebuds singing. Here’s some for you to try next:

Farley's Rusks are nutritionally tailored for babies and toddlers, as they're enriched with vitamins and minerals such as iron and Vitamins A, C and D and with added prebiotic that helps support healthy digestion and immunity. Farley's Rusks are not only nourishing but great fun for older children too.

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Cook your teething rusks on the middle shelf of the oven for 10-12 minutes until the edges are slightly golden. Try to take them out when they’re just ready so that they don’t get too dry. Earlier parents used to be real scared about feeding their babies peanut butter, but research has shown that there really isn’t anything to fear. These teething biscuits from the National Peanut Board sound really yummy – even for Mommy! 9. Spiced Baby Cereal Biscuits Now prunes are something we often associate with old people, not young babies. However, these prune baby biscuits from Family Feed Bag will prove that prunes are ideal for everyone, especially when they’re made with homemade prune puree. If you can’t find prunes, don’t stress – use any other fruit puree. 11. Apple Teething Biscuits

Stir together the flour, baking powder, bicarbonate of soda and salt, then add to the banana mixture along with the buttermilk and mix until combined.Teething tots want to chew, chew, chew so here’s something delish for them to gnaw on, made from ingredients you’ve probably got on hand right now. The ingredients of this product include wheat flour, sugar, palm oil, wheat starch, raising agents (ammonium carbonates), calcium carbonate, emulsifier (monoglycerides), niacin, iron, thiamin, riboflavin, vitamin A, and vitamin D. Yet, despite being one of the most popular wafer cookie brands in the United States, they’re not available in the United Kingdom.