I'm equally compulsive and ambivalent about inserting stealth ingredients into the foods my kids eat. I don't own the Jessica Seinfeld book, but I've heard it hotly contested - this idea that the best way to get vegetables into kids is to hide them in things they already love. After all, if the only cauliflower that tykes encounter is pureed in their beloved mac & cheese, how will they ever learn to really eat it?
It's a good argument. And one I probably would have made before I met my strong-willed children. Maybe yours are different, but mine only eat things they actually like. And now that the 3 year old has discovered that he has his own identity, he likes to exert it by liking the opposite of everything his brother cares for.
Here is a list of the vegetables they'll both happily eat in their pure form:
Well ... this is a slight exaggeration. They both like marinara sauce.
After years of self-examination and head-shaking, I've decided that I do actually want them to consume vitamin A and fiber and things. So I stealth vegetables into baked goods. I did it long before Mrs. Seinfeld's book, and I've got a few tried and true methods.
So when it was cupcake time the other day, I pulled out my 2nd most frequent technique: the pureed-spinach-in-chocolate-maneuver. Here's the recipe, which I based on the Joy of Cooking's Oatmeal Sheet Cake:
1 cup old-fashioned rolled oats
1 1/2 cups boiling water
1/2 cup white whole wheat flour
3/4 cup unbleached white flour
1/4 cup cocoa powder (dark if possible)
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 teaspoon powdered dried orange peel
1/2 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter
1 cup steamed or thawed frozen spinach, very well drained
1 cup sugar
1 cup packed light or dark brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vani.lla
Combine the oatmeal and hot water and let them stand for 20 minutes.
All of the rest of the ingredients should be at room temp. Preheat the oven to 350 F. Grease or line the cups in a cupcake tin (if memory serves, this will make 12 full size and 24 mini cupcakes).
Whisk together the flours, soda, spices and salt. In a separate bowl beat the butter and sugars until they're lightened in color and texture. Years ago I learned that this step is the crux of baking - where your texture and rise and everything happen. Don't wimp out here!
Add the eggs and vanilla and use a blender or immersion blender to mix in the spinach until it's pureed to smithereens. And in the oat mixture, then the flour mixture. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, about 20 - 25 minutes. Let cool briefly in the pan, and then turn out onto a rack to cool completely.
I frosted the larger ones with dark chocolate fudge frosting, and then showed what a complete sucker I am by adding rainbow sprinkles, along with the M&M-ish sunflower seed candies that my little guy painstakingly removes from each one. The minis I left unfrosted so as to be more appropriate for morning snack, but then a friend absconded with them to a D&D game and that was the last I saw of those.
Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I have to confess that these cupcakes don't quite reach the level of Bad Ass. They're a little bit crumbly, and the oatmeal makes the texture a little weird/chewy. But they're chocolatey and reasonably full of nutritious things and the monkeyboys eat them so they'll probably make repeat appearances.
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