adorable but uneaten

Thanks to the advice of a friend I tried to be a little less Martha this morning and set B. up in the kitchen with flour, sugar, baking powder and cinnamon. Anything made with flour and sugar is "baking" to him, it never actually has to get cooked. He just wants to measure dry goods and stir them around.
Huge waste of ingredients but I want the kid to be comfortable in the kitchen. Especially since I'd made this sweet potato stegosaurus pancake and wanted to make sure he'd eat it by feeling part of the process.
[Snort.]
Long story short, he made a mess, refused to eat the pancake or anything else until he got to school where he ate a plain toaster waffle. So instead of picking up any new and improved eating habits at school, he's narrowing his daytime diet down to white rice, plain pasta and frozen waffles. The horror.
(I swear at some point I'm gonna write a post about all the awesome things my sweet, smart boy does. But today is not that day.)

Pancake Recipe

• 1 cup flour
  
• 3 tablespoons sugar
  
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
  
• Cinnamon (and random assortment of pumpkin pie-like spices if you have them on hand: ginger, nutmeg and all spice)
  
• 3/4 cup milk
  
• 1/4 cup sweet potato or pumpkin puree
  
• 1 egg
  
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
  
• 1 teaspoon vanilla
  

Measure out the dry ingredients into a small bowl. In a large bowl, whisk together all the wet ingredients until well combined. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir until just combined and any major lumps of flour are dissolved. (The batter will still be a little lumpy). Heat non-stick frying pan on medium heat and pour on the batter (I just used a sandwich bag with the tip cut off to squeeze out a stegosaurus shape). Cook for about 3-4 minutes until air bubbles start to pop on the surface of the pancake. Flip and cook for about 1 minute on the other side.

more veggies masquerading as cake

My aim was to make a pumpkin spice cake but all I had in the pantry was a can of pureed sweet potato so I used that instead. This recipe (which I modified slightly from epicurious) is yummy, moist and sort of dense. Perfect for fall. B's only had a small piece because he's on some weird hunger strike that includes rejecting pizza and mac and cheese. All he's had to eat today are a handful of Cheerios and cheese crackers so he doesn't get cake, even if it's healthy-ish.

Spice Cake

• 2 cups all-purpose flour, plus extra for dusting the pan
• 1 1/2 cups sugar
• 2 teaspoons baking soda
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon allspice
• 3 large eggs, beaten
• 1 cup vegetable oil (I ran out and had to use half a cup of olive oil to supplement but it worked out great)
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1 can pumpkin or sweet potato purée

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease and flour a 13x9" sheet cake pan. Set aside.

In one bowl, mix together the flour, sugar, baking soda, salt and spices. In another bowl beat the eggs, oil and sugar.

Add the egg mixture to the flour mixture and stir until just combined. Add the pumpkin (or sweet potato) and stir just until combined.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 30 mins. The original recipe called for 35 to 40 minutes but that was way too long for my oven.

I also made a cream cheese frosting but it didn't come out that well so I'm not even going to bother listing here.

if i had a garden...

I would grow zucchini just so I could make this double chocolate zucchini bread I found online. OMG. So tasty but not even remotely healthy tasting which meant everyone in the house enjoyed it.

I used to hate when my mother fed us vegetables masquerading as dessert but, then again, I ate my vegetables. So while I'm troubled by the trickery and remain a chocolate purist at heart, some tough love is in order for the picky guys in this house. 

Anyway, I made just a few tweaks since I was using what I had in my pantry but it looks like Under the High Chair modified her recipe from Joy of Cooking so it all works out :)

Double Chocolate Zucchini Cake

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• 1 tsp. baking soda
• 1/4 tsp. baking powder
• 1/4 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
• 1/2 cup canola oil
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 large eggs
• 1 tsp. vanilla
• 1 1/2 cup grated, raw zucchini (I used 2 medium size zucchinis)
• 3/4 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips (or chopped up bakers chocolate, which is what I had) 

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9x5x3″ loaf pan. Set aside.

Grate the zucchini using a medium sized grater. (I used a cheese grater.) Set aside.

In a large bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, baking powder, salt, and cinnamon. Set aside.

In another bowl, beat the oil, sugar, eggs, and vanilla with a hand mixer until well blended. Fold in the grated zucchini. Add the flour mixture, beating just until combined. Then stir in the chocolate chips.

Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and bake until the bread has risen and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. The original recipe suggested about 55-65 minutes. I found this way too long for my oven and pulled it at 45 minutes. Place on a wire rack to cool for 10 minutes, then remove the bread from the pan and cool completely.

what worked, what didn't

Stepped up my hidden fruit & veggie efforts this week. Spinach brownies from Deceptively Delicious were a win. Oatmeal with a hidden spoonful of applesauce worked too. Green eggs were a big fat fail. Two out of three ain't bad, right? Tho I'm gonna keep refining the brownie recipe because the texture is a little too rubbery for me. As I make this stuff (like last week's carrot cake) I realize I'm not interested in making health food. I just want to make food that's healthy. So I'm all for incorporating good stuff in my recipes but I don't want to cut out all the fat and sugar. I think if B. has brownies, they should be rich and special. Not just a casual snack. And that's my 2 cents.

Spinach Brownies

3 ounces semisweet chocolate
1/2 cup apple sauce (the cookbook called for carrot puree but I didn't have any)
1/2 cup spinach puree
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/3 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
2 tablespoons margarine (I swapped and used butter)
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 large egg whites
3/4 cup flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Preheat oven to 350. Coat an 8x8 inch baking pan with cooking spray (I used parchment paper instead). Melt the chocolate with the butter over very low heat. In a large bowl combine the melted chocolate & butter with the spinach and apple puree, sugar, cocoa powder and vanilla, whisk until smooth and creamy, about 1 to 2 minutes. Whisk in the egg whites. Stir in the flour, baking powder and salt with a spoon. Pour the batter into the pan and bake for 35 to 40 minutes. Seinfeld has a great tip, saying not to serve the brownies warm because the spinach flavor disappears once they're cool.

it's been a long week...

Most of SATC2 sucked but there was one moment when Charlotte freaked out and locked herself in the pantry to get away from the kids. I watched the movie on a flight from L.A. to NYC and teared up while watching her meltdown - thanks god no one was paying any attention to my blubbering over such a crap movie with this one redeeming motherhood moment. Anyway, I had that moment today. Only instead of locking myself away I started hacking at a 3-pound Valrhona chocolate slab we have in the baking cupboard, (which was inevitable since we don't have any other kind of dessert in the house right now and we're out of liquor and/or wine).
Part of the frustration is I made some healthy-ish oatmeal cookies with B. earlier today (recipe below). He loves oatmeal so the idea behind this was to make a portable snack, sort of like a homemade granola bar, that he could enjoy. And he was totally into helping me add and stir ingredients. Only he refused to try the cookies once they were baked. So take that all you parenting books and blogs that say kids will try anything they've had a hand in making. Not true!
And then dinner (chicken sausages, pizza bread, which is basically homemade focaccia, and roasted brussel sprouts) went totally unappreciated by all dudes in the house--sidebar: I wasn't expecting anyone but me to enjoy the brussel sprouts--until I literally threw a piece of sausage in B.'s mouth while he was yawning (he was otherwise gritting his teeth) and then he loved it and ate a bunch. Except instead of being grateful that he was finally eating and enjoying the sausage, all I could think was, "You little mother effer, I knew you'd like it. Why couldn't you just trust me and eat it in the first place." Like I said, it's been a long week. So after chomping down on a bunch of Valrhona, I hacked up some more chocolate and added the chunks to the leftover oatmeal cookie dough. Somehow seems like a fortuitous salvage of the neglected cookies and my Friday night.

Oatmeal Cookies

The inspiration for these came from the awesome Smitten Kitchen blog but I cut down on the sugar and added some applesauce since I figured B. might not like the raisins suggested for this recipe.

1/2 cup butter, room temperature
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1 egg
1/4 cup applesauce (or half of one of those little Knotts containers)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups instant oats

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream together butter and brown sugar. Add the egg, applesauce and vanilla and blend well. Smitten's blog says to whisk the flour, baking soda, cinnamon and salt together in a separate bowl before mixing with the wet ingredients but I just measure and dumped them straight in because I hate washing extra bowls.
Because the applesauce makes a fairly wet batter, I refrigerated the mix for about an hour before baking. I use a Silpat mat (nothing EVER sticks, it's amazing) but the original recipe calls for parchment paper. And then baked for about 12 minutes.

DISCLAIMER: T. ate two cookies and then decided he didn't like them. They are on the healthier side. So don't make these if you're expecting the full fatty version. I do have a richer oatmeal cookie recipe somewhere that I'll post later.

yummy apple muffins!

Another rainy day meant we had to stay home but it gave me the chance to make these apple muffins (originally from Bon Appetit). They're so good and so easy compared to other muffin recipes. I even let B. help and make a huge mess--since I'm working to get over the whole Martha Stewart perfection thing before I give the kid a complex :)

Apple Muffins
1 stick (8 tablespoons) butter
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup whole milk
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon (plus a pinch of whatever else you've got in the pantry: allspice, ginger or nutmeg)
1 peeled and grated apple

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Put liners in muffin cups. Whisk together butter, brown sugar, milk, egg and vanilla until well mixed. Measure out the dry ingredients and stir gently with the milk mixture. Fold in the grated apple. Divide batter between the muffin cups (makes about 10-12) and bake for about 20-25 minutes.

eat yer veggies!

Week 2 of being at home (I have some notes saved from last week that I'll be posting soon) and it's been mostly snot and Baby Einstein DVDs. We're all sick and had to skip the art and music classes I signed up for last week. With that in mind I made a tomato sauce last night with a ton of hidden vegetables for extra nutrients. B.'s been really picky and since I want him to keep eating (and not throw a fit and get all blubbery) I've been a real pushover lately. Poor boy doesn't realize the tough love in store once he gets better. Anyway, I grated one carrot, one zucchini and one eggplant into a pan with garlic, one chopped roasted red pepper and a 16 oz box of Pomi tomatoes and then pureed with a hand blender once everything had melted together over medium heat and tossed with macaroni and ricotta. That's five vegetables at once. Mommy FTW!

beets really aren't that bad

I put so much effort into feeding B. a healthy, balanced diet that I've really felt the need to step it up myself, get healthy and set a better example. Which fits in with this great Mark Bittman article about making family meals a priority. To boil it down, don't say you're too busy to cook and then settle in to watch an hour of TV says Bittman. (Busted!) Just make the time. Which brings us to these beets. I've been meaning to experiment with more veggies, including some golden yellow beets I found at the farmer's market. I roasted them up to make a nice grown-up salad and, bonus, B. was perfectly happy to eat chopped up beets (which is way more adventurous than I was at his age, or even six months ago!).

Roasted Beets with Orange Vinaigrette and Goats Cheese
6 beets with stems cut off but skin on
3 tablespoons olive oil
2 ounces fresh goat cheese
1/2 orange
Salt and pepper to taste

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Place the beets (skin on) in a baking dish, drizzle with two tablespoons of olive oil and cover well with aluminum foil. Roast for about 40 minutes or until the beets are tender. Once the beets have cooled, the skin peels off easily. Cut the beets into chunky slices and arrange on a serving platter. Zest and juice the orange and whisk together with the leftover tablespoon of olive oil. Drizzle the beets with the orange vinaigrette. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and top with crumbled goats cheese.

*This is a modified recipe from New Flavors for Vegetables

best banana bread ever

Now that we need to keep the house constantly stocked with food (funny how babies want to eat every fricking day) I always have bananas around. But we don't always get to them before they go bad. So have been perfecting my mom's banana bread recipe to deal with all the overripe fruit and I think I nailed it with this one (baked during B.'s one and only nap Sunday). Plus I baked it in a bundt pan, which takes less time and guarantees it'll be cooked in the middle when you take it out.

Banana Bread
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1/2 cup butter at room temperature
2 eggs
2-3 ripe mashed bananas (seriously the darker the better)
2 cups of flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 cup milk
1 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 cup sour cream (sorta optional but makes WAY moister)
*chocolate chips (very optional and I don't use when baking for Ben)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Cream the butter and sugar together. Add the eggs and mashed bananas and blend all together. Add half the flour and all of the salt, baking powder and baking soda. Beat until just combined. Add the milk, vanilla and sour cream and beat until just combined. Add the rest of the flour and beat until just combined. Add chocolate chips at this stage if you want. Pour into a large bundt pan and bake for about 45 minutes or until the top if firm and a straw comes out clean.

baby puree ideas

So exciting, K.'s just about to start cooking for her baby soon so we got around to talking about what to serve. I never got really sophisticated with my purees. B. did sweet potatoes when he was five and a half months, followed by pear, apple, carrots and broccoli over the next four weeks. I tried doing peas but found them too fibrous and had to push through a strainer to get it smooth enough. And zucchini was too watery. So we did a lot of the same old for a while and then chunkier food by the time he was eight months. (Plus discovered the Peter Rabbit organic purees which sorta took me off the hook. Except T. recently ordered a case of 30 and now B.'s stopped eating them. LOL.) But after talking to L. I was totally impressed by her combos and wished I had asked her about this a year ago: pear-pea (she has a Blendtec which obviously kicks the crap out of my little hand held mixer) apple-strawberry, apple-prune, apple-sweet potato and pear-blueberry. Yum! I might even try the last one at this stage because I think I could convince B. to eat blueberries this way.

no double dipping!

We have officially become a household that needs to put out two serving bowls when guests come over. One for grownups and one for kids. So judgmental (who knows how I'll feel the next time I actually host a party?) but I hate people who let kids slobber all over the crudites. I fed B. hummus this weekend, sucked off the end of a long carrot stick (seriously, a huge carrot so it couldn't be a choking hazard). And he could not get enough. Granted the giant dipping carrot might have been part of the appeal but I also read that dips come in as one of the Top Nutritious Foods Kids Find Delicious.
To be honest, I prefer white bean hummus when I have time to make it--it's just sweeter and smoother. You can add tahini and fresh herbs and all that good stuff but I go with a pretty simple version in the food processor:

White Bean Dip
1 can cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
2 tablespoons lemon juice
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 small garlic clove

Puree all the ingredients in a food processor. Add salt and pepper to taste.

saturdays are our favorite good food days

Sweet potato pancakes for breakfast (with this recipe). (Do you have any idea how hard it is to find canned pumpkin six months from Thanksgiving?! Hence the substitution.) Roast beef for lunch (what can I say, the kid likes red meat.) And then I slipped chopped up spinach into his mac n cheese for dinner. Woot!
And then we bundled him up for an early meal at SugarFish. Couldn't feed him the sushi, obviously, but we let him suck on the edamame and eat the beans, which somehow he enjoyed more than he does at home.
Oh and then I got a piece of Celebration cake (vanilla cake with confetti sprinkles baked in and vanilla frosting--one of those kid at heart type of cakes) from Susie Cakes on the way home. OMG. I've never been a huge fan of the place but this was insanely good. Though I had to keep hidden until Ben went to bed because we didn't need a repeat of the birthday episode.

cake 'n' stuff

I'm not sure I'd describe it as the best birthday cake ever (the term I used to search for a recipe on Google) but it's a tasty cake that didn't droop in the middle and was made from organic ingredients with no yellow dye #17 in sight. Could have been a little fluffier but maybe I overmixed? I had some leftover batter and make 2 cupcakes which cooked faster and so were actually moister than the cake itself. Which should work out perfectly for the 3 dozen cupcakes I'm planning to make tonight for Birthday No. 2 at the beach.
Thanks to SmittenKitchen for the recipe...

Birthday Cake
4 cups plus 2 tablespoons cake flour (not self-rising)
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 sticks (1 cup) unsalted butter, softened
2 cups sugar
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
4 large eggs, at room temperature
2 cups buttermilk, well-shaken

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter two 9-inch round cake pans and line with circles of parchment paper, then butter parchment. (I used 8-inch pans and just kept a little batter out.)

Sift together flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt in a medium bowl. In a large mixing bowl, beat butter and sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium speed until pale and fluffy, then beat in vanilla. Add eggs 1 at a time, beating well and scraping down the bowl after each addition. At low speed, beat in buttermilk until just combined (mixture will look curdled). Add flour mixture in three batches, mixing until each addition is just incorporated.

Spread batter evenly in cake pan, then rap pan on counter several times to eliminate air bubbles. Bake until golden and a wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 35 to 40 minutes (maybe the pan size but mine took a good 45 minutes to cook). Cool in pan on a rack 10 minutes, then run a knife around edge of pan. Invert onto rack and discard parchment, then cool completely, about 1 hour.

trying new things

Big weekend for little B. He had scrambled eggs with melted cheese. Two bites of tuna salad sandwich. And instead of our regular pancake breakfast he tried French toast this morning. Okay, I admit it was easier to make and less messy but since I made it with whole wheat bread and a little applesauce I felt like it was just as nutritious if not more.
And for C. who said why not cook on weekends and freeze food, I would now like to say it's just about impossible to run after an 11-month-old and make soup or meatballs at the same time. I started making a cream of broccoli soup at 1 p.m. this afternoon and planned to finish up during naptime but he never took a siesta so I just finished pureeing and washing dishes at 7:30 tonight. Bleh.

French Toast
2 pieces whole wheat bread
1 egg
1 tablespoon milk
1 teaspoon apple sauce
pinch cinnamon

Preheat a Teflon pan on medium heat. Cut both pieces of bread into 4 strips. (For some reason a friend of mine calls this French Toast soldiers?) Whisk the egg, milk, apple sauce and cinnamon in a deep bowl. Dip each strip of bread in the mix so both sides are coated. Fry about 2 minutes on each side or until toasty brown.

1st best pasta sauce

This comes from "Cooking for Baby." There's probably tons of other great, healthful pasta sauces I just like how easy this one is.

Roasted Red Pepper & Goat Cheese Puree

1 large red pepper
1 1/2 ozs goat cheese

You can either buy the roasted red pepper in a jar or make your own. I toast the red pepper in my toaster oven for 20 minutes. While it's still hot, put the pepper in a baggie and seal which helps steam off the skin. Once it's cool enough to handle, peel off all the skin and remove the seeds and stem. Puree the red pepper and goat cheese until smooth and creamy. Add about 1 spoonful of red pepper cheese mix for each bowl of pasta. So good!

2nd best pasta sauce

This recipe is a little more effort but so yummy plus healthier than mac and cheese every night. I don't remember where I found this, it's actually a zucchini spread that's meant to go on crostini but I tossed it with noodles and Ben ate it up.

Zucchini Puree

1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 small onion chopped
4 zucchini chopped (with the tops and bottoms removed)
4 cloves of garlic
12 basil leaves chopped
parmesan to taste
salt & pepper to taste

Saute the onions in the olive oil on low heat until soft and translucent. Add the zucchini, garlic and basil. Cook over medium heat until the zucchini is well cooked and squishy. Puree the zucchini mix. It works out to about a heaping spoonful of zucchini mix to one bowl of warm noodles. Then top with salt & pepper and parmesan. Stir well. Then you can freeze the rest of the mix in individual baggies so it's easy to reheat a little bit at a time.

positive thinking

Having watched Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution last night (so good and so surprising that it's exec produced by Ryan Seacrest?!) I decided that I should be a little more positive about Ben's diet since at least he doesn't mind eating some vegetables and hasn't eaten a nugget yet (seriously gross when you see how they're made). He's been doing sweet potato puree since he could eat solids but a couple of months ago, once he started gumming solids, I roasted chopped sweet potatoes with regular potatoes and carrots and he can't get enough. Plus now that he can pick up little pieces (that start around 9 months) he loves to feed it to himself.

Roast Root Vegetables
1 peeled sweet potato, chopped into bite size pieces
3 carrots, chopped into bite size pieces
3 small red potatoes, chopped into bite size pieces
About 2 tablespoons olive oil
Fresh rosemary or thyme if you have it

Preheat oven to 400 degree. Peel and chop all the vegetables. Put on a baking sheet or baking dish and toss with olive oil and pinch of herbs if you've got them (totally not necessary). Roast in the oven for about 20 minutes until the veggies are soft.

*I'm totally on board with everything Jamie does but I wonder if other people thought the show was preachy?

so much for keen-wa

I'd heard so many good things about quinoa (pronounced keen-wa I recently learned) that I figured it was a sure thing. It's a grain, it's a green leafy vegetable, it's high in protein -- fricking steak, spinach and whole wheat goodness all rolled into one little nutty brown bead. So I steamed some quinoa up couscous-style with vegetable stock and added a mess of sauteed veggies (1 diced red pepper, 1 diced zucchini, 1 bunch diced asparagus, 1/2 diced onion and 4 cloves diced garlic). The reaction was instant, he spit it right out. Wah-wah. But I thought it was delicious (and way tastier than brown rice if you're looking for a substitute). Oh well, tomorrow I try again but this time I'm gonna coat it with tomato sauce and see if that makes a difference...

pancake breakfast

Cooking For Baby is this great, beautifully illustrated, cookbook I've been using for inspiration ever since I made Ben's first fruit purees at age 6 months. The recipes range from really basic to fairly exotic for a kid (chicken and mango quesedillas anyone?). I've been riffing on their recipe for pumpkin pancakes since Feb. 6 (Ben was almost 10 months old that first time). Now I'm using pear puree and it's like breakfast crack -- neither one of us can get enough. They're not necessarily the fluffiest (that honor goes to these pancakes) but they're delicious and relatively good for you -- at least IMHO.

Pear Pancakes
1 cup flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
3 tablespoons brown sugar
3/4 cup milk
2 eggs
2 tablespoons vegetable oil (or melted butter but if you've got rugrats underfoot it just seems like the path of least resistance is best)
1/4 cup pear puree (or pumpkin puree, I haven't tried apple yet but assume it works just as well)
1 teaspoon vanilla

Stir the dry ingredients together (flour, baking powder and brown sugar). In a separate bowl or measuring cup whisk together the wet ingredients (milk, eggs, oil, pear puree and vanilla). Stir the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until everything is just mixed together. Preheat frying pan to medium heat, coat the bottom of the pan with a little oil or butter. Pour in batter and cook on one side until bubbles begin to pop on the surface. Flip and cook for about 2 minutes more on the other side.