Beets in Your Pancakes, Anyone?

French toast with pumpkin, pancakes with beets and macaroni & cheese with white beans and cauliflower...sound yummy? Surprisingly, they are great! And what kid wouldn't think pink pancakes are fun? These are a few examples of recipes from Jessica Seinfield's Deceptively Delicious cookbook. The concept is to hide pureed veggies in food to boost the nutritional content and get more veggies into your kids (and your hubby and/or yourself!).

My mother-in-law gave me this cookbook for Christmas along with a starter set of frozen purees that she made for me. What a great gift! Because the purees were already made for me, I started trying some of the recipes right away. Nearly every recipe we've tried has been a HUGE hit with our whole family, kids and adults alike. Every few months I spend approx. one hour on a couple evenings making/bagging more purees to stock my freezer. Whenever I want to try a recipe, the purees are ready for me. Here's a tip: Freeze purees in snack-size baggies in the amount you'll need for the recipes (mostly 1/4 c., but I also fill some baggies with 1/2 c. portions, since some recipes call for 1/2 cups). Label the baggies with a marker, for example 1/4 c. cauliflower. Lay them flat in your freezer. Having them flat makes them much easier to store and they thaw quickly in a bowl of hot tap water.

Our favorite recipe - Chocolate cupcakes with avocado and cauliflower. There is an entire cup of avocado in the cupcake batter, which makes the cupcakes rich, moist and delicious! Made these for my son's birthday. They were the best cupcakes I've ever had, hands down! Oh, and one more tip: In most recipes for cookies, cupcakes, muffins, etc., when it calls for all-purpose flour, I always substitute at least half of it with whole-wheat flour (sometimes up to 2/3). In this recipe, since it was the first time I made them, I tried half. They turned out so well, next time I'll try more whole-wheat, less all-purpose. How awesome that when eating a birthday cupcake, my kids were eating avocado, cauliflower, and whole grains!