Sneaky Chef - Week 2

Pass and Fail...this week I tried 3 recipies...2 passed, 2 failed.

Chocolate Pancakes were a big hit. Sneaky ingredients were purple puree (spinach and blueberries) and Oat bran. Kids loved them, I liked them - they were actually too chocolatey for my taste - more like dessert than breakfast - but if you like chocolate - you'd love them.

Pizza w/ boosted up sauce. We often make "Shaun's mini pizzas", where I lay out all the ingredients and the kids make their own mini pizzas on boboli crusts. (I make mine on flatbread tortilla's and it's super healthy and low cal for me). So this time, I boosted the pizza sauce I make by adding orange puree (carrots and sweet potatoes). Kids/husband never knew a thing. Point 2 for the week for the sneaky mommy chef!

Mighty Tots - uh-not so mighty. The book has this great recipe for making your own tater tots - a food my kids love. You are supposed to use frozen hashbrowns, oat bran to boost the fiber, and white bean puree to add in some protien. Perfect for what I need to get more of for the non-eater, Ainsley. I never got them to form into Tots. They fell apart as I cooked them. I even tried making it into one big "hasbrown" instead and it still fell apart. Not to mention you have to use quite a bit of oil to form them - so that's not good. I will say they tasted good, just were not forming into anything I could really serve. I think this one is a no-go for us.

Chicken Tenders - disappointing. The book has it's own "breading" recipe and you use it to make these tenders. It uses chopped up almonds in the breading - but my kids noticed those right off and didn't like that strange crunch. (Maybe if I ground those down really tiny they'd stand out less though). The main boost her is you hide some orange puree in the egg wash you dip the chicken in before breading it. I chose the baking method, but the breading pretty much fell off the tenders. (maybe the frying method is better for this - but that wouldn't be as healthy). Overall - my kids like my home made tenders much better (using basic shake n' bake) - and it is a lot less work/mess. Besides with just a dunk in the puree, I'm not sure how much boost they'd get out of it. Probably better to boost the bbq sauce or ketchup they are dipping in and they'd get more. ;-)