Deceptively Delicious - Mama’s little secret
Spinach in Blueberry Oatmeal Bars? Squash in the French Toast? The new cookbook Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld (wife of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, founder of the nonprofit Baby Buggy, and mother of three) takes on the challenge of getting kids to eat their vegetables. Seinfeld's main technique is to puree a wide variety of vegetables and add them to your standard fare. An added bonus is that this technique is a great way to use up the abundance of a CSA farm pickup! Just puree and freeze!
With a pink plaid binding and spot-color illustrations, this book has an approachable, retro feel. It immediately brought to mind my first cookbook, Betty Crocker's Cook Book for Boys and Girls, of 1957 vintage. (I remember poring over that book when I was in grade school, and making Mulligan Stew from its pages for my parents for dinner one night. Heady stuff for a kid! Turns out the book is one of the most requested titles in the Betty Crocker archives, leading to the issue of a facsimile edition in 2003.)
Deceptively Delicious covers some basics first: nutritional guidelines for kids; how to equip the kitchen and stock your pantry; how to make the vegetable and fruit purees called for in the recipes (basically steam or bake and then blend). And then it's on to the recipes, including breakfast, "mealtime" and desserts, with the majority beautifully photographed. Think along the lines of adding cauliflower puree to a tuna salad sandwich; sweet potato puree to tacos (stir in with the meat); chocolate fondue with avocado and carrot purees (?!?); or red pepper puree in sloppy joes. Seinfeld says she developed the recipes to make the purees as invisible as possible.
I was a bit skeptical about adding spinach puree to those Blueberry Oatmeal Bars (see recipe below), but I made them for a family get-together this weekend, and they were a hit. No one suspected the spinach, including my four-year-old son, who has been on an anti-vegetable kick lately. And for breakfast that morning, he ate up his French Toast with squash. Wow! Two vegetables in one day!
This book would make a great baby shower gift or a gift to the parents of young kids.
Blueberry Oatmeal Bars
Crunchy and sweet, but full of spinach! Let the bars cool completely before serving so that the taste of the spinach has a chance to disappear completely. It really does.
Nonstick cooking spray
2 cups old-fashioned oats
1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 tsp. cinnamon
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. pure vanilla extract
3/4 cup Balance trans-fat-free soft tub margarine spread, chilled
1 cup low-sugar blueberry preserves (I used a jar of Blueberry Lavender Preserves from Food For Thought)
1/2 cup spinach puree
Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Coat an 8x8-inch baking pan with cooking spray.
In a large bowl, combine oats, flour, sugar, cinnamon, baking powder, salt and vanilla and stir to mix well.
Add the margarine and cut it quickly into dry ingredients with two knives until the mixture resembles coarse meal and is no longer powdery. Do not overmix; bits of margarine will still be visible.
Set aside about half of the oat mixture; press the rest firmly into the pan. Bake until lightly browned at the edges (but not fully baked), 13 to 15 minutes.
Meanwhile, mix the preserves with the spinach puree in a small bowl.
Spread blueberry mixture over the partially baked oat layer, then sprinkle with reserved oat mixture. Bake until topping is slightly browned, 20 to 25 minutes. Set the pan on a rack to cool completely before cutting into 12 bars.
