Mama's Picky Eater Patrol: Volume 1 (Sweet Potato Pancakes)

Thanks very much to my sister for this guest post!

 Mama's Picky Eater Patrol: Volume 1 

(Sweet Potato Pancakes)

Mommy- 1

Lily Bean- 0

Remember when I told you that I refused to accept Lily Bean's stubborn eating habits without a fight?

Well fight I did- and I won!

Last week I cracked open my copy of Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld. I read the entire book cover to cover, and walked away with a few main ideas:

• Veggie purees are the key to being a sneakster with food- they can be hidden in just about any recipe
• Match purees to recipes that have similar colors (i.e. cauliflower can easily blend in with a mac and cheese dish)
• Likewise, match similar tastes so that the purees can't be detected by the wary toddler's nose.

I settled on a recipe for sweet potato pancakes, and I'm proud to say, that I sort of took the "just wing it" approach. I used the recipe as a guideline and played around a bit with the amounts. Lily Bean LOVES her pancakes for breakfast, so this recipe was especially appealing to me. What could be better than sneaking a VEGETABLE into her innocent, unsuspecting pancake breakfast?

Here's how simple it was!

The tasty lineup:

Oil

Pancake Mix

Cooking Spray

1 Large Sweet Potato

Water

Cinnamon (not picture).

Sweet Potato Puree Prep

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Stab sweet potato a few times with a fork. Bake sweet potato for 1 hour, or until inside is soft and mushy. Remove from oven, cut open, allow to cool.

2. Scoop sweet potato innards into a food processor or blender. Puree until smooth and fairly lump free. (This took me right back to my baby food making days!)

Pancake Prep

1. Combine in a bowl: Pancake mix (I used 2 cups), Sweet Potatoe puree (my potato yielded 1 cup), Water (I used about 1 cup, add more or less as needed to get a good batter consistency), Oil (approx 2 TBSP), and a dash of cinnamon.

2. Whisk together until ingredients are well blended and the lumps are mostly gone.

(Here is mine right before blending the cinnamon.)

3. As you finish blending your ingredients, start heating up your griddle or frying pan. Coat surface with cooking spray. Pour batter as you normally would for pancakes. Adjust the amount to suit your child's portion size. (I made mine big enough for Lily Bean to eat 1 for breakfast with some fruit, usually a banana.)

4. Flip over when bottom starts to brown. Continue flipping a couple more times- until pancakes are cooked all the way through and aren't runny inside.

Behold! Check out this big pile of pancakes-- all secretly LOADED with sweet potato!

5. Place your pancakes in a freezer bag and use a permanent marker to label and date the bag. Freeze.

6. Make pancakes as needed- I either throw them in the toaster or pop them in the microwave for about 30 seconds.

7. The proof: a happy and oblivious eater!

Have a recipe-in-disguise of your own to share? I'd love to hear it! Send them to mamacheaps@gmail.com.

Want to snag a copy of Deceptively Delicious for yourself? Amazon has them for just $9.98 and it ships FREE with Amazon Prime!

*It's also worth mentioning... this recipe was extremely frugal to make. My estimate for 3-4 weeks worth of breakfast: $1.35.

Illustration by Michael Klein