baking with vegetables is a great way to get your kids to eat their daily serve
Making sure our kids are eating their daily serves of fruit and vegetables isn’t too difficult. We give them free reign of the fridge crisper and they can help themselves to cherry tomatoes, carrots, apples, strawberries and grapes when they feel hungry. Occasionally for a breakfast treat they get to enjoy a smoothie which always has a handful of spinach and kale blended through. Lunch and dinner also consist of a serve of fruit and a serve of vegetables. Our eldest is now at school full time and has a YumBox for his lunch which has segmented sections for fruit, vegetables, protein, dairy and grains.
What I do find challenging is getting them to try new vegetables with both children avoiding anything too green. While I have caught my youngest biting into a whole broccoli I can’t get him to eat a raw or steamed floret. I can’t convince them that lettuce is edible but they will happily eat ‘leaves’ such as baby spinach and even the leaves off a whole celery. I may have told them a diplodocus ate leaves and doing so is pretty cool!
I have found that baking with vegetables allows my kids to see the vegetables being used in different ways and can introduce them with a positive taste. I don’t hide them as I let the boys help me in the kitchen but if this is necessary in your house – hide away!
Some of my favourite recipes include zucchini, sweet potato, beetroot and carrot. The vegetables act as a replacement for butter and sugar adding to the texture and sweetness of the baked goods.
Chocolate Carrot Cake – This is my go to recipe for a children’s birthday cake and I have used it to make a construction site, dinosaur garden and pirate boat filled with edible treasure. The carrot keeps the cake from drying out and it still has a great texture days after being baked. I also find that it freezes well and with the added orange peel the flavour is spot on. As the cake is quite dense it stacks up well for decorating but is just as enjoyable in a single ring tin topped with a ganache of melted chocolate and butter. It also works well when replacing wheat based flour with gluten free flour.
Against All Grain’s Nut Free Chocolate Zucchini Muffins are a great lunch box snack as they are gluten, dairy and nut free. While my kids don’t need gluten free foods its nice to bake something for them that I can eat too. My go-to gluten flour replacement is normally almond meal and while many schools are now nut-free zones this recipe is a winner all round. Its also great to add some zucchini to my kids diet that they wouldn’t normally eat unless I mix zucchini noodles into their spaghetti bolognaise.
One of my favourite creations is a replication of a caramel flavoured mudcake… sweet potato white chocolate donuts that can also be made into mini muffins or a cake. The recipe uses sweet potato as a replacements for butter and additional sugar – as the sweet potato, dates and white chocolate make the batter sweet enough.
One for the BBQ fans is barbecue brownies. The gooey mixture gets its texture from sweet potato and peanut butter. These can be made in the oven but there is something special about the charcoal and pecan smoke flavour that you can not replicate without baking over hot coals and a chunk of wood.
I recently converted Jamie Oliver’s Epic Chocolate and Beetroot Cake for making in the Thermomix. Grating beetroot, melting chocolate and beating ingredients in the one machine make it a Thermomix favourite. The cake has a beetroot flavour to it but the richness works well with the chocolate. Served with a spoon of yogurt and the kids were asking for seconds.
Hopefully this will inspire you to incorporate vegetables into your baking. If you are already a keen vegetable baker we would love to hear some of your ideas in our comments section below.
