About a month ago I bought a new cookbook called How To Feed A Family and intended to write about it for my blog. Each week I put “write review” on my to do list, but found myself wanting to try a new recipe and putting the review on hold. That being said, I have now made nine recipes from How To Feed a Family, loved them, and plan on making more.
While not every recipe would be appropriate for my children, most were hits as well as flexible enough that certain things could be left out or added in to accomodate my family's tastes. Here is a run down of the recipes I tried.
Baby Cakes: Mini pumpkin muffins with a cream cheese icing. My kids loved these muffins so much they didn’t even ask for the icing, which meant double icing for me!
Sweet Potato French Toast: Easy and nutritious way to make French toast. You cannot taste the sweet potato. I swear I made this for breakfast every morning for a week.
ABC Quesadillas: Not the biggest hit with my kids, but my husband and I really liked them.
Kale and Red Pepper Cheesy Calzones: Delicious! Even though my children questioned the kale, they ate them. If you know your kids won’t eat the kale, change the vegetables or keep the filling only cheese.
Crunchy Baked Fish and Chips: Great recipe. It is not easy to get my children to eat fish, but with a crunchy coating that resembles chicken fingers, it makes things easier. Also, this was a great way to get my children to start eating homemade French fries instead of the store-bought frozen ones.
Sweet Potato Hashbrowns: I love this recipe. Laura Keogh and Ceri Marsh were nice enough to let me share it with YMC readers even before I wrote this review. I had never had sweet potatoes like this before. Sweet, salty, crunchy, syrupy. They're easy and delicious.
Lemon Linguini: My children didn’t love the lemon part of this dish, so I left some whole wheat pasta plain for them, and at least the whole family was still eating pasta. This was one of my favourite recipes.
Whole Grain Muffins: I substituted chocolate chips for blueberries knowing my kids would like them better. This recipe reminded me of a healthier and tastier version of the Quaker oatmeal chocolate chip muffin mix that I secretly love. My children gobbled these up.
Old Fashioned Mac and Cheese with Kale Breadcrumbs: I left the kale breadcrumbs out knowing my children would give me a hard time about them, and I was short on time. My whole family loved this recipe; a huge hit. I will be making this once a week for sure.
Baby Cakes
I was given permission to publish this recipe and have these stock piled in my freezer and take a couple out to send as a snack a couple times a week for my son's lunch (without the icing). The addition of pumpkin puree makes these the perfect treat to serve at a Halloween party.
Ingredients:
½ cup (125 ml) butter, softened
½ cup (125 ml) granulated sugar
½ cup (125 ml) brown sugar, packed
2 eggs
1 can (14 oz/398 g) pumpkin puree (or 1 2/3 cups (185 ml) of homemade puree
1 cup (250 ml) all-purpose flour
1 tsp (5 ml) baking powder
½ tsp (2 ml) baking soda
1 tsp (5 ml) ground cinnamon
¼ tsp (1 ml) ground nutmeg
¼ tsp (1 ml) ground ginger
¼ tsp (1 ml) salt
Icing
1 package (4 oz/110 g) cream cheese, softened
¼ cup (60 ml) butter, softened
1 tsp (5 ml) vanilla extract
1 ½ cups (375 ml) confectioners’ sugar
Preheat oven to 350 (180 C). Lightly grease mini muffin tins or line them with cupcake papers.
For the cupcakes, in a large bowl, mix the butter and both sugars together with an electric mixer until light and creamy. Add the eggs and mix again. Add the pumpkin puree and mix well.
In another bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger and salt. Add the dry ingredients to the wet and stir until just combined. Spoon into the prepared muffin tins, filling each three-quarters full.
Bake for 25 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. Allow to cool for 5 minutes before turning out of the tins to cool completely on a rack.
To make the icing, mix together the cream cheese and butter with an electric mixer until light. Add the vanilla. Gradually add the confectioners’ sugar and continue to mix until smooth. Spread a dollop of icing over each cupcake.
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