Make-Ahead for Little Miss

today I made-ahead with Little Miss in mind. She is a great eater - loves pizza, yogurt, peanut butter sandwiches, graham crackers and all kinds of fruit but is (like most toddlers, I think) adverse to vegetables. I serve veggies with dinner every night, and she does reluctantly eat some of them, but I figure it couldn't hurt to have some extra "veg-surance," so each of the recipes I cooked today have a little hidden produce.

• Carrot and Cheese Muffins from Top 100 Finger Foods by Annabel Karmel
• a more savory approach to carrot muffins. Little Miss loves cheese, so I knew these would be a hit!
• they smell and taste like the best salad croutons ever
• Oatmeal Blueberry Bars from Deceptively Delicious by Jessica Seinfeld
• fresh blueberries pureed with spinach makes up the filling. once the bars cool, you can't even taste the spinach. Not sure if Little Miss will even get her hands on these - so good!
• Chocolate Cupcakes from Deceptively Delicious
• with hidden avocado! cakes are dense and super-chocolaty.
• basic cream cheese frosting - yum.

Little Miss knows there's something yummy up
there for her!

I kept a few of each out for the week, but I also loaded up the freezer with the extra treats. Muffins are one of my favorite items to have in the freezer because they're so easy to defrost - just pull one out and leave it on the counter for an hour! 

In a taste-test this evening, Little Miss loved the carrot and cheese muffin and was opposed to the cream cheese frosting on the chocolate cupcakes, but she's running a little fever today, so I'll try again with the cupcakes when she's back to normal. And if she still doesn't like them, that's okay with me - I think they're delicious!

On deck for tomorrow, veggie balls from Anabelle Karmel and I'm also planning to try Jessica Seinfeld's sneaky way of getting sweet potatoes into grilled cheese.