Tuesday, August 3, 2010

Deceptively Delicious, Recipe 4

For tonight's recipe, I tried the Peanut Butter and Jelly Muffins.  They are fairly simple to make and, as always, contain a hidden vegetable.  Tonight's vegetable was carrots!

After telling Chuck and Emma that I would make these over the past weekend, and never getting around to it, I finally made them tonight.  Honestly, I probably would have waited until tomorrow, or even another day, but Chuck asked about them.  He really has been a trooper through all of this!

After making homemade pizza for dinner, I decided to whip these little babies up.  But, before I go into detail about them, let me tell you about my pizza!

I subscribe to Everyday Food Magazine, which is a Martha Stewart publication.  They always have really great recipes that are easy!  One of my favorite recipes is their basic pizza dough.  It takes about 10 minutes to mix, and an hour to rise, then voila!  Delicious, and fresh pizza dough!

Anyway, once I got my dough ready, I prepared my sauce.  I cheated on this and used a jar of pizza sauce... But, to redeem myself, I got out some of the carrot puree and mixed in with the jarred sauce.  Remember when I said that tomato sauce hides just about anything!  It really does.

Next, I finished up the pizza with my family's favorite toppings...cheese, cheese, and more cheese... and popped it in the oven.  We enjoyed our pizza and then I got to work on the muffins.

Like I said, the recipe was fairly simple.  I whipped up the batter, topped it of with strawberry preserves and into the oven they went.  Once they were finished, I let them cool for a few minutes and served one to Chuck and Emma.  Chuck had a few bites and I asked what he thought.

 His reply, "It's good.  I taste the cauliflower."

"Really?" I asked.  "There isn't any cauliflower in it."

"Oh, well, what's in it?  I taste that."

I told him there were carrots in it and he said that it tasted like carrots.  I tried a bite and it tasted nothing like carrots.  It actually tasted like my hot peanut butter toast with jelly.

He put his empty plate on the counter and walked away.  I was pretty sure that I would have to consider this recipe a failure.  I put his plate away and continued cleaning the kitchen.  Chuck came back into the kitchen a few minutes later asking for his plate.  I was like, 'the empty one?'  He said yes, and said that he wanted another muffin.

It was at this moment that I realized that this recipe was, in fact, another success!  Yay!  He finished his second muffin and told me that the first one was good, but the second one is better.

I think the key to these is definitely letting them cool off before serving.  Granted, I thought they were good even while warm.  Also, I think that Chuck was really trying to identify the hidden vegetable.  I don't think an unsuspecting consumer would even think that there might be a hidden veggie in these!

One thing I will tell you is that when filling your muffin tin with the batter, use less than you normally would.  I filled the muffin tin like I would with any other batter, and it was too much.  You are supposed to top the uncooked batter with strawberry preserves ,which I did.  But, mine ran out over the edges when the muffins began rising.  They were NOT pretty!

Oh well!  They sure did taste good!

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