I saw on Pinterest that you can make pancakes and muffins out of baby food. Now that Jack is eating finger foods, he is less interested in all the pureed baby food we have stocked up. Excellent! I can make things he likes out of things he doesn’t like! Bonus: He can feed them to himself!

I set out to make sweet potato/pear pancakes with blueberries. The batter was too thick and they burned almost instantly. I decided to turn them into muffins. I used whole wheat flour and no sugar and these were going to be AWESOME!

Conclusion: They were not awesome. Oliver’s assessment? “These taste… yuck,” in a slightly confused voice. He wanted them to be good. They should have been good. But they were not.

Mistake #1: Trying to make pancakes at all.

Mistake #2: Not using baking powder. They looked more like thick cookies.

Jack liked them though.

For my next trick, I used banana, apple, orange baby food, a sprinkling of sugar and whole wheat flour. They were marginally better. Teddy ate some. Oliver said yuck. Jack loved them.

I tried tiny crustless quiches in muffin tins, thinking of all the wonderful veggies I could pack in them. All I could find in our fridge, though, was some questionable squash, freezer burned green beans and turkey pepperoni. I tossed in some cheese with these ingredients and baked.

They weren’t bad! Teddy, Ed and I had some. Jack sort of liked them. Oliver eschews all things egg, so he didn’t eat any.

Mistake #3: Not greasing the muffin tin. I’m pretty sure we just have to throw it away and buy a new one. That baked on egg is never coming off.

Finally, I actually planned ahead, consulted Pinterest, bought vegetables, cheese, baking powder, all purpose flour and made some savory baby muffins!

• 1 zucchini, grated
• 1/4 small onion, finely diced
• 1/4 red bell pepper, finely diced
• 1 cup Cheddar Cheese, grated
• 2/3 cup Milk
• 1/4 cup Olive Oil
• 2 Eggs
• 2 cups All Purpose Flour
• 3 tsp Baking Powder

Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Stir until you don’t see any dry flour.  It should look like this:

Scoop into muffin tin (makes 12). NOTE: Very important: grease the muffin tin prior to this step!!!

Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

Conclusion: Very tasty! Teddy liked, Jack liked, I liked. Oliver turned up his nose and didn’t even try it. Very good for kids who need veggies and not a lot of salt. If I made these for grown-up type people, I’d add salt and seasoning.

Stay tuned for more baking ideas from The Undomestic Goddess (read: failed Pinterest experiments)!