Before I had kids I always thought I’d be the smug parent with a kid who ate anything and everything.
I mean, I pretty much eat anything and everything (and I have a huge appetite) and I always imagined that half the battle with getting kids to eat their vegetables and other healthy food was about exposure. If they saw their parents cook and eat a range of foods then surely they’d want to try it for themselves.
Ha! Lady AB goes to Farmers Markets with me, likes to ‘help’ me cook and can recognise leeks, bok choy, spinach – but will still pick out or ignore anything green on her plate. I have no idea why – but help may be at hand with Vegie Smugglers!
Vegie Smugglers is a website with a tagline ‘a magical place where children eat vegetables’ (giggle). On the website are a whole bunch of family-friendly recipes with hidden nutritious ingredients that your kids can’t pick out. Tim said ‘do you want to teach Lady AB that the only way to eat vegetables is to lie about their presence?’ but I figure – if it works, why not??
My first, and very successful, foray into vegetable smuggling was with some chocolate chip and chickpea cookies. OK, so they’re not healthy as a spinach superfood salad, but there is no way that Lady AB would eat chickpeas otherwise.
The cookies are very easy to make, taste good and contain enough wholesome ingredients to make them a guilt-free treat for kids and adults. Here’s my adaptation of the recipe.
Chocolate chip and chickpea cookies (Makes approx 24)
100g softened butter
1 tbsp canola, sunflower or olive oil
3/4 cup coconut sugar
1 tsp vanilla essence
1 egg
1 1/4 cups wholemeal plain flour
1 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup dark chocolate chips. Use the best quality chocolate you can afford such as Callebaut couverture callettes.
1/2 tin of chickpeas (a tin is usually 400g). Equates to approximately 3/4 cup of chickpeas.
1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Line oven trays with silicon mats or baking paper.
2. Rinse and drain the chickpeas. Cream butter, oil and coconut sugar together.
3. Mix in the vanilla and egg, then the flour and baking powder. Stir in the chocolate chips and chickpeas. The mixture tastes pretty good!
4. Wet your hands slightly and roll small balls of mixture and pop onto the trays. Bake for 12-15 minutes until golden – they do come up quite brown due to the sugar.
I usually make a double batch so I can use up a whole tin of chickpeas at once. The chickpeas are still whole inside the cookie but hardly discernible as in each mouthful you’ll get some gooey chocolate chips as well! If you’re really worried about fussy palates maybe chop/roughly grind them up first.
