Pumpkin Pancakes- The 365 Days Toddler Meal Challenge

Food blogging is fun and it can turn into an obsession. People often tell me Sunoj and Sarah must be lucky because they get to taste all these stuff I shoot. I agree about Sunoj’s luck but not Sarah’s. Kids bring out the best and worst in you. If you thought you were some smart food blogger you would take your words back the day you have a toddler who spits or eats bird sized meals. You can’t give them junk food, your easy recipes, quick fix- ain’t it cool recipes will fall flat when your kid starts solids. You will also have a tough time cooking, shooting and composing your blog psots (a post I will write later), but the biggest nightmare would be what do I feed her five times a day (and not the same thing mind it) and this worries every mother and not just me.

Sarah was force fed ragi by our maid and this led to serious issues. She never learned to chew, she hated solids and wanted ragi because it was easy to swallow. So after our maid left, I cut down a lot of my work and decided to focus on her diet. She was a scrawny kid, who hardly slept and hated eating. And my biggest issue was that she ate too little and was thoroughly constipated. I decided this was the real challenge many mothers faced. And amidst my experiments I was perhaps neglecting her needs and why am I not using my skills to build a healthy diet for her? So began my research with toddler meals. And very soon, I started using the ingredients on my pantry to do simple toddler meals. This can be challenging but I also learned a lot of new ingredients that we never bought but was healthy for a kiddie meal ( adult meal too) . I think kids should be introduced a wide variety of food as kids rather waiting to introduce these later. Many friends of mine struggling with the same situation asked me to start a section for toddler meals and I have been procrastinating the idea.

So let’s begin this series and I plan a 365 day challenge for all you mommas. I do 5 meals a day sometimes I repeat the same thing twice but I will share on recipe every day. And this is apart from my normal posts. So I start today with Pumpkin pancakes. Sarah ate 2 of them for lunch yes, two full pancakes. No honey, no drizzles plain healthy pancakes and it so happens I am doing this around Halloween so here’s my pumpkin treat for the year. Pumpkin is an awesome veggie. I do soups, breads, khichdi, muffins and pancakes with pumpkin.

I am sure we will see a lot of pumpkin in days to come. And every recipe in this series though labelled as kiddie meal or toddler meal, is safe for adult consumption. In fact when we attempt to teach our kids to eat healthy we end up doing the same so go ahead try them.

Ingredients for Pumpkin Pancakes

Whole wheat flour- 1/2 cup

All purpose flour- 1 cup

Egg- 1

Milk- 1 cup

Baking powder- 1 tsp

Sugar- 5 tbsp

Olive oil- 3 tsp

Pumpkin puree- 4 tsp

Vanilla essence- 1 tsp

Cinnamon powder- a pinch

Butter- 2 tsp

Directions

Chop 100 gms of pumpkin and cook it with 1/4 cup water over medium flame. Puree the pumpkin after it cools down. In a bowl, whisk the egg with sugar, vanilla essence, pumpkin puree and olive oil. Add the flours, cinnamon and baking powder to this mixture alternating with milk and fold in using a spatula. Ensure that the batter has no lumps.

Heat a skillet and add some butter. Pour in a ladle and wait till the pancake is brown on the bottom. Flip over to the other and cook for 1-2 minutes till the second side browns evenly. I serve the pancakes with some steamed pumpkin because Sarah loves to mash veggies and I am hopeful she might eat something as she plays :) I guess we should keep our expectations low when we ask them to sample our creations. Every kid is different I wont say every kid will eat it but chances are they might appreciate a new flavour.

Stay tuned for your new recipe tomorrow.