In 2008 Jessica Seinfeld published her first cookbook, Deceptively Delicious. Born of the frustration of feeding small fussy eaters, she devised a wide variety of recipes addressing all the usual nutritional concerns of parents. Her creations were low in sugar, high in nutrient density and full of vegies and supposedly loved by her kids, her and her famous husband alike. Seemingly the perfect combination. Hers was a not a particularly unique niche except for the big ticket item in her mix and the meaning behind the clever title of the book. Her recipes were not only vegie forward and loaded but the veggies were hidden. And not just a rudimentary disguise but at almost where’s wally, espionage level disguises. Vegetable purees were added to a plethora of dishes not normally noted for their vegetable content and smug parents the world over patted themselves on the back for their ingenuity and trickery. Parents 1, kids 0!

I remember buying the book fascinated by the concept thinking that I too could trick my kids into believing a vegetable loaded brownie really did taste as good as the more traditional style. With budding enthusiasm, I opened that tome convinced I could beat those boys at their own veg resistant game. I was soon deflated. Have you read it? In order to embark on the Santa Claus style deceit, I was going to need to purchase an additional fridge to store the enormous range of fruit and vegetable purees I was going to be required to keep stored to stir through her recipes. I was then going to smile and wave as I handed my kids ‘treats’ containing all sorts of smoothly pulped, pre-cooked potions. Whilst a great concept it honestly sounded more time consuming than the dinner time disputes we were engaging in and frankly I was pre-occupied enough with the parental ruses of Santa, the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy.

Aside from the time load I envisaged this method creating, front of mind for me, was the possibility that this would also make my boys unfamiliar with vegetables and therefore even more unlikely to eat them. When you search “hiding vegetables in food” in google the web offers up 9,000,000+ suggestions. As parents, we’re clearly not alone in our pursuit of vegetable love by our kids. It’s one of the many we seem to have aspired to as, enen by parents who perhaps even themselves don’t love veggies. Like sleep and toilet training it’s on the list of things we know as parents we’re meant to tick off. The list of tactics and strategies is long, full and often amusing. Spaghetti Bolognese with handfuls of grated veg, hamburgers or rissoles also loaded with grated veg, multi-coloured smoothies and my personal favourited sausage rolls with, you guessed it, grated veg. Who could even parent without a grater?

I had my own collection of strategies and recipes for fostering a love of veg with varying levels of success, or perhaps I should say ticking that veg quota box. We had ‘rainbow slice’ a collection of grated and diced veg encased in an egg and cheese mixture, also known as zucchini slice, but I wasn’t going to use the Z word. It’s a vague riff on this one, maybe I’ll share it with you soon. I also made ravioli soup, a simple pumpkin soup with kid size veg ravioli, corn and peas. Just between you and I, it was pumpkin soup loaded with pumpkin, carrot, potato and sweet potato for the ‘non pumpkin eaters.’

Like the short list of veg happily consumed here, introducing new fruit could also be a precarious path. But like veg, I had my ploys….or maybe I missed my calling as a quick thinking James Bond type spy. In an ‘adventurous’ moment as a mum I thought I’d try medjool dates with the lads. Reaching into the fruit bowl with curious little fingers and trepidatious eyebrows raised my son picked up one of the wrinkly squishy little blobs and asked what he was holding. I had one of two choices to make, honesty (as if) or another santa clause style fairy tale…. ”Oh, that’s caramel fruit!” I nonchalantly replied. “You know them. They’re the ones I use to make sticky toffee pudding.” It worked, he ate the fruit and I ran off to the pantry to hide while I silently fist pumped a parenting win.

Now, I’m not necessarily advocating the veg puree laced cakes and treats. Frankly they don’t really taste that great, at least not in my experience. I’m not singing the praises of parental deceit either, though a little white lie here and there, in everyone’s best interests won’t really harm. I’m just a mum sharing a little parenting hack or two from the other side. Santa, the Easter Bunny, the Tooth Fairy a box grater and Caramel Fruit.

Are these blondies healthy in the traditional sense? Depending on what philosophy you’re living on, probably not. Do they contain fruit? Well yes. Yes they do. They have caramel fruit.

Ingredients:

220 gm white chocolate chopped

225 gm butter chopped

220 gm brown sugar

120 gm white sugar

1 tsp vanilla (because can you really bake without it?)

4 eggs beaten

220 gm plain flour

¼ tsp baking powder

¼ tsp salt flakes

125 gm pecans chopped

100 gm medjool dates chopped ( toss in a sprinkle of flour to help them separate)

70 gm white chocolate chopped extra

¼ tsp freshly grated nutmeg

Method:

Preheat oven to 160c (140c for fan forced). Grease and line a 19cm x 30cm baking tin, the sort you’d use to make slice/lamingtons/brownie.

In a small saucepan, combine chocolate and butter and melt until just melted and combined, don’t let it cook too long or heat too much, it should be lukewarm. Pour into a large bowl to cool. In a second smaller bowl, combine flour, baking powder, nutmeg and salt.

Once cooled, add eggs, sugar, flour, baking powder, vanilla, nutmeg and salt to the cooled melted butter and chocolate. Gently fold everything together with purposeful but gentle folds ensuring everything’s combined but not overmixed. Sprinkle in pecans, dates and white chocolate, again folding gently with only a few strokes. Pour into the prepared tin and bake 35 minutes or until the edges have pulled away from the tin and look slightly browner and crispy and the centre is just firm, but a skewer comes clean.

Cool completely in tin and cut into squares of your preferred size