As I often say, I like my vegetables, fruits and other healthful foods to be up front, not snuck into things.  But I’ve also mentioned that my youngest has become very picky of late.  So, I’m making sure he gets some of his favorite vegetables daily (and out in the open, so to say) but every once in a while I also add some that he’s not too fond of through a different method.  Since he won’t eat soup besides our family recipe “eintopf” and potato leek right now, that delivery means is mostly out.  But smoothies and baking are two ways that are in. 

I tend to give the kids smoothies a couple of times a week.  But he wasn’t in the mood for one in the past few days.  No soups.  Unbelievably I got him to eat a “salad” of raw cabbage.  He tries to avoid it cooked and won’t eat cole slaw, so I was very pleased with that.  But I was in the mood to bake and wanted to try a pumpkin bread.  He loves the Trader Joe’s mix, but it has so much sugar in it and I wanted to add more vegetables. 

So I came up with this recipe:

Pumpkin Zucchini Carrot Bread (or Muffins)
2 cups AP flour
1 cup spelt flour
1 tsp baking soda
1½ tsp baking powder
1 cup brown sugar
¼ cup sugar
½ tsp salt
2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (cinnamon, ginger, lemon peel, cloves, nutmeg, cardamom)
2 eggs
1 cup milk
1 medium zucchini, grated
1-2 carrots, grated
1 cup pumpkin puree
½ cup neutral oil (sunflower, canola, grapeseed)
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350˚F. Mix dry ingredients together and set aside.  In a blender, puree the grated zucchini and carrots together with milk and eggs.  Add pumpkin and oil to wet mixture and blend until well mixed.  Add vanilla then add wet ingredients to flour mixture and fold in until mixed but don’t overwork.

Pour into greased bread tin (I put parchment paper on bottom too).  Sprinkle a little sugar on top. Bake for about 30-40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean from center.  For muffins they’ll take about 15-20 minutes. 

I made one bread and 6 muffins (also made 1½ doz banana muffins).

The bread was very moist and delicious, though I think it can be better somehow.  The kids liked the muffins and bread. Best of all: my youngest son ate it.