Pancakes and Muffins and Trying to Like Beets

On Friday, I wrote about cleaning my pantry out. I challenged myself to use up these six items that had been overstayed their welcome on my shelves.

Quick Oats 

Pureed Pumpkin
New England Clam Chowder Chunky Soup
Canned Beets 

Pureed Sweet Potatoes
Apricot Pie Filling 

I used up almost everything on that list, today. Here is how I did it.

I used half of the oats and some raspberries on their way to mush to make dark chocolate raspberry muffins using a recipe by Aimee at Simple Bites. 

Source: simplebites.net via Jayme on Pinterest

Mine do not look as beautiful as hers do.

I think I might have undercooked them, but they were still pretty tasty.

I decided to try out another pin on my Fooooooood board to get rid of the Pureed Pumpkin. My pin is for Pumpkin Muffins from Sweet Verbana. She actually pinned this from Big Red Kitchen. Pinning is such a great way to find awesome new blogs to follow.

Source: sweet-verbena.blogspot.com via Jayme on Pinterest

I

I love this recipe because you only need to keep TWO ingredients in your pantry and then you're ready to whip up a batch of muffins on the fly to bring over to a neighbor.

These are moist and taste great with cream cheese.

Don't you love these flower cupcake liners?

When I finished these guys, I had took a break from the kitchen and ate my Chunky Clam Chowder for lunch. I hate how salty canned soup is. I'm not sure why this was even in my closet.

Next up: Pancakes to freeze for weekday breakfasts using beets and sweet potatoes!

I used 1/4 cup of the beets in the can to make Jessica Seinfeld's Pink Pancakes from her Deceptively Delicious cookbook. You puree the beets, along with ricotta cheese, water, cinnamon, grated apple and mix it with store bought pancake mix. Her book says that these pancakes are a full protein meal.

We like the way these taste when they are fresh from the griddle, but we are grossed out by their "beetyness" when you reheat them. Fortunately, we don't have to eat them, just pawn them off on our daughter. This is my baby girl's favorite breakfast. She loves crumbling them into pieces and then carefully picking up the pieces and bringing them to her mouth. So these are for her to chow down on next week.

These are baby sized- about the size of your palm. They come out kind of chunky.
Not sure why.

See how pink the insides are! This is one situation where pink on the inside is good!

I was left with half a can of beets when this was finished, so I experimented with a beet chips recipe that has been sitting on my Fooooooood pinterest board for awhile now.

Source: simplywholekitchen.com via Jayme on Pinterest

I have always hated beets, but I know they are nutritious. I keep hoping if I keep cooking with them I will someday like them. I thought "chip form" would induce me to eating them without wrinkling up my nose.

I tossed the beet slices in olive oil, salt and pepper, put it on a baking sheet, and cooked it for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.

The result: Meh.

Maybe if I was eating them with the goat cheese dip the author recommended I make with it, I could choke them down.

They taste much better than the way I ate them growing up, which was doused in vinegar, but they are still too "beety" (I'm sure there is a better way of describing that unique taste).

If I want to keep eating them, I'll just have to keep sneaking beets into pancakes, I guess.

Back to pancakes. I decided to use my canned sweet potato in the place of pumpkin in the Pumpkin Pancake recipe from the cookbook Quinoa 365: The Everyday Superfood.

This recipe uses quinoa flour instead of regular flour, but is otherwise a pretty straightforward pancake recipe. I highly recommend this cookbook. It has the best mushroom soup recipe in it, and a fantastic chocolate cake. But I digress.

Here are the results of my sweet potato experiment:

This worked out alright. To be honest I'm more pleased with this photograph than I am with the pancakes. I love when I get the depth of field figured out! 

Anyways, I think the pumpkin addition makes a tastier pancake than the sweet potato, but these are great on their own and will be even better once syrup, pecans or whipped cream is added to them.

I had half a cup of the sweet potato puree left, so I added it to a recipe I adore from Ocean Spray.

It's basically chicken breasts roasted on a bed of sweet potato slices and covered with cranberry sauce. You should check it out if you want a taste of Thanksgiving without all the work. I put the sweet potato puree on the bottom of the pan along with some sliced up sweet potatoes.

Doesn't it look delicious? This will be dinner for tonight and tomorrow.


I still have a can of Apricot Filling left and another cup of quick oats to use up, but I am all tuckered out and have a have a sink of dirt dishes to attend to.

I'm done with cooking until tomorrow!

Has anyone else out there gone on a cooking marathon to get rid of old canned goods? Do you have a great method of freezing pancakes, or muffins, or any other breakfast food for the future? Does your tongue also find beets offensive? Let me know!