Presenting Spelt

I have been wanting to make these Spelt Pumpkin Muffins for quite a while, but wasn’t sure about using an “alternative” flour.  A friend made them a couple months ago and brought me a few – they were delicious!  I finally found spelt flour at a local store, so decided to give it a whirl.  When I told my daughter two days ago that I was going to make her some pumpkin muffins, she turned her nose up, stuck her tongue out, and gave me a super dramatic “blech!”  Nice.  But I knew she’d like the taste, just as she had before, she’s just so darn stubborn about eating anything that I make.

I threw together the ingredients quickly while my daughter was downstairs playing.  A couple years ago, my mother-in-law sent us a snowflake cookie baking pan and a snowman mini-loaf pan, so I decided to break these out.  Yes, I’m aware Thanksgiving is the next holiday, but I was determined to make these “muffins” in a way that my daughter would like.   When she came back upstairs, I was just pulling the snowflake cookies out of the oven and putting the snowman loaves in.  She was so excited!  Then she saw the mixing bowl, the remnants of the batter, and said, “Ummm, there’s cinna-ninna-ninna-mon in that!”  (Although I know it’s not true, she contends that she does not like cinnamon.  And, for the record, she can pronounce the word correctly, we just have fun with it.)  I told her there was no cinnamon in the cookies (little white lies are perfectly okay), that the recipe called for it, but I specifically left it out so she’d like them, and that what she was seeing was just ginger.  She clapped and screamed, “Yum, gingerbread!”  (Insert evil laugh here.)  And, of course, she thought the cookies were super yummy!  So yummy that we made those Wednesday afternoon, and as of this morning, Friday, they are gone!  My husband and son happened to love them too, and there is now more pumpkin puree thawing so I can whip up another batch.

So, moral of this story is: It’s really all in the presentation.  It’s so much easier to get my daughter to try better-for-you food when it’s presented to her on a Hello Kitty plate (veggie burger homemade Happy Meal), in a Cinderella cup with a lid and slinky straw (yummy smoothies), or in the form of snowflake cookies and snowman muffins.

And I just have to mention…  My daughter’s kindergarten class made pumpkin cranberry bread yesterday at school.  They made it in mini loaf tins and decorated a recipe sheet to bring home.  I loved that they all participated and were able to do something so hands-on at school, and taste the fruits of their labor.  But, I didn’t love that the recipe included two full cups of sugar for two loaves of bread.  When we got home, I sliced a piece of the bread for my sweet Baby Girl to try.  She took one bite, handed it back to me, and asked for one of the muffins I had made.  I cannot convey to you how happy this made me!  (I think I’ll send in a spelt pumpkin muffin to the teacher next week, what do you think?)