Mini-Chicken Pot Pies

Since I’m on the subject of muffins, I’ll throw in another recipe that I made for Sly’s dinner tonight.

I got this recipe from a friend as part of a collection she made for me when I got married. It makes eight mini-chicken pot pies. I’m including the original recipe, and then my modification.

Mini-Chicken Pot Pies (original)
1 (16.3-oz.) can of Pillsbury Grands refrigerated biscuits
1 (19 oz.) can of chicken noodle soup
1-2 tablespoons butter
1 tsp. dried Italian seasoning
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/4 cup shredded mozzarella cheese

Heat oven to 375. Lightly spray a regular-sized muffin pan with cooking spray (you only need to spray eight of the pockets). Separate each of the eight biscuits into two layers. Place eight of the halves into the sprayed muffin cups, pressing to cover the sides and bottom.

Drain the soup, then spoon the drained soup into the biscuit-lined cups. Place the remaining biscuit halves over the soup and press gently to seal.

Spread the biscuit tops with butter, then sprinkle with the Italian seasoning, garlic powder and 1/2 tablespoon of cheese.

Bake at 375 for about 15 minutes or until golden brown. Run a butter knife around the edge of the muffins to remove.

In my version, instead of the chicken soup, I use:
- approx. 1 cup of frozen mixed veggies, thawed
- 1 can cream of chicken soup (regular or low-sodium)
- 1 small can of canned chicken

I mix those together — using about 3-4 spoonfuls of the cream of chicken soup and most of the canned chicken — and use that to fill the biscuit cups.

The cooking directions are otherwise pretty much the same. Sometimes I top the muffins with the spices and cheese, other times I just leave them plain.

These are a pretty biscuit-heavy (not a lot of room for the veggie filling), but I haven’t found a satisfactory substitute that cooks up as nicely as the Grands. When I cut them up for Sly, I tend to only give her the pieces with veggies & chicken, so she doesn’t just fill up on crust.

But these still make a nice meal or even a side-dish for a toddler.

Apple-Squash-Turkey Meat Muffins

If you haven’t checked out the site wholesomebabyfood.com, you should! This is the best site I’ve found for a huge variety of information and recipes on baby and toddler foods. For older babies and toddlers, check out their Baby Finger Foods section in particular.

Sly loves their sweet potato fries and broccoli-and-cheddar-cheese nuggets. I also do my own version of their apple-turkey loaf — the original is listed in the finger foods section linked above.

Apple-Squash-Turkey Meat Muffins
1.25 lb ground turkey
1 whole egg or 2 egg yolks, beaten
1/2 cup canned (preferably organic) butternut squash or pumpkin
1/4 cup applesauce
1/4 cup wheat germ
1/4 cup bread crumbs
pinch of basil

The original recipe calls for pureed carrots instead of the pumpkin or squash, and wheat bran instead of wheat germ (I usually have wheat germ on hand, but not wheat bran; both add an extra nutrient boost to the recipe). Using the canned organic puree is easier than cooking and pureeing a bunch of carrots, unless you already have pureed carrots on-hand. I’ve also doubled the bread crumbs if I’m out of wheat germ, but obviously you miss out on some of the extra nutrients if you go that route.

This list of ingredients works out perfectly with 1.25 pounds of ground turkey (which for some reason is the size of one package at my local grocery store) — you’ll probably need to bump up the dry ingredients slightly if you’re only working with a pound of meat.

Mix everything together and then bake it for 40-45 minutes at 350 degrees. I use a regular sized, unlined muffin pan to make this, after coating it with cooking spray first.

A 1.25-pound package of ground turkey makes about 11 meat-muffins, and they’re just right for a toddler-size serving! I cover the pan with tinfoil before baking it, otherwise the tops end up tougher and chewier than the rest of the meat, especially after being frozen and re-heated. A butter knife or large spoon works well for getting the cooked muffins out without destroying the shape.

I made a batch of these last night using canned organic pumpkin and froze all but one, which Sly had for lunch today. She ate every bite!

Favorite Baby/Toddler Cookbooks

When I’m looking for a new meal idea, or just an interesting combination of flavors to try, these are the baby/toddler cookbooks that I use. I found plenty of books at my local library, but these are the ones I liked enough to buy and reference regularly.

1) Superfoods for Babies and Children by Annabel Karmel. Her website has a bunch of recipes and other tidbits, too. She’s a UK author, so she takes a slightly different approach in terms of what’s “allowed” at what ages, FYI. Annabel Karmel has various baby-toddler food books out, but there’s a lot of overlap in recipes from one book to another. This is the one I like the best.

Also note that despite the similarity in title, this is NOT Super Baby Food by Ruth Yaron. I know a lot of people who rave about that book, but I found it a PITA to use and her attitude on meats was completely unhelpful — basically, that they are “not super baby foods,” shouldn’t be in a baby’s diet and therefore she’ll only give like three recipes. Gee, thanks so much.

2) Cooking for Baby: Wholesome, Homemade, Delicious from Williams Sonoma. (I have the 2008 edition with a pea puree on the cover, but apparently there’s a new one for 2009 — no idea how it compares.) This book has some off-beat flavor combinations for infants (green beans with mint, edamame and yogurt puree, roasted red pepper and goat cheese) and a focus on using unusual grains (quinoa, amaranth, millet) that I haven’t seen in other baby cookbooks.

The toddler recipes are equally adventurous: things like lentil burgers and chicken and mango quesadillas. Man, flipping through this book right now reminds me that I should use it more!

3) Mommy Rescue Guide: Toddler Meals: Lifesaving Recipes and Advice for Making Fun, Nutritious Food, by Shana Priwer and Cynthia Phillips. This pocket-size book is stuffed with recipes for different age ranges: 9-12 months, 12-18 months, 18-24 months and 24-36 months. Obviously you can pick and choose, but it’s nice to have a place to start. They list a minimum recommended daily toddler diet (hugely reassuring on those days when your toddler doesn’t eat much, because it’s a reminder that really, they don’t need a ton of huge meals) and I like the conversational-but-factual tone of their advice-on-feeding chapter.

The type of recipe ranges from no-brainer basic (egg noodles plus peas) to intriguing: peachy sweet potatoes, Hawaiian poached pork. They also have a bunch of easy recipes for items you wouldn’t normally think to make yourself: grape juice, graham crackers and yogurt, to name a few. LOVE this little book!

Stuffed crescent rolls

I got this idea from one of my favorite snack-food recipes — pepperoni pinwheels, where you basically roll up shredded mozzarella and pepperoni in crescent roll “logs”, slice them up and bake them.

So I figured I could do something similar for Sly. I take the dough triangles of the refrigerated crescent rolls and sprinkle them with shredded cheddar, and put part of a slice of deli ham in there and roll it up for a slightly different riff on a ham-and-cheese sandwich. This is also a great way to sneak in veggies like peas, corn, carrots, green beans, etc. along with the cheese.

I bake the stuffed crescents according to the package directions at 375-degrees until they’re a deep golden brown — especially if you’re using unthawed frozen veggies, it’s important to make sure the dough cooks all the way through. Usually that takes less than 10 minutes. A quick and easy meal!

Grandma-Created, Toddler-Approved

Before I make this recipe, I make sure I have empty ice cube trays and tiny freezer-safe containers ready — because it freezes and re-heats like a dream, and making one batch results in a huge amount of toddler-or-baby-sized meals. 

This is one of the staples of DD’s menu. If she won’t eat anything else, she will almost always eat broccoli-rice-&-cheese casserole. I’ve shared this recipe in other places, and one mom told me that her son was leaning forward and pounding on his tray for more. Sounds like a successful meal to me!

Since I try to always keep a stash of it on-hand, it’s a quick, no-brainer of a meal component. It also rolls nicely into bite-sized balls so little ones can feed themselves. 

This is my mom’s recipe, and she’s so proud that one of her grand-daughter’s favorite meals comes from her. I’ve made some modifications and use different options depending on how calorie/fat heavy I want it to be. Sly is currently on a high-fat diet, so I’m always looking for places to get extra caloric bang. I’ve noted some of the potential options below.

Broccoli, Rice & Cheese Casserole

- 1 package of frozen, chopped broccoli. You can use one of the small, square packages, but I like to use the 1-lb. bags and go heavy on the veggies. 

- 1 can cream of chicken soup. Using the low-sodium/low-fat variety works fine, but I use the regular kind right now to get the extra fat. 

- about 2/3 of a package of shredded cheese [edited: 8 oz. size]. I typically use mild cheddar or colby-jack, but straight colby or other varieties of cheddar are good as well. 

- 1 can (use the empty soup can to measure) of instant rice

- 1 can of milk (or half-&-half, to go calorie-crazy)

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Thaw the frozen broccoli in the microwave. If the chunks are too big for your little one, give it a whirl in a food processor to make them bite-sized. Mix the thawed broccoli with the soup, rice, milk and most of the cheese in an oven-safe casserole dish — save just enough cheese to sprinkle some over the top. Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. Allow some cooling time before putting the casserole into freezer-safe containers. 

I love this dish, not just because Sly can’t get it into her mouth fast enough, but because it provides a pretty good balance all by itself: a healthy veggie and lots of nutrients from the broccoli, calcium and protein from the milk and cheese, and carbs and additional nutrients from the rice. 

Additional options: For that high-calorie diet, add a few tablespoons of butter. To bump up the protein, try adding small pieces of cooked chicken — canned will work, but I find that it tastes better and is healthier to use remnants from a roast chicken, which I make every couple of weeks anyway. It takes a bit of time to go over the carcass for meat bits, but canned chicken is ridiculously expensive in comparison. And the improved taste in chicken pot pies and casseroles is a bonus!