The food battle wages on our in household.  I continue to prepare meals for my children, and they continue to eye them with great suspicion and sometimes outright disdain.

I had heard of the Sneaky Chef.  While it sounded good in theory, I couldn’t see myself prepping up these mysterious blends of fruits and vegetables to slip into our meals.  Not to mention Linus pretty much won’t eat anything you could reasonably sneak a vegetable into.  My homemade spaghetti sauce was loaded with pureed vegetables.  Linus quit eating spaghetti.

Yesterday I baked a cake.  I had seen this gorgeous bundt cake in my Rachael Ray magazine.  I had recently scored a very cool copper bundt cake pan at the thrift store.  I never made one before, so I was a bit nervous.  Would it turn out like my Jello Easter Eggs?  Now that was a disaster!  Getting things out of molds can be pretty tricky.

I set about making the cake and preparing dinner.  I love those evenings when my husband is home.  I can go all out in the kitchen!  My family sat down to a nice spread of roast chicken, tossed salad, broccoli and cheese rice, plain rice, corn, and bread and butter.  The boys picked what they would try.  Tater was more adventurous, gagging his way through the broccoli and cheese rice, but wolfed down the plain rice (cooked in chicken stock, but I wasn’t about to divulge that).  He choked down some chicken, even though it wasn’t in nugget form.

Why were they actually consuming food?

The cake.  No dinner, no cake.

They didn’t eat all that much, so by the time the cake had cooled and was frosted, they were more than ready for their dessert.  Linus was practically attached to my hip.  “Is it time?  Is it done yet?”

We all sat down and enjoyed large pieces of cake.  I was pleased that I only lost a few chunks off of the top.  The frosting hid the blemishes quite well.

I watched my boys wolf down the cake and smiled to myself: it was a carrot cake.  Hidden inside were four whole carrots and nearly a can of crushed pineapple.  To make my victory even sweeter, the frosting had sour cream in it.  None of these are on the short list of things they will eat.

Even though I must have spent three hours in the kitchen preparing and cleaning up after this meal, it was well worth it.  It isn’t every day that I get to seriously pull one over on the kids!