After-Work Gourmet by Lisa Messinger

What's often equally as challenging at Thanksgiving is not only deciding what innovations you'll devise from leftovers, but what to do with the kids during the long holiday weekend. Multitalented multitaskers combine the two.

Be on the lookout for fun recipes with which children can laugh and learn while preparing. Often, Thanksgiving leftovers fare is on the sophisticated side and aimed at adults, but the grub is just as well suited to the munchkins in the house.

Caterer Mary Giuliani often cooks for stars like Gwen Stefani and Sheryl Crow, but recently came up with logic for leftovers better suited to their tots — who often grace magazine pages with their famous parents. She suggests whipping up some easy mini pumpkin muffins as "sandwich bread" and filling them with turkey and cranberry sauce for scrumptious sliders.

One of my favorite all-time Thanksgiving leftover recipes is to add ginger, cinnamon, cloves and allspice to any muffin batter, fill muffin cups halfway, ladle in a rounded teaspoonful of homemade holiday cranberry sauce and then fill with the rest of the batter before baking. This creates a sweet hidden surprise for kids.

Grilled cheese almost always tickles tots. Giuliani suggests being innovative with bread and cheese choices, and then pan-grilling in butter the sandwiches stuffed with turkey and cranberry sauce.

Mr. Breakfast, the enthusiast behind the Mr. Breakfast blog that features more than 2,000 recipes for "all breakfast, all the time," recommends grabbing kids' attention by mixing leftover mashed sweet potatoes into waffle batter to create sweet orange treats.

Pastry chef Lauren Chattman, author of "Cake Keeper Cakes" (Taunton, $17.95), suggests turning any loaf, like a pumpkin one leftover from your holiday dinner, into the foundation for kid-friendly French toast.

Famed Food Network TV chef Paula Deen has come up with a potpie that's a virtual treasure chest of Thanksgiving leftovers for kids: turkey, butternut squash and cranberries. But, even better for tempted tots, the whole thing swims in a sauce of cheddar cheese soup and cream of celery soup and is cleverly topped by strips of puff pastry to look like a woven basket — which gives the kids not only the fun of helping with cooking, but doing arts and crafts, too!

THANKSGIVING LEFTOVERS POTPIE BASKET

Flour, for dusting

1 sheet frozen puff pastry

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup milk

2 (11-ounce) cans condensed cheddar cheese soup (see Note 1)

2 (10 3/4-ounce) cans cream of celery soup (see Note 1)

1/2 large turkey skinned, cooked, boned and cubed

2 medium onions, diced

2 cups cooked butternut squash, diced

2 cups cranberries

Salt, to taste

Pepper, to taste

Yields 4 servings.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

To make the crust, dust surface with flour.

Cut 1 sheet of frozen puff pastry into 1-inch strips, 8 inches long. (See Note 2.) On a large cookie sheet, weave strips into a lattice large enough to cover each potpie. Mix egg and milk together and brush onto each lattice square. Bake for 5 minutes. Dough will rise and turn light golden brown. Carefully set aside until ready to assemble pies.

In a large saucepan, heat the soups. Stir in turkey, onion, squash, cranberries, salt and pepper. Bring mixture to a boil. In an oven-proof dish, fill with mixture and top with the pre-cooked lattice square. Bake for 5 minutes until bubbly and puff pastry is deep golden brown.

Note 1: Good substitutions for cheddar cheese soup are cream of chicken soup and cream of mushroom soup.

Note 2: Cutting the puff pastry with a fluted-wheel creates elegant edges.

— Paula Deen for Food Network

TURKEY-CRANBERRY MINI PUMPKIN MUFFIN SANDWICHES

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon

1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg

3/4 cup canned pumpkin

2/3 cup milk

1/2 cup vegetable oil

2 large eggs, beaten

Leftover turkey, to taste

Leftover cranberry sauce, to taste

Yields 12 servings of two sandwiches each.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Grease 2 mini-muffin tins (12 mini muffins in a tin.)

Or, if only using one mini muffin tin, repeat the baking process twice.

In a bowl, stir flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg.

In a separate bowl, stir pumpkin, milk, oil and eggs until blended.

Stir flour into pumpkin mixture.

Fill muffin tins 3/4 full. Bake for 15 minutes. Once the 24 mini muffins are cool, cut muffins in half horizontally. Place sliced turkey and cranberry sauce on bottom half. Replace muffin top.

— Mary Giuliani Catering

Lisa Messinger is a first-place winner in food writing from the Association of Food Journalists and the author of seven food books, including "Mrs. Cubbison's Best Stuffing Cookbook" and "The Sourdough Bread Bowl Cookbook." She also writes the Creators News Service "Cooks' Books" column. To find out more about Lisa Messinger and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2009 CREATORS.COM