Chef Mom Vs. Chef Dad Lunch Box Challenge

Who took the bite of this? Hey, I'm Kelly and I'm a Culinary Producer at Tasty. And this is my husband, Jeremy. Hi, I'm Jeremy and I'm a chef. And we have been cooking together for 11 years? Yeah, that sounds about right. We met in culinary school, day one. He fell in love. I didn't. Wow. I'm joking. We have two wonderful young boys, Dylan and Teddy, and Dylan will be joining us today. No. I feel great. Why? Because you have to pick between mommy and daddy? Yeah. If I win, I would love some help with the laundry. This whole seven loads a week thing isn't working for me anymore. Maybe split it up. Fine. OK, so what happens if I win? I'll wake up before 9 AM. Yeah, I want to sleep in on the weekend. You got it. OK, deal. For today's challenge, I'm going to be making a space-themed pizza lunchbox. We are going to start with easy peasy pizza dough in a can. So I have this cute rocket-shaped cookie cutter. I'm going to cut out a few. Kind of small. I don't know how I'm going to stuff it with pizza. All right, let's do one. And then assess if I have to change my game plan. So this is just store-bought pizza sauce. Again, store-bought is fine. They don't care. So I'm just going to put, like, the teeniest little amount. And then I'm going to add some cheese. And then I found these little baby pepperonis that I thought were so cute. Now I'm just going to egg wash the outer part, the outer, like, rim, so I can stick another piece on top and glue it together. Kind of just looks like a Christmas tree. It definitely lost its shape. That's OK. That's OK. All right, I also have this rocket. Maybe this will look better. OK, this one's cute. All right, so I'm just going to brush the top with egg wash to get it nice and crispy. And then I'm just going to put a little Parmesan on top so it's like half pizza, half cheesy breadstick. And then maybe I should make a little window. OK, so I'm going to bake these at 425, I think for, like, eight to 10 minutes, but we'll see. I wanted to recreate those, like, little pudding packs, but I wanted to make a healthier version. It's called an ABC pudding. Avocado, banana, and cacao. And then I'm going to call it galaxy pudding and dye some whipped cream blue and purple and swirl it on top so it's, like, outer space themed, but a little bit healthier. First thing, A, is avocado. I could not find any good avocados at the store, so I actually found these frozen ones. So they look pretty green, so we're going to add those in. And it'll probably give it, like, a nice texture that it's frozen. Add one banana. And then the C is cocoa powder, which is where the chocolate comes in. Dylan has the biggest sweet tooth. He asks for cookies and cake every morning. I have to tell him that's not a breakfast food, so I think he'll be really excited about this. And then just to sweeten it up, I'm going to add some maple syrup. I'm going to add a little bit of milk just to, like, help it blend together. And then how we do that, we're just going to blend it up. That's perfect. He is going to love this. This might be my winning star. The next step I'm going to do for my lunchbox is add some fruit and veggies just to add some balance to the pizza and the pudding. I'm just going to cut some thick slices and then take my star cookie cutter Look how cute! Then for the bell pepper, I was actually thinking it could be like the fire, the gas. What is it? So I'm just going to cut it in thin strips, and then maybe in half. And then, like, here's the rocket chip, and then I'll put them underneath like that. Carrots, too. Dylan loves carrots and hummus. So we got our veggies. Now let's move on to the fruit. Look how juicy that is. First, I'm just going to cut some circles. I mean, I guess it's a full moon, but maybe I should make it a little cuter. Cute. Okay, I wanted to create some type of Martian alien to go with the space theme. So I found this little cheese, and I'm going to pull the wax off and then cut it down the middle. And then I'm going to use some marshmallow fluff to glue on some eyes, kind of like the Toy Story Martian. I've never done this, but we'll see. I just have to tell Dylan he can't eat the wax. I don't know, do they look like aliens? Maybe. Maybe if I can put some toothpicks in his head. So I need to make a planet, and green is his favorite color. So I'm going to take a Tootsie Roll lollipop and put a ring around it to make Saturn. That's cute, right? No? To make the green antennas, I'm going to take some green apple and cut little strips and then stick it in the top. It kind of looks like a rabbit. It looks like a three-eyed rabbit. Let's just move on. What do I have next? I got to make the ranch dip, the best part. Okay, so we're just going to put some sour cream, and I'm going old school with the ranch packet because you cannot beat this flavor. Even as a chef, I know I've made ranch a million times. It never tastes like this, ever, ever. When I worked in a restaurant and when I was a waitress, I was in charge of making the ranch. People were always asking for the recipe, and I was like, it's on the back of the package. Okay, I'll put this in the fridge and then move on to the next step. All right, we're on to the last step. I'm going to make the galaxy whipped cream to go onto our healthy pudding. So I'm just going to take some heavy cream. I'm going to add just a little bit of powdered sugar to sweeten it, and then I'm just going to beat this with a hand mixer on high speed until medium to stiff peaks form. Those are stiff peaks. A little bit of purple. Ooh, this is like a neon purple. This is fun. Okay, so we got purple done. Now let's add blue. I was a little bit nervous the food dye would mess with the texture of the whipped cream, but it's actually, it's working out. Okay, all right, and now we're going to do the fun part. We're going to go to the assembly. First, I'm going to add my rocket ship, and then I'm going to add some bell peppers and some carrots coming off the end so it looks like it's that fire spurting out. I have my star cucumbers, and then I also have my mango moons with some blueberries because I know Dylan loves those. So now I have my alien martians. We're still not sure about these, but they're cute. They're cute. Okay, the best part. Our healthy pudding. Look at those fun colors. He's going to love that. He's going to love it. And then for the all-star, I found these outer space themed sprinkles. And finally, our little Saturn lollipop. And that's it. So today I will be cooking a superhero themed lunch. I will be making a Captain America burrito, Captain America Rice Krispie Treats, little Spider-Man strawberries, and the hammers of Thor using cheese and pretzel sticks. At home, we call Dylan Captain America because he protects his little brother who we call Iron Man. So I think this one will go over well with him. So first for the Rice Krispie Treats, we're going to melt some butter. The more fat, the better. So now that the butter's melted, I'm just going to add in the marshmallows. Now that our marshmallow and butter are nice and smooth and all mixed together, we will add the Rice Krispies. I'm just going to mix it all together until it all forms one ball, and then we'll get it cooling down. All right. Now they're all mixed together and we'll start cooling them down so we could shape them into balls and into shields. So normally if I was going to make Rice Krispie Treats, I would flatten this out and try to compress it. But since we're just rolling it into balls, I'll just pop it into the fridge like this and let it cool down. Now that they're cooled down, I could add some sprinkles. If you add them while they're still warm, the color will bleed into them and you'll just kind of have a brown mess. And then shape them into balls and shields. And now we're going to mix the sprinkles into the Rice Krispie Treats. Now, once they're mixed in, we're just going to roll it into a little ball and then flatten it out to look like a shield. We're just going to use a hole cutter and punch out the center to represent the star on his shield. So next we are going to make Spider-Man faces out of strawberries, chocolate chips, and marshmallow fluff. So this is really simple. All we're going to do is slice the strawberries. So now we have our face. Next, we will place two chocolate chips as the eyes. Try to wedge them in there. And then we're going to shape those eyes with the white to kind of make it look like Spider-Man's eyes. Okay, now we have small strawberries that vaguely look like Spider-Man. Next, we're going to cut cubes out of a block of cheese for Thor's hammer and put pretzel sticks into the box to make it look like a big hammer. So next up, I'm going to try to make the fist of the Incredible Hulk. The Hulk wears purple pants, so I'm going to take vanilla yogurt and purple food coloring and mix that together and then use green grapes to form a fist on top of the purple yogurt. Kind of. So next, we are going to make our Captain America burrito. And since there aren't many burrito-friendly foods that come in the color blue, and we want red, white, and blue, we're going to add a little bit of blue food coloring to our mozzarella cheese. I'm going to add a little salsa to my red beans just to give it a little more red color and to give it a little more flavor because Dylan does love salsa. The first layer we're going to add is the rice, and the rice is already white, so we don't have to add any color to that for the red, white, and blue theme. After the rice, we'll add in our red beans, and then we'll top the whole thing off with the blue cheese and roll it up. So now that our burrito is rolled, we're just going to sear it off in the pan to get the cheese nice and melty and the burrito all sealed up. And now we're just going to cut into the burrito and hopefully have red, white, and blue for Captain America. Next, we're going to make little spiderwebs out of string cheese to put underneath the strawberries, and then we're going to assemble everything and put it into the box. That goes with a couple of our Spider-Man strawberries. Next, we will pipe in some hummus into our lightning bolt mold, and then we'll put the Thor hammers around that. Now we have our already-assembled Hulk hands. We're just going to drop this in here. Going to add a little bit of guacamole for the burrito. Next, we'll add our burrito. Can't forget our Captain America dessert. And last, just to keep with the superheroes, we'll add our little guys so he knows who he's looking at. And this is the superhero lunch. Hmm, strawberry. I don't know how to get them out. I got it. Juicy. Now I want a potato. Two. I like it. No. Have the next one. Hmm, the moon. Can I take his eyes off? This is a cold rocket ship. What was your favorite thing out of both of these? The strawberries and the alien. Oh, the alien? You liked that cheese? Did you like the pizza? I don't know if it was pizza. Because it was cold? Some people like cold pizza, though. I don't. All right, we have a tough question to ask you. Which one was your favorite? Mommy. Yay! What made it the best? The lollipop? Yeah. Looks like Mommy's sleeping in this weekend. Oh, right. I forgot. And that means you get to help me with the laundry. No. Thanks for having me.