Kid Friendly Snacks and Treats

We all know that kids can be picky about what they eat. It’s already hard to please everyone when bringing treats to school or birthday parties, but you also have to be careful with allergens and try not to load them up with fat and sugar. We’ve heard your cries for help and have come up with a few ideas of kid friendly, allergen free and healthy snacks and treats.

1. Kids love things that come on sticks. Buy some disposable skewers and kabob away. You can put pretty much anything on a stick. Here are some options:
   Fruit kabobs – you can get really fancy here and dip the fruit in melted chocolate or cut pieces of melon into shapes with cookie cutters
   Veggie kabobs – skewer up some raw veggies (tomatoes, bell pepper, cucumber etc) and serve with a dipping sauce like hummus or greek yogurt mixed with herbs
   Cake pops – a little more time consuming, make a batch of your favorite cake, once cooled smash it up with your hands and form into small balls (add a little water if the cake won’t stay formed into balls, this is also really fun for kids to do, so if you don’t want to get messy just let them do it), stick the cake balls on the end of a skewer/stick and let freeze, you can whip up some frosting or glaze while they are freezing and dip the pops in to coat, let them sit out on the counter for a little while to defrost before serving
   Caprese skewers – tomato, basil and mozzarella, kids love those little mozzarella pearls
   Sandwich on a stick – cube up ingredients for your favorite sandwich, bread, cheese, meat, tomato etc
2. Fill up veggies with something that kids love. For example:
   Ant on a log – celery filled with almond butter or cream cheese/soft goat cheese, topped with raisins traditionally, but you could use another fruit/nut/seed
   Cucumber cups – cut up a cucumber widthwise into several small cups, scoop out a little bit of the seeds to make a well that you can fill with cottage cheese, yogurt, etc
3. Kids love things that are kid sized.
   Fruit on the bottom yogurt cups - get some little dixie cups, put some chopped fresh fruit on the bottom and top with yogurt
   Veggie dippers – cut up some veggies into dipping sticks, put some hummus or yogurt dip in the bottom of a dixie cup then stick the veggies into the dip
   Smoothies - bring in a blender and all your ingredients, whip up maybe two different batches and pour into the little dixie cups (it’s really fun to have the kids submit names for the different smoothie flavors and then vote on the winning name)
4. Chips and salsa, a classic.
   Make your own chips by cutting up tortillas into wedges. Or get really crazy and use cookie cutters for fun shapes, or let your kids cut up the tortillas into their own shapes with a pair of clean scissors. Bake them for a couple minutes to crisp them up. You can go two ways with this. You can do a traditional veggie salsa or you can do a fruit salsa. If you’re doing the fruit salsa, I like to sprinkle the chips with some cinnamon.