Kids Food Heaven

By Jules Brinkhuis / MrsHabitat

As any working mom, I am juggling loads of different things at the same time and after a long day at work, I don’t want to spend ages in the kitchen. But of course, I want my boys to eat healthily. Here a few ideas from us for some easy meals and snacks. I usually get inspired on the net or by friends and just make the recipes my own by adding different products. The portions below are enough for my two boys of 2 and 5.

Easy Avocado bread

Every kid needs Vitamin D, but eel and herring are not necessarily typical kids’ favorites. Thankfully I discovered my boys both love avocado!

Ingredients:

Slices of your favorite bread, aim for multigrain or rye bread to get some good fibers in as well – 1 ripe avocado – 1 tsp olive oil – add seasoning (e.g. pepper, chili powder) and garnish (e.g. tomato, spring onion or cress as preferred)

1. Just crush the avocado with a fork together with the oil and seasoning to the desired consistency
2. Spread on the bread and add garnish
3. My boys like to eat shrimps on the side as well

Mini Quiche

For an easy alternative to the normal quiche dough, try out toast bread. This way there is less work and the quiches can be eaten with the fingers. Super handy!

Ingredients (for 6 mini quiches which is what my boys eat):

6 slices of (full grain) sandwich toast – 3 eggs – 20 ml milk – 1 tsp Mascarpone – 150g broccoli – mozzarella or other cheese

1. Preheat the oven to 170 ° C
2. Grease the muffin tin cut the broccoli into small florets and pluck mozzarella into small pieces
3. Place the toast slices on a cutting board and cut out a circle with a large cutter or a glass.
4. Mix the eggs, milk, mascarpone in a mixing bowl
5. Line the muffin tin with the toast circles and fill with broccoli and egg mixture. Sprinkle some mozzarella or other cheese over each.
6. Bake mini quiches at 170 ° C for approx. 20 minutes.

Alternative: Pour the mixture in the muffin tin without bread! After 20 min the egg mixture is stable enough stay in shape and can be eaten with the fingers as well.

Spaghetti sausages

Pasta always works at ours and for a fun effect and to have an alternative to Bolognese, Tomato sauce, and Co. we make Spaghetti sausages with Spinach.

Ingredients:

2 Wiener sausages 100 g spaghetti, frozen Spinach – my boys prefer the one with cream – Parmesan

1. Cut the sausages into finger-thick pieces and carefully push the uncooked spaghetti through the pieces
2. Bring water to a boil in a saucepan and cook the sausage spaghetti al dente in the water.
3. Warm the spinach in a separate saucepan
4. Drain the spaghetti sausages carefully and serve them sprinkled parmesan and with the Spinach mixed through or on the side.

Island cookies

Sometimes I bake with the kids and sometimes we just decorate the cookies together. One thing is for sure – it will be messy! The cookies have little sugar in them, so I use icing for the extra kick. But if you want to go healthier – leave out the icing and use some sprinkles instead.

Ingredients:

350g flour (you can use plain, whole wheat flour or even gluten-free flour – the result is pretty much the same) – 25g sugar – 3g baking powder – 85g butter (softened at room temperature) – 30ml milk – 2,5g vanilla extract For the icing: Icing sugar, lemon, sweets for decoration

1. Mix the ingredients in a bowl until the dough is nice and smooth. Put in the fridge for about 10 minutes.
2. Preheat the oven to 190 degrees. Roll out the dough.
3. Cut out the dough with a cookie cutter
4. Place onto baking sheets and bake for about 9 minutes. Take out and let the cookies cool off.

For the icing, I use a bit of squeezed lemon (alternative use water) and stir in icing sugar with a bit of food coloring. There are natural, organic, and even vegan options available. A bit of icing goes a long way so don’t make too much. There is hardly any fluid necessary so stir in bit by bit. Decorate the cookies when cooled off with decoration as preferred.

Mango-raspberry ice

75g sugar, 100ml water, 150g frozen mango pieces, 150g frozen raspberries

1. Put the sugar with the water in a saucepan and bring to a boil. Stir until the sugar is dissolved and turn off the heat. Let it cool for half an hour.
2. Put the frozen mango with half of the sugar water and puree it in a grinder or with a blender into sorbet ice cream.
3. Spoon into a container and put in the freezer until use.
4. Put the frozen raspberries with the rest of the sugar water in the grinder or use the hand blender and also puree into sorbet ice cream.
5. Spoon the mango and raspberry ice cream alternately in the ice cream tins. Insert the ice cream sticks and put in the freezer for at least 8 hours.
6. The ice cream is also tasty when just mixed, it has the structure of soft sorbet ice cream. You can also eat it on pancakes as a yummy desert.
7. You can make the ice creams 2 days in advance.