We love making “paint” that’s good enough to eat, and today’s version was super-quick. Use store-bought vanilla pudding and the cups themselves make the perfect paint pots!

Zen company makes vegan pudding cups, though in a pinch, you can whip up a homemade batch and divide among ramekins. Still, I preferred store-bought here because of those individual pudding cups.

I wanted rich, deep colors for the paint, so used 20 drops of food coloring for each pudding cup. For purple, mix 10 drops of red + 10 drops of blue.

I then laid down a big sheet of craft paper as Veronika’s canvas and set the pots around my little artist.

She instantly asked, “Can I eat it?” Needless to say, the eating of the paint was way more fun than the painting with it. I quickly switched from paint brushes to spoons once I realized she wasn’t going to stop taste-testing.

I did show her how to draw a few images with the paint, like flowers and a blue sky, but snacking won out.

To mix it up, next I taped construction paper to the high chair tray, and this time I poured on blobs of the pudding paint.

She dipped her hands in and did some swirling around.

Needless to say, though, she still preferred to snack than to paint! So this was a delicious activity, if not a terribly artistic one.