Category: Food play

Make a Masterpiece

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Here’s a fun way to turn the side dish at your next meal into arts & crafts! Not only will this cooking project engage children’s artistic side, but you might just get them to try a new food, too.

To start, I sliced a variety of veggies and fruits (yes, you can roast fruit), resulting in a hodgepodge of rutabaga, beets, apple, pear, and oranges. I tried to cut each item into different shapes, like triangular rutabaga pieces, semi-circle beets, circular orange slices, and apple wedges.

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I then set everything out for Veronika alongside a baking sheet lined with parchment paper and encouraged her to arrange the items however she wanted. She looked so proud as she chose where to place each piece of food.

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She especially loved the beets because they made her fingers pink!

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I demonstrated how some of the items could be arranged almost like images from a kaleidoscope (oranges surrounded by apple wedges were pretty, for example), but mostly I left the design up to her. She talked about the shapes as she worked; meanwhile ‘rutabaga’ and ‘beets’ were new vocab for her and she quickly latched on to these new words.

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When her design was finished, I drizzled with about 2 tablespoons olive oil and sprinkled with a dash of salt, then roasted at 400 degrees F for 30 minutes.

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The resulting mix made a perfect side dish to a winter meal! You can try this with any number of root veggies or fruits, and see what combination your little artists like best.

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Pasta Artist

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Travis read about pasta artist Linda Miller Nicholson in his latest Highlights magazine, and we were so intrigued with the article that we went on to check out her Instagram. Talk about wow! We knew we couldn’t recreate anything close to her masterpieces, but thought it would be fun to try some pasta art of our own.

Nicholson uses plant-based dyes right in her pasta dough, but in a pinch, I placed a little bit of dry pasta in small zip-top bags, then added all-natural food coloring (think yellow from turmeric and red from beets) and a tablespoon of white vinegar to each bag. Seal and shake the bags to coat the pasta, then let dry on paper plates.

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From here, you could color or paint directly on the pasta, or glue the various pieces down into pictures of other things. Travis predictably wanted to make Star Wars creations, so we tried our hand at pasta x-wing fighters and Darth Vader wielding a red ziti lightsaber.

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If your kids try pasta art, we’d love to hear what they create in the comments!

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Play with Peppermint

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Play with Peppermint (5)

I came home from the market with fresh mint, and Veronika was immediately intrigued with the smell. So we turned the morning into a little chance to explore peppermint with all our senses! It’s fun to pick one ingredient like this on occasion, and focus on it closely.

First up I asked her to use her eyes/sight, and notice that the plant was green and leafy. But more importantly, she wanted to explore with her nose/smell. First we smelled a peppermint teabag and then the fresh leaves.

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Next came taste! I brewed a pot of peppermint tea and cooled down cups for the kids with ice cubes. They both loved it, and also sampled the fresh leaves, which big brother Travis loved dropping right into his tea.

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Now it was time for hands/touch. Mint has that great slightly fuzzy texture and Veronika loved holding the leaves or ripping it into smaller pieces with her fingers. We decided to glue some of this confetti down to make mint art!

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I suppose we didn’t really “hear” the peppermint, unless you count the sound of it crumbling between our fingertips.

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Finally, I tied together a few sprigs for Veronika as a whimsical bouquet. She loved this “tiny tree” and played with it for a while. I thought it looked a bit like a magic wand, too! So perhaps the sixth sense we used today was our imaginations.

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This was a nice way to pause and focus on just one food, as opposed to making a recipe together. I loved seeing her wonder as she explored the peppermint with every sense.

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Eat Your Letters

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Letter Sandwiches (2)

Veronika is fascinated with letters now, adding daily to the list of those she recognizes, and she loves pointing them out to me. “Letter C!” she said in the grocery store yesterday, spotting one on a sign. To reinforce her interest, I picked up a few grocery items with letters right on them!

My original plan was to buy Alpha-Bits cereal but couldn’t find it at the store. Instead, I purchased letter cookies from Earth’s Best, and letter-shaped pasta from Banza. For the cookies, I first spread peanut butter on toast slices to make them sticky, which turned them into little “easels”. I showed Veronika how to sort through the letters and spelled out simple words for her (love, cat), along with her name.

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I also held up one cookie at a time and asked what letter she saw. She knew some new ones from the last time I quizzed her, including H and D now!

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Big brother Travis quickly wanted to join in, eager to spell his name. We ran into a snag only because the kids were snacking, too, which meant we were soon missing letters we needed!

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After that, I dumped out the letter pasta onto a tray for Veronika to further explore. This was more like sensory play, but also great for learning. I again held up one letter at a time and asked her which it was.

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It turned out the pasta only came in five letter shapes, so we briefly sorted them, too. “Another S!” she said proudly, adding it to the pile.

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If you do find Alpha-Bits cereal, go ahead and arrange them on those peanut-butter bread slices, then finish up the activity by eating your open-faced sandwich!

Banana Marshmallow Slime

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I’ve long known that Jell-O is not vegan, so we don’t bring it into our kitchen for projects. But believe it or not, the company’s pudding contains no gelatin! I was so glad to learn the fact since it meant we could put together this amazing edible slime from Crafts4Toddlers. The banana smell is fantastic, the texture is so fun, and it will no doubt lead to lots of slime play in the kitchen.

To start, combine 1/2 cup cornstarch and 1/4 cup banana pudding mix in a bowl. Add 1/3 cup warm water, stirring to combine, then add an additional 1/2 cup cornstarch, mixing with your hands. Note: I found I needed to add just a touch more water, too, or the mixture was too crumbly. Once you can squeeze it enough to come together, you have banana slime!

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For a final touch, stir in a few mini Dandies marshmallows. I then set the slime down in a tray, along with little cups and spoons, and a few extra mini marshmallows. These double not only as an extra sweet treat to nibble on, but also a fun element to add into the slime as your toddler plays.

Interestingly, our mixture was almost like ooblek, going back and forth between solid and liquid states depending whether we squeezed it…

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…or let it ooze down into containers. Crafts4Toddlers appears to have a mixture that was closer to playdough, so fool around with water-to-cornstarch ratio and see where yours ends up! Meanwhile, Veronika adored the stuff and loved spooning it up…

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…and then watching it dribble back down.

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She kept quite busy pouring it from container to container.

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The marshmallows were great because she could press them into the slime, leaving an indent, then lift up and watch the indent quickly close back up again.

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Inevitably, she wanted a nibble. She looked so confused after trying the slime, which no doubt tasted strongly of cornstarch, but a marshmallow quickly solved the yucky problem!

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Toddler Valentine’s Day Treats

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Valentine’s Day is full of sweet treats, and here are a few food ideas that even a toddler can help out with… or just enjoy!

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Edible Valentines: This first idea comes from the classic Toddler’s Busy Book. I tinted a little store-bought frosting pink with food coloring and showed Veronika how to smear this onto graham crackers (Nabisco’s original are vegan).

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Since candy hearts are not vegan, we topped the graham crackers with the seasonal gummy hearts from Annie’s bunny packs! This made for an adorable craft project and snack rolled into one.

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Valentine Cupcakes: What would Valentine’s Day be without a little chocolate? For this toddler-friendly baking project, I simply whipped up cupcakes from a dairy-free chocolate mix. The Valentine twist, though, is to make them heart-shaped. After spooning the batter into cupcake liners, place a marble at one edge of each liner which will indent it like a heart!

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And of course Veronika loved playing with leftover marbles and liners.

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The effect wasn’t quite as pronounced after baking, since the cupcakes rose so high in the liners, but we could still sort of see them as hearts. Veronika loved helping spread on chocolate frosting. In general, frosting cupcakes like this is a perfect toddler skill in the kitchen.

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We added a few final decorations (like more of those Annie’s hearts). Sprinkles would look pretty, too!

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Sweetheart Sandwiches: Next up, I made little sandwiches which are perfect for a snack or lunch on Valentine’s Day. For the first version, I stirred a little cinnamon into plain non-dairy cream cheese.

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For an alternate version, turn it pink! Use strawberry flavored non-dairy cream cheese (such as Kite Hill), or just tint plain cream cheese pink with food coloring, then stir in a little agave nectar. Finally, use a heart shaped cookie cutter to make a heart.

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And for a final edible treat, I spelled out L-O-V-E for the kids’ Valentine breakfast, thanks to this sweet idea from Parents magazine.

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On a large plate, form an L from tater tots, an O from a kiwi slice, a V from a toasted waffle cut with a heart-shaped cookie cutter, and an E from raspberries. The kids’ reaction to all these goodies? They loved ’em!

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Color-Changing Lemonade

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Color-Changing Lemonade (5)

This fun STEM snack idea from Kiwi Co has a “wow” factor thanks to the fact that red cabbage acts as a pH indicator. In other words, it will turn acids (like lemon juice) pink. Just like that, a glass of yellow lemonade becomes a glass of pink lemonade!

First, soak about 1 cup torn red cabbage in 1 cup very warm water. Add 1 cup sugar, stirring until dissolved. Let stand for about 30 minutes. Strain the cabbage mixture through a fine-mesh sieve over a cup. Set aside.

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In a second cup, whisk together 1/2 cup lemon juice and 1 cup cold water.

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Pour a little cabbage mixture into a glass and add ice. Fill with the lemon mixture, then start to stir as you add the remaining cabbage mixture.

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Pink lemonade!

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Note: The kids declared that the lemonade tasted a little “funny”, which is no doubt the result of a little cabbage flavor. So you may find that this drink works more as a novelty than as the best glass of cold lemonade your kids will ever have.

Valentine Cookie Play

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Valentine Cookies (10)

Sugar cookie recipes are a perfect way to involve a toddler in the kitchen. There’s rolling, frosting, and decorating, not to mention tasting! Because sugar cookies involve multiple steps, a recipe can easily fill a snowed-in morning together, as Veronika and I made it do today!

For the cookies, we used this recipe except (whoops!) accidentally added 1 cup Earth Balance butter instead of 3/4 cup. Luckily, the dough still worked great. If your toddler wants to help with some of the easier steps of making the dough, be sure to let him or her! Veronika wasn’t interested though until I pulled the chilled dough from the fridge and set it down, along with a rolling pin and cookie cutters.

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She loved helping roll out the dough with the purple rolling pin!

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I helped her press our heart cookie cutters in hard enough to push all the way through the dough, and showed her how to arrange our hearts on cookie sheets. She was so proud and delighted with all these steps! When there were only a few dough scraps left, I let her continue the play solo while I baked the cookie batches.

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Once the cookies cooled, it was time to decorate! We nixed homemade icing and instead just tinted a can of store-bought vanilla frosting pink with a little food coloring. Veronika was so proud standing at the counter, just like big brother Travis can! She helped frost the cookies…

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…and loved using a spoon to add little white sprinkles.

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Of course all of this was combined with lots of nibbling and taste-testing, making for a happy sugar-fueled morning.

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Jell-O Play for Valentine’s Day

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Jello Paint (9)

Kids love painting with Jell-o (or vegan alternatives like the jel desserts from Simply Delish), and today we gave the activity a Valentine’s Day spin!

Instead of preparing the jel dessert, I simply stirred a packet of red powder (strawberry flavored) into a dish with a little water. We instantly had a gorgeous red paint that smelled incredible!

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It’s hard to say which Veronika enjoyed more: smelling the paint or smearing it all over the white heart shape I had cut out!

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The paint sets and dries nicely, and Veronika kept trotting over to this holiday decoration to say, “It smells really good!” She’ll display this one with pride until Valentine’s Day is over.

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Meanwhile, I also prepared two more batches of the jel dessert (in yellow and orange) according to the true directions. That meant we had nice blobs to “paint” with, too.

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You can set down dollops of it for a toddler on a large sheet of paper (or right on a high chair tray for a baby!) and simply let the smashing and painting fun begin. Don’t be surprised if the play tempts older kids, too; my 6-year-old came running over, because Lego figures trapped in Jell-o are decidedly good fun.

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Lasagna Noodle Painting

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We love finding new “canvases” for painting, but today’s choice was one of the most unusual yet! I had a box of lasagna noodles in the pantry, so simply placed a few of them on a craft tray for Veronika. The long rectangles are practically begging to be painted!

Veronika picked out her colors of paint, opting for a mix of neon orange, green, and purple.

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At first I just let her smear the noodles with the paint any which way. After she had painted a few noodles, I showed her that she could also create circles, wiggly lines, or dots.

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She particularly loved dotting with her paintbrush after that!

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We also had one wide-bristle brush which could coat a whole lasagna noodle in one swipe. I showed her how to do this, but she asked for her smaller brush back. If your child wants to finish the noodles with a sprinkle of glitter, that would look great, too.

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As the noodles were drying, I decided to add Veronika and Travis’s names with puffy paint. Once the paint dried, I attached them to colored construction paper with hot glue.

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Now they made beautiful labels for the playroom! We’ll see how long our lasagna plaques last. 

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