Category: Kids in the Kitchen

Tangram Toast

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Travis had a tricky time of it with tangram puzzles recently, so I made things a little more accessible in the best way possible: edible tangrams!

Toast slices of bread first until nice and crispy, making as many as you’d like for the project. Cut into shapes as shown:

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In a bowl, stir together 1/2 cup softened Earth Balance butter, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract, and 4 tablespoons sugar. Travis loved mixing all this up!

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Through trial-and-error, we found it easiest to make the tangrams while the toast was plain, otherwise our fingers got messy (as we learned while designing a slightly-lopsided house).

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So instead, we spread the cinnamon butter on after, but first Travis helped design a rocket…

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…and what could this jumble be?

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Aha a bird!

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After the puzzling, he was so proud I gave him a real butter knife to spread our cinnamon-sugar mixture over his own toast pieces.

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He proudly served up triangles, squares, and trapezoids. This was a great way to get kids puzzling while thinking it’s just a messy fun snack!

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Build-Ahead Breakfast

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Mornings are crazy enough without having to worry about making a hearty breakfast and packing a bagged lunch. Take one piece out of the equation with this fantastic wrap you can put together the night before. Bonus points: Kids will love helping, and can alter the ingredients until they find their favorite combo.

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We like these with the California burger from Amy’s Kitchen.

Ingredients:

  • 2 small flour tortillas
  • 1 veggie burger patty, cooked and chopped
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh chives
  • 1/2 cup shredded Daiya cheddar
  • 2 tablespoons chopped sun-dried tomatoes
  1. Place the tortillas on a flat work surface. Arrange the ingredients in rows working from left to right, dividing evenly among the two tortillas.
  2. Fold up the bottom of the tortilla over the toppings, then begin rolling from the left and roll up tightly.
  3. Wrap in parchment paper and refrigerate overnight. To serve, microwave for 30 seconds.

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Capillary Snack-tion Straw

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This straw has some serious action! After learning about how trees and plants drink their nutrients up from the soil in his latest Kiwi Crate, Travis discovered he too can sip in defiance of gravity: by slurping through a straw.

Cut a watermelon into thick slices. Use a flower-shaped cookie cutter to make a flower shape from the watermelon. Insert the “flower” onto a thick straw “stem”.

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Give a quick blow into the straw to expel the watermelon piece inside. This earned a “whoa!” from Travis.

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We filled a glass with lemonade – any drink will do, but lemonade is a favorite around here – and then tested it out.

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Travis provided the power for his flower’s “roots”. What a delicious way to soak up nutrients! When the drink is finished, you can eat your “flower” of course.

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Sunshine Granola

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Add sunflower seeds to the kids morning granola to make the perfect sunshine-y batch – just right for the final days of summer! Whip up a batch now and the first few breakfasts during hectic back-to-school will be a cinch.

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Ingredients:

  • 2 cups oats
  • 1/4 cup sunflower seeds
  • 2 tablespoons melted Earth Balance butter
  • 2 tablespoons maple syrup
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt
  1. Arrange the oats and sunflower seeds on a baking sheet.
  2. In a small bowl, whisk together the butter and maple syrup. Drizzle over the oat mixture and sprinkle with the salt.
  3. Bake at 300 degrees F for 15 minutes. Stir and return to the oven for an additional 15 minutes. Let cool completely before storing in an air-tight container.

We love this stirred into non-dairy yogurt!

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Farmers’ Market Corn and Peach Salad

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This salad is the direct result of a trip to the farmer’s market. I hesitate to give an exact recipe, since the hope is that you tailor your family’s meal after what you find at your market! So consider the recipe below as a guideline only.

We set out with the intention of making a Corn, Nectarine, and Blueberry Salad that I’d spotted in a magazine, and I printed Travis a picture of each ingredient we hoped to find. This turned it into a neat scavenger hunt.

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Any similar hunt will be a great way to engage kids with the market and the sellers! If you don’t have exact ingredients in mind, then challenge your kids to find things you spot along the way: “Find me a root vegetable” or “Find me something red!” you can say.

Don’t forget to check out the other fun that a farmers’ market has to offer while you’re there.

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Travis got to sample fresh lemonade, pick out a toy made from organic catnip for our cat, check out homemade crafts, and more. Nibbling a bite of fresh basil was a must!

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Babies love the scents and sounds of a farmers’ market, too, so consider adding this to your summer hit-list of baby field trips!

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As it turns out, we couldn’t locate everything on our scavenger hunt ingredient list, but we did find perfect corn, and the biggest scallions we’d ever seen!

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So when we got home, we improvised the salad. We had beautiful local peaches in place of the nectarines, and no blueberries (but the salad was just fine without them!), and added lots more basil and scallions than called for since we had a big bounty. I present to you, our Farmers Market Corn and Peach Salad.

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Ingredients:

  • 3 ears fresh corn
  • 2 peeled and chopped ripe peaches
  • 1/4 cup chopped scallions
  • 1/4 cup chopped fresh basil
  • 1/4 teaspoon salt
  • 1/8 teaspoon black pepper
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon fresh-squeezed lime juice
  1. Cut the kernels from the corn cobs and place in a large bowl.
  2. Add the remaining ingredients and stir to combine.

Solar Oven S’mores

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Happy National S’mores Day! Travis and I celebrated with a STEM take on this classic summer treat: s’mores cooked in a solar-powered oven made from one of his recycled Kiwi Crates!

To start, cut the flaps off the top of the Kiwi box (or an old shoebox). Line the entire inside with aluminum foil, and secure with clear tape.

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Place 4 graham crackers on the bottom; we love the vegan and gluten-free grahams from Kinnikinnick.

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Top two of the graham cracker pieces with dark chocolate squares and the other two pieces with Dandies marshmallows.

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Cover the top of the “oven” with plastic wrap and tape down; you don’t want any bugs in there! We placed our oven on the patio in hot sunshine.

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82 degrees ought to do it!

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After 20 minutes, we took a peek. Our chocolate was so hot and melty and perfect.

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The Dandies had softened up, although they didn’t melt all the way down. But these made fantastic s’mores!

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Gummy Ocean Vacation

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This snack idea from Highlights magazine is pure summertime fun! We adapted it slightly for our vegan family, and Travis loved the results.

Prepare 1 package of orange-flavored vegan jel dessert (such as Simply Delish) according to package directions. Pour a layer into clear glasses and chill for at least 1 hour, until firm. This will be your beach “sand”.

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Prepare 1 package of clear vegan jel dessert according to package directions. Add drops of blue food coloring a few at a time until desired color is reached.

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Cool slightly, then pour a layer over the orange dessert. Let chill and set for at least 1 hour.

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Now for the real fun! Top your “ocean” with a little swimmer. We used peach gummy rings from Smart Sweets as life preservers and vegan gummy bears from Whole Foods.

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Travis absolutely adored watching his bear go for a swim.

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These were arguably more fun to play with than to eat… but good for eating, too!

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Proportional Pie

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Much like the magnetic hearts that Travis and I crafted today, this project is a fun way to teach kids about symmetry… With the added bonus that it’s edible!

Unlike linear symmetry, this project shows circular symmetry. You can point out to your child things in nature that show symmetry in a circle like this, including starfish and spider webs.

For the ready-to-eat equivalent, bake a pre-made pie shell according to package directions and let cool. (Note: A convenient vegan go-to is Wholly Wholesome).

Spoon a thick layer of non-dairy yogurt into the pie.

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Set out plates of berries or other fruits for your child to use as decoration and score the top of the yogurt so the pie is divided into 4 equal portions.

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(Note: Bigger kids might want to do this with six portions, but four seemed easier for my kindergartner to handle).

I placed a strawberry in one quarter of the pie. How many strawberries should each of the other three sections receive? Travis quickly added 1 strawberry to each.

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Next I placed two blueberries in one section. At first he placed his blueberries any which way, but I showed him how to place them not just in the right quadrant, but also the same place.

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“Is it ready to eat?” he wanted to know. Almost!

 

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We added just a few more blueberry and strawberry decorations to help him see the symmetry, and then it was time to scoop into the pie. What delicious fun!

Spiderweb Snacks

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Travis is so into spiders lately: finding them in our new home; discovering their webs in the garage; you name it. So no better way to foster his interest than to make a spider-themed snack! We actually tried to do this craft once before, but lacked a good vegan white chocolate at the time. This time turned out so much better. As a bonus, the webs are an example of circular symmetry, something we’e been studying lately in our play.

First, arrange 5 or 6 pretzels as the spokes of the web on wax paper.

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Meanwhile, place vegan white chocolate and non-dairy chocolate chips in zip-top bags and place in glass jars.

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Fill the jars with hot water (a grown-up step). Travis loved watching the chocolate turn from solid to melted in this method.

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Remove the bags from the water and snip a small hole in the bottom corner. We piped a big circle of chocolate in the center, and added a few raisin “flies” as victims. Oh no!

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Pipe additional circles of white chocolate to form each web.

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Then each web got a big melted chocolate spider. They were tarantulas, Travis decided. We ran out of white chocolate, so made one dark chocolate web as well. Transfer the wax paper to the fridge to cool.

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The webs will set quite quickly, at which point you can peel them off the wax paper for a neat reveal. It turned out that the dark chocolate web peeled off more easily, but they all were fantastically creepy and fun!

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Frosty Bites

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It’s been 90 degrees all week and Travis had fun experimenting with which frozen snacks were his favorite, an idea out of his latest Highlights magazine..

First up, we tried a few different kinds of fruit. Frozen watermelon was hard to bite into, but almost like a watermelon popsicle! That got a big thumbs up.

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Frozen banana got big smiles, too…

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…but not so much frozen grapes.

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Frozen non-dairy yogurt and frozen pudding were too hard straight from the freezer, harder than ice cream, and needed time to thaw before he could dig in. Neither was declared a winner.

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Frozen applesauce got laughs because as it thawed enough to come out of the tube at the top, it kept squirting us!

His favorites? Frozen chocolate bars…

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…and frozen Dandies mini marshmallows – these he could eat like sweet little frozen chips out of the bag!

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What does your child like to eat as a frozen snack on a hot summer afternoon? Please share in the comments!

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