School’s back in full swing and after a full day my son comes home starving. I like to make a light snack to tide him over until dinner is ready. I like to get a bit creative with food yet keep it simple. I’ve put together a simple list of 5 ways to make after-school snacks fun.
Dip – Ranch dressing, ketchup, syrup, chocolate sauce… kids love to dip food. Cut up a plate of colorful vegetables with some ranch dressing and let them dip away to their heart’s content.
Shapes – I have a collection of mini cookie cutters that I use to make fondant cupcake toppers or fun food cutouts. You can pick them up at cooking stores, craft store or cake decorating supply shops. I use them to cut cheese, bread for mini sandwiches or fruit. Stars, hearts, animals and a few holiday-themed shapes. My go-to snack is crackers, salami topped with cheese cut into a fun shape.
Colors – Color = fun. Whenever possible, I like to serve colorful food at meals.
Pepperidge Farm® Goldfish® crackers are a classic. I remember eating them as a kid and now my own kid loves them too. I’m all for making food fun and creative (I often use my cake decorating skills to everyday food to make it more fun. As a mom, I love it when I find ways to use color that comes from natural sources. The Whole Wheat Color Goldfish contain colors sourced from plants – learn more about this below and how you can vote for your favorite color!
Food on a stick – inspired by fair food, I’ve found that kids always like food on a stick. I keep an assortment of skewers in my pantry for when I’m inspired to create a food on a stick snack (you may remember my very popular rainbow baseball fruit kabobs). For everyday snacks, I love these small reusable skewers which are actually cupcake toppers. Fruit, deli meats, cured meats, cheese squares and even pinwheel sandwiches work great on sticks.
Build Your Own – kids like to be in control selecting the foods they like to eat. We do a lot of build-your own meals in our house – taco bars, build your own chef salad, etc. For snacks, I like to do a build your own snack mix filling a few bowls with different foods allowing everyone to create their own snack. Small crackers, Goldfish Crackers, mini pretzels, nuts, dried fruits, mini marshmallows, cereal, chocolate chips are just a few ideas for a snack mix bar.
And as always, Goldfish crackers are baked with 100% real cheddar cheese. But where do the colors come from?
Red – mix of red beet juice concentrate and paprika extracted from sweet red peppers
Green – watermelon & Huito juice concentrates mixed with extracted Turmeric.
Yellow – extracted Turmeric
Blue – Huito (derived from South American fruit) and Watermelon juice concentrates (coming to stores soon)
Goldfish is hosting “Plant Your Vote” where you can vote for your favorite color – the color with the most votes will have its very own special edition bag in Spring 2018. Voting is open now until 10/31/2017. So get out and vote! No need to go anywhere (well other than to pick up your own bag of Goldfish), just click on the link.
We’re both Team Green! How did you vote?
