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Cucumber and Hummus Cupcakes

January 25, 2013 by Amy Hudson

I have a recipe for the most healthy cupcake you will ever eat! I am working on some ideas for our Facebook friend Amber’s upcoming cupcake party, and today I’m showing you how to make a super healthy cupcake!

By the way, we also put together some cute, healthy ideas for her other child’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Party. Check them out!

Aren’t they cute? Not as sweet as a regular cupcake, but you certainly can feel much better about munching on these during a cupcake party!

Our veggie cupcakes are made out of two ingredients: cucumber and hummus.

Prepare the “cupcake wrappers”

Peel a cucumber, then take a fork and, while firmly pressing down, pull the fork from one end of the cucumber to the other. This will create little grooves that will look like little cupcake wrappers!

Slice your scored cucumber into approximately 3/4 inch thick sections. You want the cucumbers to be thick enough to hold your hummus, but thin enough to take a bite from.

Once you have cut your cucumber into sections, take a melon baller and scoop approximately 2/3 of the middle out of the cucumber.

Icing your cucpcakes

I used a star shaped tip with a large opening. This will create a beautiful, fluffy frosting look on your finished product.

Fill your piping bag with hummus. I used classic hummus but there are lots of yummy flavors you could use such as pine nut, roasted garlic, basil pesto, or roasted red pepper.

Starting in the center, pipe a large dollop of hummus and then swirl your piping bag around until you are happy with the look of your little cupcakes.

For a finishing touch, I added a sliver of red pepper in the center. See how pretty they turned out?

If you have a theme for your child’s upcoming birthday party and you want to pick our brains here at Creative Kid Snacks, simply post a message for us on our Facebook Wall telling us your theme and the date of the party, and we will come up with at least 3 healthy options to put out at your party to go along with your theme! Make sure you’ve “liked” us too so that you can be sure to see your special post!

Flower garden

August 30, 2012 by Amy Hudson

Make use of wonderful seasonal fruit like peaches by creating an awesome snack of a flower garden.

Reminiscent of our famous flower pot snack, this snack is refreshing and beautiful.

Create three flowers. The first is a turkey breast rosette. Roll up a slice of turkey breast and position atop the celery stem as shown. The second will be your peach. Slice normally and position like a flower as shown. The third will be a strawberry flower. Slick a strawberry into nine sections (or so) and position on the plate to look like a flower.

Serve with some peanut butter for dipping the celery, and you have a lovely and healthy snack!

(Linked HERE)

Solar System

August 27, 2012 by Amy Hudson

A great excuse to give our kids a variety of fruits, veggies, meats, and cheeses in one snack (while educating them at the same time), is to make the Solar System with them! Teach your children about the planets in our Solar System (yes, I know Pluto is no longer considered a planet…read on), and give them a healthy snack at the same time!

Using snacks is an amazing way to teach your young child about science. Take a look at our Volcano post for a good example of this!

I found foods to use for each planet first, then I handed each to my daughter one at a time and had her repeat the names of the planets with me in order. As she repeated each one, she laid it on the plate (and I spaced them out a little more for the picture). She normally doesn’t like pepperoni but she ate it with this snack!

Below is a list of which foods I used for each planet:

Sun: mandarin orange, top sliced off and peeled but not separated

Mercury: a red grape

Venus: celery

Earth: kiwi

Mars: strawberry

Jupiter: pepperoni

Saturn: cheddar cheese

Uranus: a slice of string cheese

Neptune: ham

Pluto: (No longer technically a planet) corn

I added Pluto as a way to show my daughter that it was once a part of the solar system but is no longer.

And this one is another solar system I made last week showing the lines of orbit that each planet has.

I prefer the first version, which do you prefer?

The solar system above was made to show how each planet orbits the sun in our galaxy, the milky way.

I made the lines in the photo below as well as the stars in the photos above using this technique:

Variations:

Make your planets out of anything you have in the house that you can cut into circular shapes. Use your own creativity for this one!

If you enjoyed this post, check out our other educational snacks

Volcano

Egyptian Pyramids

Alphabet Lunch (practice your ABC’s)

Stoplight (to learn about traffic rules)

The Flood

Jonah in the Big Fish

David and Goliath

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you See? (Includes a lunch and learning activity)

Joshua and the Battle of Jericho

Snowflake Pancakes (plus 25 great educational activities for the snow)

Disney’s "Up" Lunch

August 6, 2012 by Amy Hudson

One of our favorite Disney movies is their film”Up”. It is a such a good movie to watch with the kids. We love making cute snacks to go along with our favorite Disney movies like we did for with Mike Wazowski from Monster’s Inc, Mickey Mouse,

was so creative, and what I love about having lots of fruits and vegetables in the house is the ability to take all those colors and use them to create something like this. The balloons are made of bananas, green grapes, strawberries, blueberries, carrots, and red grapes. Shape each fruit or veggie like a circle. Next, make your house. I used half of a graham cracker and a triangle Triscuit cracker for the roof. Windows are made of thin wheels of string cheese. I took that same string cheese and peeled it into thin pieces to use as the strings for the balloons. Finish off the house with a banana wheel cut into a rectangle shape, and you have a fabulous and colorful “Up” lunch.

(linked HERE)