Snack Archives - JDaniel4s Mom

Easy to Make Muffin Recipes Featuring Yogurt and Fruit

July 7, 2015 By Deirdre

At snack time we inhale a lot muffins and yogurt at my house. We so enjoy them after a long bike ride or session of LEGO play. Yoplait gave me the opportunity to combine yogurt and muffins to create some really delicious snacks. After a trip to Walmart to look over the Yoplait yogurt choices that would be good pairings for muffins, we headed to the kitchen to cook. We combined a standard muffin recipe with several different Yoplait yogurts. My husband, son, and I all like snacking on them so much that they disappeared in just two days.

I think part of the reason my son liked the muffins is because he helped make them. Let me walk you through the ingredients and directions for our Key Lime Cooler muffins first.

Key Lime Cooler Muffins

Ingredients:
2 cups of baking mix
2/3 cup of water
1 tsp. of vanilla extract
1/3 cup of sugar
1/3 vegetable oil
1 large egg
3 tablespoons of Yoplait’s Light Key Lime yogurt

Directions:

Stir all the ingredients in a large bowl with a large spoon. Place the mixture with a spoon into muffin cups. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in a 425 degree oven.

Here are the yogurt fruit filled muffin recipes:

Next we decided to make blueberry lemon muffins and banana chocolate muffins. Each of these muffin recipes were similar to the key lime recipe. They did have a few differences. The biggest change was the addition of fresh fruit.

Blueberry Lemon Muffins

Ingredients

2 cups of baking mix
2/3 cup of water
1 tsp of lemon juice
1/3 a cup of sugar
1/3 a cup of melted margarine
1 large egg
1/3 a cup of blueberries (You can add more if you like. My son inhaled all, but a 1/3 cup of berries before we made these.)
3 tablespoons of Yoplait’s Greek Blueberry and Lemon Yogurt

Directions:

Stir all the ingredients in a large bowl with a large spoon. Place the mixture with a spoon into muffin cups. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in a 425 degree oven.

Banana Chocolate Muffins

Ingredients:
2 cups of baking mix
2/3 cup of water
1/3 cup of sugar
1/3 cup of melted margarine or vegetable oil
1 large egg
2 tablespoons of Yoplait’s Chocolate Whipped Yogurt
2 large ripened bananas smashed with a potato masher

Directions:

Stir all the ingredients in a large bowl with a large spoon or fork. Place the mixture with a spoon into muffin cups. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes in a 425 degree oven.

Each of these muffin recipes had a wonderful texture and delicious flavor. I think these are just the beginning of our exploration to find ways to use Yoplait yogurt in muffins for summer snacking and maybe even school lunches. We will need to try more. These recipes used the Light and Greek Yogurts. We need need to try some that showcase the Yoplait Light and Gogurt. I am pulling for a pineapple muffin with orange peel next featuring Yoplait’s Light Pineapple Upside Down Cake.

This is a sponsored conversation written by me on behalf of Yoplait®. The opinions and text are all mine.

Kid Friendly Recipes- Teepee Snack

November 17, 2014 By Deirdre

I wanted to come up with a yummy kids friendly recipe for Thanksgiving snack that kids can build. It needed to have ingredients that could be swapped out if the children creating it had food allergies. This kid friendly recipes for teepee are something that will do just that. If you read through the ingredient list and it doesn’t, please check out my scarecrow snack mix. It is another one of those kid friendly recipes I have done with my son.

Kid Friendly Recipes for Kids

Ingredients:

Graham crackers
Nutella
Pretzel sticks
Assortment of dried fruit or Trail Mix

Adding a Spread to the Graham Cracker

The ingredients can be set out for children to completely create on their own. You can put the nut spread on the crackers ahead of time instead if you like . If you put the nut spread on ahead of time, you won’t have to put out a spreading tool.

Here are some spreading tool ideas:

Dull knife (If children are allowed to use them)
Popsicle stick
Tongue depressor
Small Spatula

Constructing the Kid Friendly Recipes for Kids

Children can arrange the pretzels in to the shape of teepee. We used two short or broken sections of a pretzel at the top of the teepee for this thanksgiving snack for kids. One full size pretzel and one broken pretzel that were about pretty long were used to create the side of the teepee. We did not have to break pretzels. There were a lot of broken pretzels in our bag. If you don’t have a lot of broken pretzel in your bag, you can break them into the sizes you need for the kids.

After creating the teepee, we added dried fruit to it to decorate it. Children can create patterns or a design with the fruit or just place it where they think it will look best.

Ingredient alternatives to use in these kid friendly recipes for kids

If you want to steer away from nut butters, you could try spreading the cracker with one of the following:

Cream cheese
Jelly
Frosting
Honey

If pretzel are a problem, you could use one of the following:

Diagonal columns of raisins
Small bread sticks
Chex cereal
Slices of cheese sticks

There are probably bunches of other alternatives. If have any food alternative suggestions, please leave a comment below or on my Facebook page sharing them.

Children love to create. This snack is one that is fun to create! We also found it to be really delicious.

Here are some for kid friendly recipes you will enjoy:

Fruitful Turkey

Over a Veggie Rainbow

Applesauce Toppings Bar

Very Hungry Caterpillar Snack

Jellyfish Lunch

Other Kid friendly recipes can be found on my Food Creations Pinterest board.

Scarecrow Snack and Party Idea

October 23, 2014 By Deirdre

A scarecrow is a great learning or party theme for a fall harvest unit, Thanksgiving or Halloween. With that in mind here a is a build a scarecrow snack and some ways to share the snack with kids. Also included in this post in the printable Scarecrow Snack Tag. Children can use the ingredients in this build a scarecrow , play learning games or just to nibble on.

Here is how to put together a scarecrow building snack mix:

Ingredients
Dried cranberries (A row of these will from the scarecrow’s smile.)

Raisins (These can be the scarecrows eyes or buttons on the scarecrow’s clothes.)

Chex mix (The various foods in the mix can be used to make the scarecrow’s clothes and the outline of his head.)

Candy corn (This will be used for the scarecrow’s nose and neck.)

Pretzel sticks (These will be used to make the scarecrow’s arms and legs.)

Directions

Add each of the ingredients to a mixing bowl and toss with a large spoon.

(Affiliate link placed below for your convenience.)

We placed on scarecrow building mix into long clear treat bags.

I placed a whole in the top left corner of the bag tag with hole punch. They a piece of ribbon was place through the hole. The bags were tied shut with a piece of red ribbon and Scarecrow Snack Tag

Scarecrow Party Ideas

After you pass out the snack bags during a snack or party time, you can have your children empty the bag onto a paper plate or paper towel.
Here some things you can do with the ingredients:
Sort each ingredient into its own pile on your plate.
Create pattern with the scarecrow building elements at the bottom of your place.
Build a scarecrow using the ingredients on the plate. I have placed suggestions on what each ingredient could be used for. Children could choose to follow these guidelines or build a scarecrow in a new and exciting way.

While I suggested that these would be great to have at a party, I think they would be great to send home with kids as a treat bag.

Here are some more scarecrow themed activities:

Paper bag scarecrow craft

Free printable scarecrow game board

Measuring a lonely scarecrow

Disclaimer: You will want make sure that the children you are sharing this snack with don’t have any food related allergies to the ingredients. Some of the items in the snack pack might need to be taken out and foods that are safe for them can be added.

Kid Friendly Recipes- Brown Cow Float and More

June 3, 2014 By Deirdre

kid_friendly_recipes_brown_cow_float_and_more

Have you ever had a brown cow? How about a spotted cow? They are really easy and fun drinks to make using these kid friendly recipes. Each recipe calls for three ingredients. Children who can pour, stir and scoop on their own or with help a little help. They will able to create these fun drinks in less than two shakes of a cow’s tail. Okay, it may make three shakes. The basic ingredients each of these kid friendly recipes are ice cream, flavored syrup and soda or juice. Actually the traditional brown cow and other colored cow floats use soda in them. I thought it would be nice to throw in one that has juice instead. I know not all of you like for your kid’s soda or pop.

Here are the kid friendly recipes:

Brown Cow Float

Kid Friendly Recipes- Brown Cow Float and More_brown_cow

Ingredients

Root beer

2 Tablespoon of Chocolate Syrup per glass

Vanilla Ice Cream

Directions:

Add 2 tablespoons of chocolate syrup into each glass.
Pour only enough root beer in the glass to reach up to about two or three inches from the top of the glass. (You don’t want to fill the glass full with soda.)
Mix the soda and syrup together with a tall spoon. If you have a sweet tea spoon, it would be perfect. Some people prefer to leave the syrup on the bottom, mixing the soda and the syrup blends the flavors. It is also fun to do.
Now for the tricky part. Adding ice cream to the glass in an opportunity to talk about liquid displacement so, add the ice cream in very slowly if you think you are worried about the soda flowing out of the glass. There is also a chance for bubble overflow from the ice cream and soda being combined. This is an opportunity to talk about chemical reactions!
Finally you need to place a straw into the brown cow float and do a taste test.

If the brown cow wasn’t for you, you might like one of these kid friendly recipes.

Black Cow Float

Kid Friendly Recipes- Brown Cow Float and More

Ingredients

Coca-Cola

2 Tablespoons of Chocolate Syrup per glass

Vanilla Ice Cream

Directions:

Add 2 tablespoons of chocolate syrup into each glass.
Pour only enough Coca-Cola in the glass to reach up to about two or three inches from the top of the glass. (You don’t want to fill the glass full with soda.)
Mix the soda and syrup together with a tall spoon. If you have a sweet tea spoon, it would be perfect. Some people prefer to leave the syrup on the bottom, mixing the soda and the syrup blends the flavors. It is also fun to do.
Next add ice cream to the glass. Add the ice cream in very slowly if you think you are worried about the soda flowing out of the glass.
Finally you need to place a straw into the black cow float and do a taste test.

Spotted Cow Float

Kid Friendly Recipes- Brown Cow Float and More_spotted_cow

Ingredients

Coca-Cola or Root Beer

2 Tablespoons of Chocolate Syrup per glass

Chocolate Chip Ice Cream

Directions:

Add 2 tablespoons of chocolate syrup into each glass.
Pour only enough soda in the glass to reach up to about two or three inches from the top of the glass. (You don’t want to fill the glass full with soda.)
Mix the soda and syrup together with a tall spoon. If you have a sweet tea spoon, it would be perfect. Some people prefer to leave the syrup on the bottom, mixing the soda and the syrup blends the flavors. It is also fun to do.
Next add ice cream to the glass. Add the ice cream in very slowly if you think you are worried about the soda flowing out of the glass.
Finally you need to place a straw into the spotted cow float and do a taste test.

Orange Cow Float

Kid Friendly Recipes- Brown Cow Float and More

Ingredients

Orange Juice

2 Tablespoons of Orange Marmalade

Orange Sherbet

Directions:

Place two tablespoons of orange marmalade in a microwave safe bowl. Heat in the microwave for 15-20 seconds to create a syrupy substance. Place in the bottom of aSoda Fountain Glass. (This is an affiliate link.)
Pour only enough orange juice in the glass to reach up to about two or three inches from the top of the glass. (You don’t want to fill the glass full with juice.)
Mix the juice and marmalade syrup together with a tall spoon. If you have a sweet tea spoon, it would be perfect. Some people prefer to leave the syrup on the bottom, mixing the soda and the syrup blends the flavors. It is also fun to do.
Next add sherbet to the glass. Add the sherbet in very slowly if you think you are worried about the soda flowing out of the glass.
Finally you need to place a straw into the orange float and do a taste test.

Other Kid Friendly- Cow Float Combinations:

Pink Cow– Strawberry soda + strawberry syrup+ strawberry ice cream

Purple Cow– Grape juice + vanilla ice cream

Yellow Cow– Lemon-Lime soda + pineapple sherbet

If you are looking for more fun kid friendly recipes, you may want to look at my Summer Food and Drink for Kids board on Pinterest.
Follow JDaniel4’s Mom’s board Summer Foods and Drinks for Kids on Pinterest.

What is your favorite kid friendly drink?

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{Snacks for Kids} Kings Cake Recipe

March 2, 2014 By Deirdre

A preschool teacher shared this snack for kids Kings Cake recipe with me. Her students loved this sweet snack on Fat Tuesday in honor of Mardi Gras. JDaniel and I decided to try it out. I wanted to see if my kindergartner could complete the steps to make this fun snack. It was no surprise that he did a great job. He was able to do every step except putting the Kings Cake rolls in the oven and taking them out. I did that for him.

Step One- Baking the Rolls

Put the contents of a tube of cinnamon rolls on a greased pan and cook for the time listed on the package.

Step Two- Frosting the Rolls

The frosting for the cinnamon rolls can in a small plastic bag. I cut a hole in one of the corners of the frosting bag and JDaniel squirted it each of the rolls. ( He might have licked his fingers a little bit.) If you buy a can of cinnamon rolls that has the frosting in a small can you can heat the icing for a few seconds in a microwave and then transfer it to a plastic bag to squirt it on the rolls.

JDaniel used a plastic knife to spread the frosting to areas of he felt needed just a little more.

Step Three- Adding Sprinkles to the Snacks for Kids

Snacks for Kids- Kings Cake Recipe - Adding Sprinkles

Prior to cooking the rolls we combined gold (yellow), green, and purple colored sugar and sprinkles into a small sprinkle container. (We have various holiday sugar and sprinkle containers leftover from special meals and dessert creations.)

Snacks for Kids- Kings Cake Recipe - Frosting

When the rolls were frosted, JDaniel added the mixture to the top of the rolls. Some ended up with more sugar than sprinkles, but all of them looked delicious.

Step Four- Taste Testing

Snacks for Kids- Kings Cake Recipe - Tasting

We both test tested the Kings Cake rolls and decided that they made a wonderful snacks for kids.Hints:

You could easily make the rolls ahead of time and just put out the frosting and sprinkles for your children to work with.
Having plastic knife to spread out the frosting really helped cover more of each roll.

If you are looking for some Mardi Gras activities for your preschoolers or kindergartners, you might want to check out my Mardi Gras Mask and Learning Activities post.

Deirdre Smith writes/owns JDaniel4’s Mom. After twenty years as a elementary school and technology resource teacher in Northern Virginia, she became a stay at home mom in upstate South Carolina. Her blog features ways she and her 5 year old are exploring learning, crafting, creating healthy meals and living life to its fullest. Deirdre can also be found on her blog’s FB page. You can also check her out on Google+.

The Very Hungry Caterpillar- Read.Explore.Learn.

June 13, 2013 By Deirdre

I can’t believe I haven’t featured this week’s book The Very Hungry Caterpillar on Read.Explore.Learn. before. We have several copies of it in JDaniel’s room and I have read it to him a zillion times. He loves to count the fruits that the very hungry caterpillar eats as he prepares to build his cocoon.

If you aren’t familiar with the story, a little caterpillar hatches from an egg and then begins a daily inhalation of food. He starts his week of slowly and gradually eats more and more until he isn’t a little caterpillar any more. The caterpillar has digested enough to carry him through the time he is sequestered in a cocoon.

Each food he eats has a hole in the middle of it. JDaniel loves to put his finger into each hole as he counts the foods the caterpillar eats everyday. He learned to count as I read this book over and over again.

What did we do to explore this book?

Caterpillar Snack

I am not huge on snacks. JDaniel does enjoy them though. We had green grapes, tomatoes, and watermelon in the fridge. I decided to use them to construct the caterpillar from The Very Hungry Caterpillar for him. Half a grape was used for each of the caterpillar’s sections. except his head. Half a grape tomato was used for his head. The Very Hungry Caterpillar’s antennae and feet are tiny slices of watermelon.

The caterpillar’s eyes and nose also came from the fridge. I cut tiny circles out of a flour tortilla and colored them green with a food marker.

Measuring the Caterpillar

JDaniel has been very interested in measuring with a ruler lately. He wants to find the length of the tiles in the kitchen, my foot, and his shoes. Not everything he wants to measure is completely straight. I decided to show him a trick for measuring oddly shaped objects.

I made The Very Hungry Caterpillar out of construction paper. The caterpillar is simply a piece of green paper folded in half with connecting curves cut out of it. It front and back ends are reflections of each other.

Then we took yarn and organized it inside the caterpillar’s body to follow its curves. We lifted the yarn up very carefully and lined it up above a ruler. The yarn length of the caterpillar was longer than the ruler. We wrote twelve inches onto the white paper. I had JDaniel hold the remaining length of the yarn while I recorded the first length. We then measured the remaining yarn. It turned out to be eight inches. The caterpillar didn’t look twenty inches long, but that is what he turned out to be.

Sight Word Game

JDaniel has really gotten into learning to read. We have been working on six sight words a week. This week I thought we would play a game to help him review the words we have worked on. I made a The Very Hungry Caterpillar game board using a paint program.

He earned a red pom pom for the first word he recognized and a green pom pom for the remaining words he read. The goal was to review six words at time. I ended up having to print out two game boards. JDaniel remembered so many of the words and he loved earning pom poms for the caterpillar.

How did you explore books this week? If you have a post you would like to share, please link it up below. Once you have added your post, please visit at least three others.

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