I’m feeling a bit under the weather again so I’m swiping this from one of my very old newsletters and calling it a day! 🙂
Quick Edible Art Ideas for…..
Babies: Mix some baby oatmeal with a couple of drops of food coloring, tape a piece of paper down, and let him finger-paint in his high chair. For extra fun, use two bowls and two colors. Incidentally, this is the only way I could get my babies to eat oatmeal, as paint!
Toddlers: Put some vanilla yogurt in a ziploc bag and add a couple of drops of one color food coloring to one side and another to a separate part in the bag. Close the bag (seal with tape if your child is good at opening them) and give her the bag. Let her mash the colors through the yogurt, watching as the colors spread and mix. You can put a few crunchy things in for texture if you like, too, and talk about how they feel.
When your child has mixed the bag well, snip a tiny piece of the corner of the bag and show her how to pipe the yogurt in designs onto a plate. Give her a piece of fruit to drag through the designs and use as a spoon.
Preschoolers: Make pancakes and set out ingredients to make faces on them. You can make eyes out of chocolate chips or raisins, mouths out of piped strawberry jelly, freckles from sprinkles of cinnamon, teeth from mini marshmallows…. raid the pantry and see what else you can come up with.
Alternately, let them just create art on their pancakes. They can dribble designs with piped jelly, draw stripes with a toothpick dipped in chocolate syrup, cover sections and sprinkle powdered sugar on the parts that remain (doilies make great designs)….
Grade schoolers: Bake a cake together and give him a variety of cake decorating tools to frost it himself. Alternately, let him "decorate" dinner. Mashed potatoes pipe beautifully around meat loaf! Use a pastry bag and different tips to make swirled butter pats or to fill twice baked potatoes. Sprinkle with fresh, snipped herbs and really pay attention to designs. It’ll be too pretty to eat!
Teens: Try your hands at candy making together. Get some books from the library and experiment making homemade taffy, lollipops or chocolate covered cherries. They make inexpensive presents for kids to give– if any are left from sampling. 😉
Happy weekend! Send healthy vibes!