One less meal to worry about! There’s a lot of healthy homemade food that can bring breakfasts and afternoon snacks for children to a new level, and still be varied, balanced and fun.
Although the easiest option might well be just to pick up one of the many processed cakes and biscuits you can find in any supermarket, all those saturated fats won’t do any favours to your children, who need to keep their cholesterol under control from an early age. And don’t be tempted to give them high-fat cheeses and milk products or fizzy sugary drinks.
There’s a whole host of healthy homemade foods that can bring teatime to life, including these sweet and savoury tasty morsels:
Biscuits with fruit.
200 g flour, an egg and a teaspoon of baking powder to make the dough, where you can replace the butter with olive oil (75 ml) or even use fresh fruit such as apple, banana or pineapple. This way you can make the most of the natural sugars in the fruit and cut down on the added sugar (125 g in the original recipe). By adding fresh fruit juice you can create different flavours, and a handful of raisins make a healthy, fun topping.
Vol-au-vents with raisins.
Another version of the biscuits but this time made with puff pastry and filled with raisins and fruit.
Homemade sponge cake with yogurt.
Eggs, flour, sugar, yogurt, olive oil and baking powder, but this time we’ll make a delicious sponge cake that’s ideal for dunking in milk. We take the time-old recipe but once again swap the butter for olive oil. You can add nuts like walnuts to create different textures and give kids a healthy energy boost.
Homemade chocolate spread.
A quick and easy alternative to processed chocolate spreads. 100 g freshly toasted hazelnuts, 50 g pure cocoa power (healthier than chocolate), 60 g honey (instead of sugar), 2 teaspoons of extra-virgin olive oil and 25 ml milk. Crush the hazelnuts, add the cocoa and olive oil and mix together. Then add the milk and honey. Ready to spread!
Bread and ham.
To add a savoury touch, there’s nothing better than a natural loaf of bread (much healthier than processed bread) and low-fat cold cuts or cured ham instead of processed meat. You can also rub the bread with fresh tomatoes and drizzle it with olive oil, or even add fruit such as pears, which goes perfectly with cured ham.
