Healthy Halloween Treats

I love Halloween, all holidays really!  With kids I think I love the lead up to Halloween the best; decorating, reading Halloween stories, watching It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, and of course Halloween treats!  In that vein I wanted to make some fun and spooky treats that were also healthy.  Here are the 3 favorite that we discovered:

Vampire Apples

 

Sliced Apples (reddish look especially realistic)

Slivered Almonds

Slice your apples

Cut out a "mouth" in the center

Make fangs with the slivered Almonds

Carrot Eyeballs

 

Sliced Carrots

Cream Cheese

Raisins (or black olives)

 

Slice your carrots (about 1/4 of an inch)

Spread cream cheese on the carrots

Add the raisins or olives for the pupil

 

 

Also fun to combine the two together!

 

 

Cracker Spiders

Large round crackers

Pretzel Sticks

Raisins

Sun/Peanut/Almond Butter

Spread the Peanut Butter on the cracker

Add 8 pretzel stick "legs" and 2 raisin "eyes

Zucchini Nuggets

We have two overproducing zucchini plants this year and while searching for new ways to prepare them I came across this great recipe on one of my favorite kid food blogs, Itty Bitty Bistro.  Following the recipe below I made about 30 "nuggets" and was able to freeze the leftovers. 

3 small to medium zucchini, grated

1/2 onion grated
2 cups coarse bread crumbs (used her idea of throwing the "butts" of my whole wheat in the food processor, in fact I used the food processor for the all the ingredients, super quick and easy!)
2 Tbsp flour
2 eggs
1/2 cup cheese
oil for frying

salt and pepper to taste

In a large bowl, combine zucchini, onion, crumbs, flour, eggs, cheese, salt and pepper. 

Heat up oil in a frying pan over medium-low heat. Form small balls in your hand of the mixture and fry up in batches.

Enjoy! And check out the orginal recipe here.

Whole Wheat Zucchini Bread

I love zucchini bread!  As much as I would like to convince myself how healthy it is (it has a green vegetable in the title!) most recipes are high in sugar and oil and low in actual zucchini.  This is my latest version in which I have tried to up the veggie portion and lower the oil and sugar portion.  I have to say I think it turned out quite good!  As you can see above my favorite way to prepare them is in mini-muffin form.  This makes for great snacks for all and easy finger food for my littlest.

Ingredients
3 1/4 cups flour (I like a combo of whole wheat and white whole wheat)
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp cinnamon
1 1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/2 cup unsweetened apple sauce
4 eggs beaten
1/3 cup of water
4-5 medium zucchini grated
3 carrots grated
1 tsp lemon juice
*chopped walnuts or pecans or shelled sunflower seeds (optional)*

1. Preheat oven to 350

2. In a large bowl combine flour, salt, nutmeg, baking soda, cinnamon, and sugar

3. In another bowl combine eggs, oil, applesauce, zucchini, carrots, and lemon juice

4. mix wet into dry, fold (don't overmix)

5.  Bake: loaf pan = 1 hour, muffins = 20-25 minutes, mini-muffins = 13-17 minutes

Veggie Pancakes

 

Lena is at that age where she just wants to feed herself.  This is both freeing and restrictive.  It is great having her able to eat along side of us and being able to eat myself!  But with only 2 teeth, I also find myself limited in variety, especially in the veggie department.   Recently I came upon this great recipe on Parents.com.  The results were awesome!  Silver dollar corn-cakes full of veggies that both my kids have eaten!  They also freeze great.  Next time I think I am going to try spinach and maybe carrots or sweet potatoes.  Please try it out and let me know what other combinations worked for you!

Veggie Corn-cakes

Ingredients

1 box of Jiffy cornbread mix

1 egg

6 tablespoons of water

2 medium zuchinnis shredded

1/2 can of chopped canned beets

2 tablespoons of canola oil

Mix everything but oil together in a medium bowl.  Drop silver dollar sized pancakes into hot canola oil.  Cook until brown (about 2 minutes) on each side. Makes about 24 pancakes.