Sugar Swings! Serve Some: fruit snacks

Showing posts with label fruit snacks. Show all posts

Friday, October 7, 2016

Fruit (Fig & Strawberry) Halloween Monster Pops

I'm adding to all the fun monster themed foods that will be showing up from now until Halloween!

How about some fruit pops. Meaning fruit on sticks!

I've been on a fig kick lately. I know that most people (KIDS) don't gravitate toward figs but I'm trying because I love them. Aside from a fig newton my kiddos haven't really ever had fresh figs. Let's be honest they don't always look so yummy. You don't peel them and you have to get past eating the skin. And inside, they actually did remind me of a monster face. Hence the monster pops.

But how fun do these guys look??!

Add some spooky eyes and a little melted candy and you've got a simple sweet treat.

I did also use strawberries too as I knew they would eat these guys.

You can find fresh figs so much easier now in grocery stores or you may find other varieties at your local farmer's market.

My favs are the black mission but I love the kadota too.

They don't store for long so make them the day you plan to eat them. They are so quick to put together so that's easy to do.

Create your own gang of fruit monster pops this Halloween

AND they'd also be great as an after school healthy treat!

My kids did try them but still preferred the strawberry pops - but it was at least a first step!

Thanks for stopping by and have great weekend!

Fig and Strawberry Monster Pops

by Michelle Clausen September-16-2016

Ingredients

6 strawberries; 6 figs
candy coated chocolate candy (like m and m's)
candy eyes
1/2 cup vanilla/orange candy melts/wafers
24 pop sticks or straws

Instructions:

Wash and dry fruit. Cut each into 1/2 lengthwise (as in photos)
Insert pop stick into bottom of fruit
Melt candy wafers in quart sized freezer bag in 15 second intervals in microwave. Snip an end and add some candy to pop stick to adhere to fruit.
Attach candy eyes with melted candy.
Add more detail with melted candy. Let harden 10 minutes.
Serve the day the pops are made.

Prep time: 15 mins Yield: 24 monster pops

Sunday, July 19, 2015

Pea Pods made from Fruit

Summer is in full swing around here! The kids are in a few day camps, the days are 90+ degrees and humid, the cicadas are singing their hot summer songs - and I'm loving it all. It's hard to believe it's nearly the end of July - only one full month of summer left so I'm going to enjoy every second of it.

And I have a really easy healthy treat for you this time. Well relatively healthy when you compare it to the rest of the sugary sweets that you usually find here. Cute little pea pods - made from fruit.

I spotted these Joray brand fruit rolls in the food store the other day. Joray makes all kinds of flavors of fruit rolls, but I had never seen an all apple green fruit roll. (ps if you look for them, I found them in the Kosher section of my local Shop Rite food store).

I thought they'd make great pea pods with some green grapes as the "peas".

They are really super easy to make too. Cut out a leaf shape from the fruit roll. Add your grapes (2 or 3 "pea" clusters) and wrap the fruit roll around the grapes.

Twist the ends a bit and that's pretty much it.

Very cute as is or you can up your cute factor by adding some smiley faces. Faces added with an edible food writer.

Smiling pea pods - try not to smile yourself!

Make them for your veggie averse peeps. I was thinking they'd also make a super cute addition to a twin or triplet baby shower or maybe a fun April Fool's Day prank. So many options!

Thanks as always for stopping by. Have a GREAT week!

Monday, November 4, 2013

Homemade Fruit Snacks

Do your kids love fruit snacks as much as mine do? For some reason mine are always begging for those store bought character fruit snacks with all those bad ingredients like corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, food colorings, various waxes and gums. But they love them, so as an alternative I tried some homemade ones made from this stuff:

CasCal is a natural fermented soda that made from all natural ingredients. I've had it for awhile so not even sure it's still available. It came in neat flavors like cherry rose and chocolate, mango jasmine and kaffir lime, lemongrass tangerine and pineapple, pear apricot and magnolia, and black current tangerine and lemon so I thought it would be great to use to make some of the homemade fruit snacks.

For these you need some gelatin, the soda base and some sugar, as well as some candy molds. I found this recipe on Mommy Savers and just used the natural fruit soda for the flavoring.

Add 1/3 cup of the soda (or whatever drink/juice you'd like to make these from) to a sauce pan and sprinkle 2 envelopes of gelatin over. Let sit a couple minutes. I also added about 1 tablespoonful of sugar and heated everything over medium until all dissolved. Put the mix into something you can pour from, and pour into molds.

Let sit until firm or put in the refrigerator to speed this up. This worked great and it was easier to pop the snacks out of the mold when they were cold.

I have all kinds of ice cube trays and molds I've collected over the years so it was great to use these for the fruit snacks too. Almost as cute as those store bought fruit snacks. OK no Monsters U or Star Wars characters but still cute.

And the kid's reaction? At first good and they ate them up, but when I asked them about what they liked better, these homemade ones or the store bought. They picked the store bought {insert sad face with sad trombone sound}. The homemade definitely had a good flavor but the texture is not the same as those others, it must be the wax or guar gum ingredients that give them more of a candy chewy texture, and these are more of a delicate flavor with a harder gelatin texture. Maybe I just need to experiment with the recipe a bit more. If anyone has any better experience with homemade fruit snacks, please share!

Thanks for stopping by and hello to November. Beautiful weather here in the northeast AND today is my 18 year anniversary (I know 18 years, how the heck did that happen?!). The time flies by when you are married to your best friend, happy anniversary hon!!!

Tidy Mom's I'm Loving It