Although this book touches lightly on fun food/bento techniques it is predominately a book full of recipes you can use in the lunchbox everyday, I’ve had such great feedback not only about the recipes but about how much people loved the bento tutorials at the back of the book so much so that writing a second book full of those kind of tutorials seemed like a natural progression and Fun Lunches for Kids was born, I’ve decided as I write the book I’d release each section as a little ebook before compiling it into one awesome printed book toward the end of the year, I also thought I’d share with you a little snippet of what sort of tutorials you can except to find in the Fun Lunches for Kids series, so below is a tutorial for a simple, quick and easy butterfly sandwich, I hope you enjoy it.

Easy Butterfly Sandwich

You will need:

2 Slices of bread

1 Cheese stick

Cream cheese/butter/filling of your choice

Food items to decorate (I went with simple sultanas)

You will also need:

A heart shaped sandwich cutter or sharp knife (to cut the heart free hand)

A food pick for antlers (you could make them with food items such as pretzel sticks that have been cut down to size)

Method:

Use the heart cutter to cut 1 heart from each slice of bread.

Next turn each heart onto its side (on a slight angle so the top part of the wing will be bigger than the bottom part of the wing) and slice away a small section like shown below.

Flip one of the hearts over so you have two opposite wing shapes and spread each heart with the filling of your choice.

Place the cheese stick onto a plate and then place your wings on either side.

Pop some antlers in the top of your cheese stick and decorate as desired, you can even get your little one to help, they’ll have so much fun doing so and you’d be surprised who much more likely they are to eat it if they’ve had a hand in making it.

As the title suggests I’m going to share a muffin recipe that is getting a good little workout here at the moment; Sugar Free Muffins! I haven’t tried them with wholemeal flour as I have trouble getting Mr 8 to eat it but I also have trouble getting him to eat fruit other than apples, apples and more apples so white flour as a trade off for more fruit consumption is a win for me and he can’t taste the banana in them either, double win!

You will need:

1 1/2 cup of self-raising flour
1 egg
2 ripe bananas
2 pears (diced)
½ cup apple sauce (I actually use baby food as it contains no added sugar)
¼ teaspoon of cinnamon
1 tablespoon of milk (cow or an alternative is fine)

Method:

Pre heat oven to 180 degrees.

Sift flour and cinnamon into a large bowl.

In a separate bowl mash the bananas, then mix in the apple sauce, egg, and milk until well combine.

Stir in the chopped pear and add the wet mix to the dry mix and fold through until just combine (do not over mix or the muffins will become rubbery).

You could also stir in 1/4 cup of sultanas too for a little extra flavour.

Spoon the mixture into some muffin pans/cups and pop them in the oven for 12-15 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean.

Allow to cool completely before eating and enjoy.

Makes approximately 10 muffins, you can freeze these or they will be fine in the fridge in an air tight container for 3-4 days.

You will need:

2 slices of bread, one white and one wholemeal

A knife (this is to cut the bread however I used our Animal Companion Sandwich Cutter as it’s quicker and easier)

A mini cutter

Your choice of filling (we’re using cheese)

Method:

Cut each slice of bread into quarters (don’t throw those crusts away there are some great ideas of what to do with them here and here).

Use your mini cutter to cut shapes out of the center of 2 of each quarters of bread (2 of the white and 2 of the brown).

Place the brown stars in the white bread and the white stars in the brown bread.

Make up your sandwich as normal, placing the brown pieces on the white and vise versa.

and voila you have some cute switch-a-roo sandwiches

Easy Chocolate Quick Custard

You will need:

800mls milk
2 tablespoons cacao (or cocoa powder)
3 tablespoons cornflour
1/3 cup Natvia (or 1/2 cup normal sugar or sweetener to taste)

Method:

Sift cornflour, Natvia and cacao powder into 300mls of milk and whisk until combine.

In a medium saucepan over medium heat warm the remaining 500mls of milk to a gentle simmer, reduce the heat slightly and add the chocolate/milk mix.

Whisk continuously until thick (this should take about 5 minutes).

Remove from heat and pour the chocolate custard into a bowl and cover with cling wrap so that the cling wrap sits on the top of the custard like a second skin to stop a skin from forming, if you are worried about cling wrap touching hot food simply skip this step and remove/mix in (depending on your preference) the skin.

Allow to cool completely before serving.

Best enjoyed within 2 days.

You will need:

Jelly crystals (we use Aeroplane Naturals or you could just make your own)

1/2 the amount of water as stated on the packet’s instructions (hot water)

Eggs (you will get 5 jelly eggs from each packet of crystals)

Method:

Gently tap the large end of each egg with a spoon, taking care to only crate a small hole, empty the egg from the egg shell (we made scrambled eggs for lunch with our eggs YUM), wash the shells immediately. I also boiled my shells for 3 minutes just to make sure they were clean and safe to use.

Mix your jelly and hot water and place it in the fridge until it’s not longer hot (20 minutes should do the trick) pour the jelly into your egg shells (this is best done in an egg carton to hold them nice and steady, if you have a good collection of egg cups this will also work) and place them in the fridge to set.

When you’re ready to serve you can either peel the shell from the egg completely (this is a little trick but great for younger kids) or serve it like a normal boiled (for a bit of fun don’t tell your child it’s a jelly egg) either way jelly eggs make for a cute and fun Easter snack

I love any excuse to make a themed bento and St Patrick’s Day is no exception but with my son (8) no longer interested in bento meals I’ve had to shift my fun food creation focus on to Bug (2) whilst she isn’t a fussy eater she really loves the bento lunches I make for her a couple of times each week but she especially loved this one I think that’s because there was chocolate ‘monies’ (as she calls it) in there

I thought I’d pop some of last year’s bento/fun food St Patrick’s Day ideas on the blog too just in case anyone is looking for a little inspiration

For this one I just made some mini pizzas, heart cutters are great for rearranging food info clover shapes but even if you don’t have any cutters capsicum can be cut normally to look like a clover too, add some other green foods and voila a quick yet effective St Patrick’s Day feast.

Simply creatively arranging some cut up fruit and veggies helped me transform a simple sandwich into a lovely leprechaun lunch.

And last but not least we shared a lovely fruit salad rainbow, ice-cream cloud and leprechaun hat garlic bread (I added a little natural green food colouring to the garlic butter) lunch last year on St Patrick’s Day. YUM!

How to pack a bento

So here is a bento photo I shared last year

The tricks to packing a good bento are make sure you’ve packed the food into the container well (use food cups/food dividers too keep different food separate) and pack the food right to the top of the container, if you do these 2 things when you put the lid on it will hold everything in place and stop it from moving around.

Now I am quite fortunate that when I was packing bento lunches for my son that he didn’t ‘throw his bag around’ so to speak, it would get carried to the car then put on his back when he got out of the car to go to class, it’d get a quick bumpy ride to his class and then would be put on his desk for the day but I thought I’d give the container a little shake shake shake and tip it upside down and right side up a couple of times just for good measure as you can see there was barely any movement aside for the section that wasn’t quite packed as per the guidelines above but it really doesn’t make that much of a difference to the way the bento looks in the first pic and then in the last pic.

Not all my son’s bento lunches were packed this way, there were some that for art’s sake I didn’t pack to be school bag proof but these were usually done on days I would walk my son to class/need to see his teacher and I would simply carry the bento to class for him.

I hope this post helps give people a good visual and some pointer about packing a school bag proof bento.

Happy bento-ing

This is one of my all time favorite creations, I generally draw inspiration from around the place and put my own spin on it but this bad boy is a 100% original N2E idea, I made this one back in February last year and have seen it recreated so many time now and I just love knowing that I’ve inspired those recreations Such a great idea for Easter or anytime of the year, this is also great if your little one has allergies/intolerances that stop them from fully enjoying the fun of Easter or if you just want a nice way to serve up a special Easter lunch.

You will need:

An empty egg carton

Plastic eggs (can be found at your local $2 shop)

A small amount of your child’s favourite snacks

Simply wash and dry your plastic egg thoroughly and fill each one with your desired snacks.

Pop each food filled plastic egg in to your egg carton, serve and watch as your little ones face lights up as they enjoy finding a tasty little snack in each egg.

This recipe makes a great base recipe with room to add other flavors such as cocoa/cacao or some almond butter (or nut free equivalent), Mr 8 even gave them the thumbs up (I was a bit surprised) so why not give them a go yourself

You will need:

2 cups of desiccated coconut (plus 1/2 cup for rolling)

200gms pitted dates (I soaked mine for 2 hours before using them to soften them, making them easier to vitamize)

Method:

Place dates and coconut into your food processor and process on high speed for 2-3 minutes, stopping to scape down the sides as need.

Roll the mix into small balls (I measured mine to be 15gm each which should give you 22) .

Roll the balls in the 1/2 cup of coconut until evenly coated.

Pop them in the fridge to chill for about 1/2 hour and serve.

You can keep them in an air tight container in the fridge for up to a week.

I thought we’d kick things off with this funky caterpillar snack plater; this is a cute, quick and easy way to jazz up an everyday snack platter for your little ones and it would also be a fab addition to any party spread.

I’ve divided this tutorial up into 4 sections; the caterpillar’s head, the food for the silicone cups, the feet and putting it all together.

So here is a quick before shot.

All up changing the above snack plate into a much cuter, more visually appealing meal only took me an additional 5 minutes of prep time, with the feet taking most of this time, which can easily be left out making it super quick as well as cute!

Step 1 – The head

You will need:

Onigiri (I made some for Mr 8′s school lunch the night before so this was on hand)

Scissors

A small amount of Nori (dried seaweed sheets)

And something to use as antennae (I’ve used the bunny ears from our Pick & Cutter Costume Set but you could also use tooth picks with a small grape on each end)

1. Fold your Nori into 3

2. Use the scissors to cut a circle shape out of the Nori (you will end up with 3 Nori circles due to the Nori being folded into 3)

3. Place the Nori circles onto the onigiri ball (the moisture from the rice ball should help the Nori stick)

4. Gently push the ‘antennae’ into the top of the rice ball and your caterpillar head is now complete.

Step 2 – Preparing the food for the silicone cups

Most of the food I’ve used in the silicone cups for this creation has already been cut up how you would normally serve it to a child however for a little added cuteness I decided I would cut both the cucumber and carrot into cute shapes using mini cutters.

This step is quite quick and easy, just take your veggies and mini cutters and get cracking, mini cutters are awesome and differ from cookie cutters in that they will cut through raw carrot (and other things) cleanly and with easy.

Now I get a lot of questions about scraps/off cuts, more specifically what I do with them, well as you can see there really isn’t too much carrot left and to save time I didn’t peel the carrot so those off cuts will just go in the bin, as for the cucumber off cuts they were used the following day, I cut some hearts out of cheese and popped them in the centre and had another cute snack for Bug.

Step 3 – Caterpillar legs

I over estimated the amount of cheese I would need to make the cheese feet, I initially thought I would need a whole slice of cheese but instead ended up using just under 1/2 a slice, I used an L mini cutter from our ABC mini cutter set to cut out the feet (as you can see, as I mention regularly you can cut it so that there isn’t too much wastage and the other half slice and the scraps seen in the second pic were popped in a container in the fridge for Mr 8′s cheese toasty the following) you’ll need 3 cheese feet per silicone cup (except the head).

Step 4 – Putting it all together

Simply arrange some silicone cups onto a serving platter, I’ve used 6 and I would say this is enough food to feed 2 kids for a snack, next put the caterpillar’s head in the first silicone cup and place each serve of food into each cup and arrange the feet, placing 3 cheese feet under each silicone cup and voila a cute caterpillar snack platter served up in style