One of the greatest pleasures in my life is getting to cook with my kids (thank goodness it’s also what I do for a living). Having said that, there are certain recipes that are more appropriate for certain age groups than others. Since I’ve got two young children, cooking activities that don’t require the stove are a huge bonus, especially when I’m trying to get both kids involved in the same task at the same time. There was definitely a mess to clean up when we were finished making these Coconut Peanut Butter Balls, but it was totally worth every minute.

While Chloe was busy licking spoonfuls of peanut butter, pressing her tiny fingers into the coconut on the plate and saying “snow,” Kenya was focused on rolling the peanut butter oatmeal mixture into balls. Halfway through he decided to improvise and said, “look Mommy, now they’re logs!” I looked down at his creation, then up at him and said “Kenya, you’re a genius!” Maybe that was a little too much praise for a kid just having some fun with food, but to a mom always trying to come up with new and exciting recipes for kids to eat, it was an inspired idea.

But the best idea is cooking with your kids. No matter what you make, the experience is always delicious.

Coconut Peanut Butter Balls (Makes 40-50 Balls depending on the size)

1 1/4 Cup Old Fashioned Oats, ground in a food processor
1/2 Cup Peanut Butter (you can also use almond, cashew or sunflower butter)
1/2 Cup Honey
1/2 Cup Coconut Flakes, unsweetened

1. Place the oats in a food processor or blender and pulse until finely ground.
2. Stir the peanut butter and honey in a bowl until thoroughly combined.
3. Add the ground oats and continue to stir until thoroughly combined.
4. Using 1 tsp of the mixture at a time (I like to use a mini ice cream scooper or a spoon), roll into balls or logs (Kenya’s idea).
5. Place the coconut in a separate bowl or plate and roll the balls or logs in the coconut to completely cover.
6. Serve.

**Freezing: place balls on a sheet tray and freeze for 30 min. Remove, place in a ziploc bag, label and place back in freezer. Can be frozen up to 3 months.

These Strawberr-Wee Popsicles are not only super easy to make, they’re nutritious and perfect for anyone in the family, no matter your age!

It’s not that I make everything our family eats from scratch, but I do try to make as many of the sweet treats my kids eat as possible. I recently realized that Kenya had never eaten a graham cracker before. How is that possible?! Graham crackers are like a total cookie rite of passage for kids! When I was Kenya’s age, I think I ate them every day of my life. So, my next recipe challenge was born.

It’s not that I’m against pre-packaged cookies or crackers (I’ve definitely bought a few boxes in the past two years), but it’s so much more fun to make them with your kids. I have to say this is one of my favorite new sweet treat recipes, especially when it comes to school lunch. Not only does the recipe make a TON of cookies, but you can cut them out and freeze them to bake as you need them. It takes no time for me to make the dough, roll it out and then let Kenya take over, using mini cookie cutters to pop out the sweetest, crispiest graham crackers I’ve ever tasted. They reminded me of the ones I used to eat as a kid, but even better!

Homemade Graham Crackers (Makes A LOT, depending on the shape you cut them in)

1 Cup Whole Wheat Flour
1 1/2 Cups All Purpose Flour
1/2 Cup Dark Brown Sugar, packed
1/2 Tsp Salt
1 Tsp Cinnamon
1 Tsp Baking Soda
1/2 Cup Butter, chilled & cubed
1/4 Cup Honey
1/4 Cup Water

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. In a food processor or mixer combine the first 6 ingredients.
3. Add cubed and chilled butter to the mix and pulse/mix until it resembles coarse meal.
4. Add honey and water and continue to mix until it all combines.
5. Remove and shape the dough into a flat disk and place between two pieces of parchment paper.
6. Roll dough out until 1/4 inch thick. Cut into crackers or shapes.*
7. Place cookies on a Silpat or parchment lined baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes.
8. Cool and serve.

*To Freeze: After step 6, place the cut out cookie shapes on a baking sheet and freeze for 20 minutes. Remove, place in a Ziploc bag, label and freeze for up to 4 months. When ready to bake, follow steps 7-8, adding an additional 1-2 minutes baking time.

** If you have no Whole Wheat, you can use 1 Cup Oat Bran to 2 Cups AP Flour instead of what the recipe calls for and it works perfect!

Every Sunday when I was little, my parents took us to church. After Sunday school the entire congregation would gather for conversation, juice and cookies. Without fail, all the kids would run up to the table to grab handfuls of pre-packaged, jelly-filled thumbprint cookies. But even as a kid that loved sugary sweets, the mere thought of the jelly in those cookies grossed me out. I would scrape the jelly out and throw it away because it tasted more like strawberry glue/gel than the “all natural” preserves advertised on the package.

Wanting to improve on yet another childhood memory that’s still vivid in my mind AND keep with this week’s Peanut Butter and Jelly theme, I came up with these PB&J Thumbprint Cookies. I’ve recreated many of my unhealthy childhood favorites here in the pages of weelicious, only I always try to come up with a healthy version. What strikes me is how easy it is to make healthy desserts your kids will love without sacrificing taste! Instead of the hydrogenated fats and untold amounts of sugar that comprised the cookies I ate as a kid, I added naturally sweet honey, fiber-packed oats, protein-rich peanut butter and then topped them off with fresh preserves for a tasty, real fruit touch.

My kids were so excited when I put the plate of these fresh baked cookies in front of them, but the best part for me was watching Kenya react just like his mommy used to: by digging out the preserves first. The only difference was that he put them right into his mouth!

PB&J Oatmeal Thumbprint Cookies (Makes about 60 cookies)

1/2 Cup Butter (1 Stick), softened
1/2 Cup Agave Nectar OR 1/2 Cup Honey

1 Large Egg

1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
1 Cup Peanut Butter

1 1/2 Cup All Purpose Flour

1 Cup Old Fashioned Oats

1 Tsp Baking Soda
1/2 Tsp Salt
Jam, Jelly or Preserves

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Place the butter and agave (or honey) in a bowl or standing mixer and beat for 1 minute.
3. Add the egg, vanilla and peanut butter and beat another minute on medium speed or until smooth.

4. In a separate bowl, combine all the dry ingredients and mix to combine.

5. Slowly add the dry ingredients to the wet and mix to incorporate.
6. Drop 1 tbsp of the cookie dough onto a silpat or parchment-lined cookie sheet and using your thumb (or index finger if you prefer), make an indentation in the center of each cookie.
7. Fill the indentation of each cookie with about 1/2 teaspoon of jam.
8. Bake for 10-12 minutes.
9. Cool and serve.

Recently, I was asked to come up with five recipes using peanut butter and jelly for LilSugar. Not only did they ask that the recipes be different than the standard PB&J sandwich that gets stuffed into most kids’ lunch boxes everyday, but they also wanted them to be healthy.

I had the best time coming up with the recipes and my in-house testers were more then thrilled with the results. These Peanut Butter and Jelly Sandwiches were such a hit with Kenya that I barely heard him mumble “I WOVE these” as he stuffed bite after bite into his mouth with Strawberry Preserves dripping down his chin. I hope you get to see the same results with your little ones on their first day back to school!

Peanut Butter and Jelly Pancake Sandwiches (Serves 4)

1 1/4 Cup All Purpose Flour
2 Tsp Baking Powder
1/2 Tsp Salt
1/4 Cup Peanut Butter
1 Large Egg
1 Tbsp Sugar
1 1/4 Cup Milk
Jelly, Jam or Preserves*

* I like to use my own Strawberry Preserves

1. Whisk the first 3 ingredients in a bowl.
2. In a separate bowl whisk the peanut butter, egg and sugar until combined, then whisk in the milk until incorporated.
3. Whisk the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients until just combined (it’s okay if there are a few lumps).
4. Heat a large sauté pan or griddle over medium heat and grease with oil (Vegetable or Canola).
5. Pour about 1/4 cup of the pancake mixture onto the griddle and cook for 2-3 minutes on each side.
6. Take a cooled pancake, spread 1-2 tbsps of jam on one side and top with the other pancake to make a sandwich.
7. Continue to do the same with the remaining pancakes and serve.

When you’ve got one soft, ripe mango, one banana and one hungry baby, that’s a perfect combination! Smooth and creamy, this Mango Banana Puree is an ideal first food for any little one. Your baby will be getting more than her fair share of Vitamins A, C and B6, dietary fiber, Potassium and more. With all these exciting facts, you don’t need to be on the National Mango Board to know this puree will be a real winner!

Mango Banana Puree (Makes 8 Baby Food Servings)

1 Mango, cut into chunks
1 Banana

1. Place the mango and banana chunks in to a food processor.
2. Blend until smooth.
3. Serve.

We used this to freeze this recipe:

Baby Cubes

“I don’t like beets”! That was my darling son’s response when I told him I had made Sweet Beet Cookies. I thought sandwiching the word beet between sweet and cookie would serve as sufficient enough distraction for Kenya. Not so much. And since I never want to trick my kids into eating foods that are good for them and hope they learn to love them on their own, simply calling this recipe something like Red Cookies was out of the question.

But if the name itself wasn’t a selling point, the site of these cookies was. As soon as Kenya actually saw them, his eyes lit up. “They’re beautiful,” he said. “I love beets!” As Kenya will now attest, not only are these cookies gorgeous, perfectly sweet and super crunchy, they’re also packed with folates and vitamin C. They’re the kind of treats that make everyone happy. Beet that!

Sweet Beet Cookies (Makes about 50 – 1 inch square cookies)

1 Cup All Purpose Flour
1/2 Tsp Baking Powder
2 Tbsp Sugar
1/4 Tsp Salt
1/2 Cup Raw Beets, shredded fine*
2 Tbsp Oil

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
2. Combine the first four ingredients and stir to combine.
3. Using your hands, add the beets to the flour mixture coating the beet pieces with the flour.
4. Add the oil and work with your hands to bring the dough together (the salt and sugar will fall to the bottom of the bowl so make sure you knead the dough well to combine everything — the outcome will be a smooth dough).
5. Form the smooth, sweet beet dough into a flat rectangular disk and roll it out 1/2 inch thick on parchment paper or a dry clean surface.
6. Using a knife, cut the dough into squares or use small cookie cutters to cut out shapes.
7. Bake on a Silpat or parchment-lined cookie sheet for 15-17 minutes.
8. Cool and serve.

*You can only use RAW fine shredded beets for this recipe. Using canned beets will not work because of the thickness of the beets and they are already cooked.
*These cookies are best stored on the counter in an air-tight container.

We used this to make this recipe:

Microplane Medium Ribbon Home Series Grater

The tips in this video will make preparing these Carrot Snack Sticks a total breeze even if you have no idea how to cook!

We used this to make this recipe:

Microplane Medium Ribbon Home Series Grater

The ice cream making bonanza has begun again at our house this summer! Last year it was all about letting Kenya help us make Honey, Cinnamon and Honey Gelato. This year the flavors have changed, but not the fun! Coconut milk is smooth, creamy, and refreshing and it makes for a rich ice cream — without the addition of either eggs or dairy — that is perfect in the August heat.

Coconut Ice Cream (Makes 6 Servings)

2 13 oz Cans Coconut Milk, unsweetened
1 Tsp Vanilla Extract
1/3 Cup Agave

1. Combine all ingredients in a bowl and whisk to combine.
2. Pour the mixture into a ice cream maker and freeze (churn) according to manufacturer’s instructions (my batch took 1 hour 45 minutes).
3. Transfer to a container and freeze for 2-3 hours or until firm (I like to save used ice cream containers for this recipe, but you could also fill a loaf pan and cover with plastic wrap).
4. Serve.
* If you don’t own an ice cream machine, you can pour the mixture into 8 popsicle molds and freeze for 3-4 hours. Refrigerate the remaining mixture for up to one week if you run out of mold space. Or, just half the recipe if you don’t want extra.

This is some of the most fun I’ve ever seen Kenya have making a recipe because he was totally in charge. He literally got to build his meal from the ground up. It’s normally not tough to persuade kids to eat pizza, but letting them make it their own way is a big step towards empowering them. Since all of the steps in making these Mexican Fiesta Pizzas are kid friendly (besides putting them in the oven), Kenya was able to make his the way HE liked it (important for kids who tend to like things their own way). I’m not going to tell you that his final product looked as pretty as the picture above, but Kenya ate every last bite and enjoyed every minute of the process. To me, a kid can’t have a better experience than that in the kitchen.

Mexican Pizza (Serves 4)

1 Lb Pizza Dough (whole wheat, white or Weelicious whole wheat dough)
1/2 Cup Salsa, I used chunky mild
1 Cup Mexican Cheese Blend (Mozzarella, Cheddar and Monterey Jack, grated

Toppings before baking: sliced black olives, scallions, black beans, sliced tomatoes

Toppings after pizza cooks: sour cream, lettuce

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees.
2. If using prepared dough, leave the dough on the counter until at room temperature.
3. Cut the dough into four equal pieces and using your hands, shape into individual pizza circles.
4. Place on a parchment or Silpat-lined baking sheet and cover each pizza with salsa, cheese and desired toppings.
5. Bake for 15 minutes.
6. Serve.