Blog from Cheshire Franchise
Halloween is a great excuse to encourage your children to be creative in the kitchen, as there are so many interesting recipes you can try. However, the occasion is also synonymous with sweets and treats, which is why it is hard to steer your little ones away from sugary or salty snacks at this time of the year.
This is why I’ve put together some devilishly delicious dishes you can have fun making together that are also nutritious to eat.
1) Ghost bananas, pumpkin satsumas & apple fangs
If you’re hosting a Halloween party, it is easy to fill up bowls of crisps and gummies, but to encourage the children to eat some fruit as well, you could create a freaky fruit platter.
Bananas turned into ghosts with the help of a couple of raisins for eyes, satsumas made to look like pumpkins thanks to the addition of celery ‘stalks’, apple slices with yoghurt-covered raisins in between for fangs, and lychees with blueberries in the middle to look like eyeballs are all creative and exciting ways to make a fun fruit platter they’ll love to tuck into.
2) Have fun with pizzas
Making pizzas is a great way to get your little ones involved in food preparation, whether they have taken part in cooking classes in Greater Manchester before or not, as they can decorate their toppings any way they wish.
When it comes to Halloween decorations, they could melt some mozzarella on the top to look like ghosts, or place black olives in the shape of a spider, or you could even make a monster face by putting different ingredients, such as peppers, sweetcorn, pepperoni, and mushrooms, for the eyes, mouth and nose.
The more toppings they put on, the more veg and protein they get as well, so encourage them to be as creative as possible with their decorating.
Most children love pizza, so this one is always a winner in terms of having fun making it and enjoying eating it!
3) Spooky veg platter
A great accompaniment to pizza is a veg platter, chopped into spooky shapes.
For instance, you could make pepper ghosts by slicing them in half length-wise, using candy eyes or olives as eyes. You could add some cucumber skulls by slicing the cucumber thinly and cutting out the lower sides with the bottom end of a piping nozzle and its eyes with the top end.
If you have Halloween cookie cutters, you could chop lots of fruit and veg into bats, spiders, cats and witches, serving them around a bowl of guacamole ‘slime’.
Witches’ fingers can be made out of breadsticks with a bit of tomato paste at the end for nails, while pretzel and cheese brooms are also a great addition to a veg platter, and are really effective when the end of the cheese is splayed to look like broom bristles.
4) Be playful with pastry
Even if you’re not that familiar with using pastry in your everyday cooking, it is a really handy ingredient when baking with kids, as it allows you to be really creative in your cooking, as well as fulfil their sensory-play needs.
For instance, you could twist strips of readymade puff pastry into scary snakes, and decorate with parmesan and poppy seeds before popping them in the oven.
Alternatively, you could wrap the pastry around sausages for bandaged ‘mummies’, fill pastry with pumpkin pie filling for a veggie ‘coffin’, or make apple turnover ‘ghosts’.
5) Halloween pancakes
Whether you want to give your children a fun breakfast to kickstart your Halloween celebrations, or you want them to have a more nutritious pudding than their Trick or Treat hoard, you could make some ghoulish monster pancakes.
These are made with spinach leaves, which gives them a fun green colour, and can be decorated however the child wants, using fruit such as bananas, blueberries and kiwis, for the eyes, nose and mouth.
This allows them to have lots of fun in the kitchen, which is a great way to start their passion for food and cooking.
If you allow your children to get involved in the whole cooking process, from finding recipes to presenting their creations, they are more likely to take an interest in what they eat, both now and in the future.
For more information on Halloween cooking workshops or children’s cooking classes in Cheshire & Greater Manchester, get in touch today.