This is the third post in a series about how I simplified the way I meal plan for a young family of five, and the go-to meals I tend to rustle up for my crew. (My children are currently four and a half, three and a year old.) You can check out my list of main meals, breakfasts and sides here, and my low GI pregnancy choices here.
This time I will be focussing on the snacks and puddings that work best for us. Some of these are more my jam, others work best for the kids. Regardless of who I’m cooking for, I opt for home-made whenever possible, and always aim to maximise our intake of nutritionally dense, clean foods and minimise sugar and refined flours. I love baking with my daughters and snacks, treats and puddings tend to be easy things they can get involved with making, which is one of the reasons they feature regularly on my to do list.
PUDDINGS
- Chocolate peanut pudding. This is pure culinary genius, courtesy of the Minimalist baker. It’s also a great way to sneak avocado into my girls’ tummies.
- Fruit Crumble: made with whatever fruit we have on hand, and with oats or spelt flour and maple syrup instead of sugar.
- Natural yoghurt with “super seeds” (chia seeds), good honey and chopped bananas / berries.
- Fruit
- Kids “roly-polies” wraps filled with with nut butter and chia seed berry jam
SWEET TREATS
- Dark chocolate: Lind Excellence Dark Supreme (90%) makes me happy. Knowing dark chocolate is good for you is an added bonus. My younger two think the dark stuff is the good stuff. My four year old won’t stray higher than the 70% variety.
- No sugar chocolate bark: recipe from The Whole Food Diary.
- Chocolate peanut butter bars: recipe from Lizzie loves Healthy.
- Davina’s Digestives: My kids love them, my daughter loves to make them with me, and they have a satisfying dunk in cuppa quality to them. I tend to use spelt flour instead and add cocoa nibs to give them a pseudo chocolate chip appeal.
SNACKS
- Nuts: usually almonds, cashews, walnuts
- Dates
- Peanutbutter Larabars by Back to the Book Nutrition. I substitute chocolate chips with cocoa nibs to keep the sugar hit as low as possible and increase nutritional value.
- Fruit: apple, pear or berries
- Home-made oat biscuits: I vary the recipes depending on mood and what we have in our cupboards, but always avoid sugar and try to maximise the healthy stuff. This is quite a good recipe from Lizzie Loves Healthy.
- Flapjacks (made with maple syrup instead of sugar)
- Savoury flapjacks made with cheese, oats and butter
- Banana bread
- Carrots and home-made hummus
- Cheese
If you would like a free copy of my Master Shopping List and Go-To Family Meals Printable, sign up for my newsletter and I’ll send them across as a thank you. Hopefully my docs will help simplify your own planning and shopping process, or inspire you to compile similar lists of your own that better serve you and your family.
And if you have any family favourites of your own, do share them in the comments box below. I’d love to hear from you!
If you enjoyed this post, you might also enjoy:
- How I Simplified Meal Planning (with FREE Printables)
- Our go to family meals
- Why I followed a low GI diet when pregnant