Easiest Holiday Dessert Your Preschooler Can Make!
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Thank you to KinderCare for sponsoring this post!
The holidays are a time filled with family bonding and food, right? When you have kids in the house though, it can be really tough to find toddler-friendly recipes and the time to cook them! Well, what if cooking with your toddlers was possible? It is!
More than that… according to recent research, cooking with your kids will help them make healthier choices in life!
According to the research found here, “Confidence in cooking ability led to fewer fast food meals, more meals as a family, and more frequent preparation of meals with vegetables in adulthood”
I’ve also found that planting veggies goes a really long way too! My kids will actually ask to go to our little garden and pick a piece of lettuce to eat! My oldest even used to eat green onions straight from the garden – seriously!
Anyway, cooking with your little one can be a great experience for both of you! It’s a great chance to bond, plus there are many opportunities to practice their measuring, counting, and math skills while you cook!
This post is also the third in a three-part series I put together with Kindercare after attending their learning adventure called Cooking Academy! If you like this post, you may also like the other posts: All the questions you need to ask when choosing a daycare and 10 ways to make learning fun!
One of my favorite holiday meals to make with my kids includes steak, sweet potatoes, fruit, and raw veggie sides, bubbly cider and mini fruit tarts! In this post, I’ll show you how to make these super simple fruit tarts and show you what they look like when we decorate them like little snowmen!
Easiest Dessert Recipe – Mini Fruit Tarts!
While making tarts 100% from scratch isn’t hard, and can be loads of fun, I like to compromise and make this simple recipe during the holidays. Let’s face it, usually we have family around that we don’t get to see often, so I rather spend our time hanging out play board games or at the table, then in the kitchen!
With this recipe, we’ll get to assemble the tartes within just a few minutes. It’s a fun activity that we get to eat without taking too much time.
You will need:
- 1 pack of mini-graham cracker pie crusts
- 1 jar or cans of pie filling (My favorite brand is from Wegmann’s – see the photo!) To make this recipe a bit more healthy, you can use fresh fruit too like sliced strawberries or blueberries!
- 1 jar of marshmallow fluff
- Decorations like chocolate chips, nuts, sprinkles, jelly beans etc. You can even let them play with fondant like it’s playdough and use that!
To make the tarts, just give your kids spoons and have them spoon the pie filling into the crust!
Then top with a spoonful of marshmallow fluff! The marshmallow fluff is hard to spread out so don’t worry about it! After sitting for a moment, it will spread out on its own and be ready to decorate!
Did one of the crusts break? No worries! Just let your kid crumble it even more and then sprinkle it on top of the marshmallow! Set aside for a few moments so the marshmallow fluff will spread – Now decorate!
To decorate just use whatever you might already have in the house! You can use fruit, sprinkles, chocolate chips, sprinkles, even mini candy canes!
This time we decided to make snowmen out of chocolate chips, sprinkles and a jelly bean! Here’s what they looked like when done!
That’s it! Isn’t this so super easy?
Best of all, there are so many great opportunities to practice hand-eye coordination, fine motor skills, and even coutning while making recipes like this! You can even have your little one count out how many chocolate chips they will need for the eyes when prepping your ingredients!
Try it out and let me know what you think! Better yet, share photos of you and your kids cooking it (or eating it) on Instagram and tag me (@analyticalmommy)! I’d love to see it and say hi!
Want to read more about cooking with kids? Here are some great resources!
How to teach kids about food prep
Kid books that teach kids to eat better
What’s your favorite thing to cook with your kids? Comment and share your favorite family-friendly recipe below!
I think we are going to add this activity to our advent calendar this year! This is “cooking” my three year-old can actually do. Thanks so much for sharing this! I think we’ll try the fresh fruit version!
Hi Rachel!
Great article! I have an 11 month old, but I’m planning on cooking and baking together a regular occasion! I’m a newbie in the baking department so it’s great reading articles like this one that make baking super easy!
Hi Rachel! This is such a great post! I have a preschool aged toddler son who loves to help out in the kitchen whenever possible. I can’t wait to try this recipe with him-those snowmen are the cutest! I pinned this post to Pinterest so it’s always handy.
This is so cute! Great idea and fun project. It might be fun to toast the fluff up under a broiler, too.
I’ve done that! It tastes great that way too!
This is such a great idea! I enjoyed learning about all the different benefits and skills kids learn through cooking. I’m going to have to try out your recipes with my own kids! Thank you for sharing.
Great post! My boys love “cooking” with me and this gave me some great ideas. I’m also a “boy mom” with 2 boys, a 9 year old and 5 year old.
My daughter would LOVE this!!! She is so into crafts, and this is like a craft that you can eat!
I can’t wait to give it a try. I love the individualized pie shells so that I can monitor how much sweets she gets to eat as well.
Have you ever considered using these as neighbor Christmas gifts? I’m always looking for small, simple, and yet full-of-meaning Christmas gifts for neighbors and friends. This would be perfect!! Thanks for the idea!
I haven’t but that’s such a great idea !
This is such a cute idea! Will have to try it next Christmas.
Hey Rachel!
This looks like a lot of fun, and is perfect for January as well!
Wow! I love this idea. I will be trying this soon. Best of all its an easy way for kids to cook and kind of takes the mess out of it. Because my kids are young I like that this is easy to make and the ingredients aren’t crazy or hard to find.
I am just seeing this post for the first time in May, but it looks so delicious! I’ll definitely be trying a version of this with my kids for one of the upcoming holidays this summer. Thanks for sharing! Fruit flavored sweets and desserts are my favorite!