Veggies Taste Even Better When They Look Like Trains!
/ jodi levine
A few months ago I made some veggie trains for a video for Thomas & Friends! They're fun for any occasion, whether it's a train-themed birthday party treat to a playdate craft activity or an afterschool snack. As I usually work with candy it was so nice to have some healthy "craft materials" to share with my boys when they poked their heads into the kitchen to see what I was doing!
*IMPORTANT* In these photos I attached the wheels with toothpicks but in the video, I "glued" them on with cream cheese. Toothpicks are fine if the trains are for decorations only but if you're giving them to a child to eat, leave off the toothpicks.
Veggies taste better when they're shaped like trains!
Posted by Thomas & Friends on Monday, November 6, 2017
Watch the video to see how they're made!
The "smoke" coming out of the carrot and pepper locomotive is a sprig of rosemary! The center cargo train is filled with some yummy dip and sprinkled with a little paprika.
I hope you'll give these a try!
With all the leftover peppermint candy I have from cookie-house-making, I am planning on revisiting these peppermint bowls I made many years ago for our book, Candy Aisle Crafts. They're not as hard as you might think (and super fun!) but it’s good to read through the instructions, below. Especially the tip to use a potholder while handling and shaping the melted candies to the bowl (essential!). Also, as I describe below, it helps to melt the inner candies and then add rows of candies. If you heat them all at once the inner candies are sheltered and won't melt enough.
In honor of Pride month, I thought I’d post some rainbow crafts, including these easy/healthy/yummy (but admittedly time-consuming) popsicles! I made these a few years ago for Fisher-Price and the how-to is in this video, below.
Are you looking for a pretty, springy Easter treat, or a crafty food project for spring break? These super easy and fun “watercolor” decorated cookies that I made for the current issue of Reveal Magazine are the thing! (You can use egg-shaped cookie cutters if you have!)
Making a matzo house is a fun Passover craft and all you need is a few sheets of matzo and something to glue it together with, like chocolate hazelnut spread or frosting (or peanut butter, though it’s not kosher for Passover), and a few little items like nuts, dried fruit, shredded coconut, or chocolate chips for roof tiles, doorknobs or pathways!
Cereal and pretzel “snacklaces” require little more than kitchen twine. As an activity for little kids, it is a chance to talk about colors or patterning and sequencing...and it is fun! Set out some bowls of cereal or pretzels, all with holes for threading string through. I’ve made these with dried fruit too: this best for kids old enough to use a needle (clean the needle first).
Many of you probably remember being a kid and making stained-glass cookies where you crush hard candies and melt them inside a cutout cookie frame. That was my entry into the world of (easy) candymaking with store-bought candy…and I was hooked!
When trying this with kids, adults should handle the hot work of candy shaping but kids can have fun arranging the unmelted candies on a cool baking sheet and then seeing what results. You’ll never quite know how your melted candy will turn out, since happy (and, well, not-so-happy) accidents can happen! Flowers are lots of fun to create and organic shapes are forgiving! For this project, over-melting and under-melting yield interesting and pretty surprises!
In honor of one of his favorite foods, my son asked for a “garlic bread party” to celebrate his 14th birthday, and I was immediately in! It’s always nice to have a theme as a jumping off point…and with this one, the menu pretty much takes care of itself. Themes aren’t as easy to come up with as they were when my boys were dinosaur/planet/science/comics/Elmo-obsessed little kids! FOOD-as-theme, though, is an easy crowdpleaser.
You may be wondering about that string of brown balloons in the photo above. Well, it was my attempt at a garlic bread garland! With a little more time I think I could have used some white acrylic paint to create better-looking scoring to make it look more like bread. (As an aside, this project got me fascinated with bread scoring! I won’t ever look around in a bakery the same way!)
If your family, like mine, are big Stranger Things fans, channel the creepiness to inspire your Halloween party! I worked with Family Circle to create ST-themed crafts and decorations like the Upside Down portal (below), '80s photo wall and an Eggo buffet (essential)! Click here for the buffet details and here for the string lights wall.
Gingerbread houses are fun to bake and build, but these little Valentine cottages, from my book, Candy Aisle Crafts, are made from graham crackers, allowing you to skip the baking and get to the best part -- decorating! They make a pretty Valentine's centerpiece or mantle decoration, too. For a great playdate or snow-day activity, pre-make the house bases, one for each kid, and set out bowls of candy for decorations.
Sure, gingerbread houses are fun to bake and build, but making these little cottages, constructed from store-bought graham crackers, allows you to skip the baking and get quickly to the fun part: decorating! And (almost) everything you need can be found at the supermarket or in your kitchen. I made these last year for the incredible New York Times For Kids (and somehow never posted it here).