Christmas recipes are all about the shapes. You don’t really need recipes to delight your preschooler with holiday-themed snacks and treats, because the trick is to shape your food into Christmas symbols. It’s still useful to have recipes as examples and inspiration, so here are four quick and creative snacks that will delight your child and their Montessori preschool classmates this holiday season.
Watermelon Christmas Trees
Ingredients: Seedless watermelon & yogurt
This is a simple, quick, and healthy snack that you can prepare in minutes. Slice a seedless watermelon into thin, kid-friendly slices that are attached to the rind. Then slice the rinds on each slice into thirds, so that when you remove the outside thirds, you’re left with a center piece that resembles a tree trunk.
Fill a piping bag with yogurt, or a sealable plastic bag with a sliced tip, and decorate the “trees” with ornaments or zigzaggy lights. Leave the slices in the freezer for 1-2 hours to solidify the yogurt decorations, and they’re ready to serve.
These don’t have to be served immediately, so you can easily bring these to your child’s Montessori preschool for holiday parties.
Banana Snowmen
Ingredients: Bananas, a single carrot, strawberries, raisins, grapes, skewers (one for each snowman)
Skewers are a useful tool for stacking food into snowmen shapes. To make the body of a banana snowman, cut the bananas into thick slices (three slices for each snowman). For the noses, cut the carrot into small triangles. For the hats, half the strawberries and grapes horizontally.
Next is to assemble each body. Lay out three banana slices on a flat surface and gently skewer them. Leave enough room for the strawberry hat, and just enough for the grape pom-pom. Then use the raisins for the eyes and buttons, and finally attach the carrot nose.
Banana snowmen should be served immediately, because the bananas will start to brown. You can tell your preschooler that the snowmen will start to “melt,” so they should be eaten soon.
Strawberry Santas
Ingredients: Strawberries, a single banana, cottage or cream cheese, edible gel icing
Strawberries make excellent Christmas hats for all your creations. Begin your strawberry Santas by slicing the stems off the strawberries, then taking off another thin slice. Next, cut the banana into thick slices, and you’re ready to assemble.
For each Santa, place a strawberry slice on the serving tray. Coat one side of a banana slice with cheese, then put the cheese-side down on the strawberry slice. Using the gel icing applicator, paint two eyes onto the edge of the banana slice.
For your final touch, put the strawberry hat on top of the banana slice and add a dollop of cheese to the top as a pom-pom. Serve these soon, before the bananas brown. These are quick to eat, so you could serve these in between or during Christmas activities.
Christmas Tree Platter
This recipe is more of a stylized arrangement of bite-sized snacks. Instead of a simple vegetable platter, you can excite preschoolers into eating healthy by arranging the vegetables into a Christmas tree. Use broccoli as the tree’s body, and use tomatoes, carrots, cauliflower, and others as ornaments. You can also use additional vegetables (or fruit) to surround the tree as a “backsplash” or background.