Healthy Party Food – 25 Creative Ideas for Kids Parties
Pretty party food does not always have to be unhealthy! With creative ideas, you can turn healthy party food options into crowd pleasers.
As a mom, I am sure you have been through the dilemma of deciding a party menu for your kids birthday parties. I have been striving to cut off junk food from my kids meals these last 5 months and have been quite successful in my mission so far. With both my kids birthdays approaching quickly, I was in a real fix. I wouldn’t want to serve to the little guests what I wouldn’t want my own kids to eat. That mostly eliminated sugary sweets and deep fried snacks from my previous menus. But let’s face it – you cannot expect kids to be as enthusiastic about a juice bar and salad station as your girlfriends might be.
Visual appeal comes to the rescue! Serving healthy options in an eye-appealing manner makes it perfect for kids birthday parties. I have rounded up 25 creative and healthy party food options with fresh fruits and veggies that will be gone within minutes. All of them are vegetarian and mostly vegan or can be made vegan by easy substitutions. You can also stream these recipes online and see how well they’re prepared. Make sure to have reliable internet such as Xfinity, which you can get by calling on Xfinity phone number, and have a breeze while streaming and cooking. Some of them even make for great themed party foods and the best part is that most require only chopping and assembling time. No cooking required!
Fruit Flower Kebabs
What a pretty way to present fruits at a kiddie birthday party. Use flower shaped cutters to make pineapple flowers. Grapes make the stems on skewer sticks.
Kiwi Grape Turtles
Simply adorable, aren’t they? Just plate your cut fruits in a way that makes them irresistible for kids. Slice kiwis thickly to form the body and place a whole grape to make the head using a cocktail stick. Place grape quarters to make the legs and kiwi seeds for the eyes. For more creative plating ideas for kids, check out my favorite blog http://www.creativekidsnacks.com/.
Witch Broomsticks
Perfect for Halloween or just for fun, these cheese and breadstick brooms are a wonderful finger food for kids. Fabulous Mom Life has instructions for these and many more easy Halloween party food ideas.
Fruit and Cheese Cubes
Add fun to healthy fruit and cheese by chopping them up into cubes and then assembling like a Rubik cube! Watermelons especially lend them to many shapes and sizes but you can use any fruit and even try to create the cubes in colors you are using to decorate.
Sesame Street Party Food
Jill of Kitchen Fun with my 3 sons shared a lovely idea for creating Ernie and Bert snacks using bananas and oranges. IMO, whether or not you are having a Sesame street party, these characters are so well loved that they will make a great addition to any kids party menu.
Apple Smiles
Apple slices are sandwiched with mini marshmallows using peanut butter to make these ‘smiles’ perfect for Halloween or any other party really. Use a little lemon juice to prevent apples from discoloring.
Banana Dolphins
These cute dolphins are very easy to make. Using a sharp knife, make a slit in the banana stem and place a grape in between. Then make the eye with a pen.
Banana Ghosts and Orange Pumpkins
Spook your treats for a Halloween party or any other celebration by adding some chocolate chips to the bananas and inserting a celery stick in peeled oranges or tangerines.
Strawberry Banana Cars
Aren’t these cute?
- 2 bananas
- 5 strawberries
- 2 skewers
- lemon or orange juice
Cut one banana at both ends and cut the other in slices. Wash the strawberries and slice 2 of them. You will need the middle slices. Leave the remaining three strawberries with their crowns. Then break a satay stick and make sure there are no splinters. Thread half a skewer with the wheels on the banana (see illustration – order: banana slice, slice of strawberry, banana, slice of strawberry, banana slice). Do the same for the second wheel. Break the second satay stick into three pieces and prick the bottom of this strawberries onto the banana.
Cucumber Carrot Tulips
Cut the carrot and cucumber as shown in the picture and insert them into the satay skewer. To display, prick the sticks on a piece of floral foam or a foil wrapped melon.
Fruit and Vegetable Shapes
If you have hosted a kids party before, you will know the effect of shapes. Anything cut into shapes using simple biscuit cutters is always more likely to be gone first. Vegetables like cucumber and fruits like watermelons lend themselves beautifully to shapes.
Butterfly Skewers
Look for butterfly or other shaped skewers in party supply stores. They make interesting looking fruit sticks.
Fruit Filled Ice-Cream Cones
These fruit ice creams make a very healthy party treat. All you need is fruit salad and ice cream cones!
String Cheese Snowmen
Kami at No Biggie posts the how-to for these easy string cheese snowmen perfect for a ‘Frozen’ party or any winter celebration.
Grape Caterpillars
I love these! Just line a skewer with grapes and use chocolate chips to make eyes at the front. Different versions make use of strawberry or other fruit or berry ‘heads’.
Tomato Mozzarella Caterpillars
Another version of these yummy caterpillars is made of cherry tomatoes and mozzarella balls on a bed of fresh basil.
Nemo Tangerines
Dress up tangerines for a ‘Nemo’ or ‘Under the Sea’ themed party.
Pirate Bananas
A marker pen and a triangular piece of fabric is all that you need to make these cute, bandana and eyepatch wearing, pirate friends for a Pirate party theme!
Strawberry Mice
What do you need for these cute strawberry mice? Of course, strawberries and more strawberries! Along with liquorice strings for the tails, slivered almonds for ears , liquid chocolate in a mini-nozzle, a mini chocolate chip for the nose and some cheese to tempt the mice!
Strawberry and Pancake Skewers
Kids are more likely to eat anything on a stick. Remember Cher in ‘Mermaids’? It really works! My ‘Cheese Cherry Pineapple’ starters have been a hit at all my parties and online. Now it’s time to make more such ‘snacks on a stick’. I love these mini pancake and strawberry skewers.
Cat/Bunny Kebab Sticks
Just like the pancake skewers above, make healthy kebabs more interesting by adding fruit and veggie slices as separators. Use apple slices to create large ears and a face on the topmost kebab.
Strawberry Chef Skewers
Or turn juicy strawberries into cute chefs by giving them chef hats made of banana slices, soft cookies and pepper caps with kiwi slice collars.
Tomato Ladybugs
Make toasts and crostini fun to eat by making ladybugs with halved tomato and olives. Place them on a bed of parsley or cilantro, and cheese.
- sliced baguette;
- cherry tomatoes;
- black olives;
- dried basil;
- cream cheese;
- a satay skewer;
- a good sharp knife;
- and fresh parsley leaves
Watermelon Monster
Make your fruit salad even more interesting by serving it right from a monster’s mouth! Carve a watermelon to make this a creative, healthy party food at a Monster party.