Strawberry Smoothie for Kids

How to make a strawberry smoothie for kids?  This delicious and healthy strawberry smoothie for kids is a great way to get your little ones to eat their fruits!

  

  With a few simple but healthy ingredients it will have them licking their fingers with joy. Here is what you will need. 

    1 cup fresh strawberries, hulled

    1/2 cup plain yogurt

    1/4 cup milk

    1 tablespoon honey

    1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

    1/2 cup ice cubes

What we like to do for our girls is to also call it a Pink Unicorn Smoothie. My five years old daughter asked for a few sprinkles on top the other day so I was more than happy to put it together for her. We also like to top it with Coconut Whipping Cream. I buy mine at Trader Joe’s. It comes in a can so it’s already ready to use. Most stores also offer plenty of non dairy alternatives nowadays. They are usually by the heavy whipping cream section at the store. They do require adding some sugar and to whip it and make it fresh from home. 

In the past as a non dairy alternative for the whipping cream, I have also used straight cold coconut cream from the can. 

The whipping cream effect is achieved by using the coconut fat only from the coconut can. It’s then whipped with a healthy sugar alternative such as monk fruit sweetener. It’s a simple alternative that will come out extremely creamy, not necessarily fluffy like a dairy whipping cream. 

This super easy Strawberry Smoothie it’s also very fast to make. I use fresh strawberries during the summer, and frozen strawberries during the winter months. Frozen fruit it’s often more nutritious than the fresh kind bought from the store because it’s picked ripe and immediately frozen. 

Rather than most fresh fruit that travels far and is picked while still not fully ripened. This combination can cause fresh fruit to not be fully nutritious. Another great way to make sure I select the best fruits and vegetables is to buy them fresh from local farmers. 

  

  Instructions

  

    In a blender, combine the strawberries, yogurt, milk, honey, and vanilla extract.

    Blend until smooth.

    Add the ice cubes and blend until desired consistency is reached.

    Serve immediately.

  

I like that this smoothies also calls for honey and yogurt. 

At our home I have some kids that suffer from allergies. Buying local honey from local bees is a great way to help them combat seasonal and environmental allergies. Some people have even bought pollen kernels to help combat their allergies. But local honey is a great way to start. By exposing a person who is allergic to a little bit of their environmental organic nature in a sort of way, they become more accustomed to it and their allergies can improve.

The yogurt instead is a great way to have adults and kids eat probiotics. Probiotics are extremely important for digestive health. Especially when struggling with gut irregularities or after recovering from any food poisoning or digestive issues, it’s important to make sure to replenish the stomach bacteria. 

More and more studies are now proving that a healthy gut equals a heathy brain. 

Regularly eating fermented foods it’s a great way to constantly keep the gut replenished with the type of bacteria that it needs. 

Because our kids do not like to take pills, and tend to like the sugary kind of yogurts only, I love to use our plain or greek yogurt in smoothies. 

I buy our greek yogurt in larger tubs. We then like to use it as a substitute for any recipe that calls for sour cream. The difference in taste is imperceptible. By using greek yogurt we also get all the benefits of probiotics even on taco night or chili soup night. Those are just some of the recipes where we like to add a dollop of cream to top our meals with some fresh and creamy flavor. 

Another great thing to keep in mind when making this smoothie, if I use frozen strawberries, I can omit the ice cubes. They are great to use regardless because they make the smoothie creamer similar to ice cream consistency. But the frozen strawberries already allow the smoothie to come out creamier. It also depends on what we are in the mood for. When we prefer a warmer smoothie that we can drink with a straw, we omit the ice and make it more like a thicker juice type of drink.

For the presentation: 

We love to serve it in a clear cup with a giant tower of whipping cream. We then top it with the sprinkles and a straw. I also give my kids a spoon so they can reach for some cream and smoothie at the same time. Red and white straws are a great way to present it. A nice strawberry on top of the glass, or even one slice of strawberry makes it more fresh and mouth watering. 

For other great alternatives don’t forget to check out my Recipe for Strawberry Smoothie with Banana coming soon.  

I hope you enjoy it and don’t forget to reach out to me with any questions. You can easily send me a DM on instagram. To keep looking out for more recipes and tips remember to subscribe at the bottom of this page. Sending you all my love and wishing you the best at all you do. 

How to Make a Strawberry Smoothie for Kids:

 

If you are needing a mess free and completely nutritional meal all in one plate, this chicken tortilla soup for crock pot is for you. I have been making this recipe for quite some time. I absolutely love how juicy and flavorful it is. This chicken tortilla soup for crockpot also allows you the freedom to set up the meal, walk away, run errands, go to work, and come back to the most colorful, and nutritional meal. Warm and ready to eat. 

 

 

The reason why we love to make chicken tortilla soup in the crock pot so much is because it takes only about 15 minutes to prepare all the ingredients and gather them together. Then I can walk away for a few hours and know that dinner is preparing all by itself. I often leave early in the mornings, or run errands all afternoon and take my children to sports. By the time we come home we are not only ALL  tired, but also ravenous. All we want is to eat right away. During the winter months especially we like to eat warm meals. 

I also am not a fan of eating fast food. Children’s young bodies are still in the developmental stages where they growing. Their bones are absorbing calcium, and their body needs nutrients to develop. Fro their brains to their heart. It’s important they eat right. Learning how to eat healthy from a young age will also set a habit foundation for them to look back to for the rest of their lives. 

By simmering all the food together for hours in the crock pot,  the broth becomes extremely flavorful and also nutritious. This recipe also calls for different vegetables. Tomatoes, corn, onions, and the avocado as toppings make it a complete meal with a good amount of vitamins and protein. 

We like to serve it with some tortilla chips and sometimes even  sprinkle it with some cheese. Aside from that everyone gobbles it up real fast before running off to shower and relax for the evening. 

For added flavor we also like to top it with some fresh cilantro leaves. I do so as a garnish, too. We place a few leaves on the side of each bowl after pouring the soup and voila, a pretty picturesque and colorful meal is ready.

 

 

I first discovered this recipe when we had our fourth child. That was the first time in our lives that we started being extremely busy in the afternoon. Chasing after our toddlers, and running everywhere for sports and music activities. Having a new born child also made cooking in the kitchen seem really time consuming. Trying to do it 3 times a day was now starting to feel like a full time job. 

I have the fondest memories of this chicken tortilla soup for crock pot meal slowly cooking, while the kids do their homework around the kitchen island on some afternoons. When I discovered this recipe we used to live in what we call our gray home. Every day our oldest two children had 1 sheet of math homework from school that they needed to complete. Luckily they rarely complained about their homework even though we did it almost every day right after a  long day at school so that they wouldn’t get tired. 

Tired kids would usually complain a lot more about their homework. And by the time I was tired too, that would have turned into a disaster.

I knew during that stage I needed to simplify our meal planning a little. I didn’t want to compromise health and eating a meal made from scratch with fresh ingredients.

The beauty of crock pot meals is that it allows one to safely step away, and the longer the meal cooks the better it will actually taste.

This recipe has also been a life saver many times when I have had friends over and I needed a meal that wouldn’t create a mess in the kitchen, and wouldn’t require me to be tied to the stove up until meal time. 

As a busy mom I love to prepare meals that don’t require using different pans and kitchen gadgets. Couple that with a messy stove. Nope, some days I just can’t take that.

In order to prepare this dish we actually use our Breville (LINK) cooker. It’s a machine that is both a pressure cooker and a crock pot. But this appliance also has many other built-in options. 

You can sauté, steam, cook rice, and reduce. I love that it allows me to sauté right before cooking a meal In the slow cooker. Regular slow cookers, don’t have this optio that allow you to do it all in one appliance.

Most slow cookers call for recipes that require sautéing on the stove in a pan prior to placing the meal in the crockpot. That is the case for most meals with roasts, vegetables, and even chili recipes. Onions usually also require sautéing before adding them to the crock pot with the rest of the ingredients. 

With the Breville I don’t need to start by using a pan. I start directly within the alliance where I can fry the onions and then add the rest of the ingredients and set it up a a slow cooker. 

Because I also like to freeze my chicken, I can often pressure cook it for a few minutes any time I am dong a recipe that calls for poultry. For this reason this appliance has saved me so much time and headaches. 

This recipe luckily is truly simple. I do precook the chicken if it’s frozen by pressure cooking it in my Breville, or if I want the meal to be ready faster than usual. But most times that is not the case so I can just slow cook everything all the way through. 

Enjoy and don’t forget to check out some of my other favorite meals with my Breville appliance such as my favorite 15 minute Minestrone Recipe which you can find HERE. 

 

I don’t know why this cake is called Texas sheet cake, haha, but I know it’s super easy  to make and moist. I searched and searched through many recipes for Texas Sheet Cake and this one is by far my favorite one. 

Most recipes are very similar in nature in the end since the foundation for this cake is really a one simple recipe that anyone can make quickly from home. 

I have had Texas Sheet Cake for the first time in Europe when a family from Texas…,just kidding. An amazing family from Idaho actually made it for our family when we visited them at their home. They were missionaries of the Church of Jesus Christ serving in the Canary Islands at the time.  I did live in an island during that time of my life and we met this amazing family at Church. 

Here is what is great about this cake. I like that it’s a very large and wide cake that can be baked on a metal baking sheet. This allows the batter to be spread out more and makes a super wide cake. But the recipe stays moist because of a few ingredients that make it amazing. 

I also like that this chocolate cake is a great recipe to make for big crowds. In fact one batch can serve 40 people.  Knowing our family it will probably feed more like 20 of us. But still, it feeds a large group. It’s a great cake to take to a party and it’s great that it can be made in 30-40 minutes tops. It’s something that I love allow me to not have to prep hours ahead when I am in charged of dessert when visiting friends and family. 

Now the original recipe is full of butter. It’s delicious but just not healthy enough for our household. So after some digging, and a few tweaks from myself, we have come up with our own light version of this super delicious and rich chocolate cake.

For this version greek yogurt and applesauce are the secret ingredients. Perfect to make most cakes really moist. There is still some butter but half of what most recipes call for. 

Why do we omit butter at our household? Because it has a high amount of calories for a tiny serving. So it’s a calorie dense meal. Also because it contains higher levels of the bad fat that clogs our veins and is the cause of heart attacks in humans. That is saturated fat and cholesterol. 

High levels of cholesterol in our bodies are dangerous. If you look at the butter labels, or most dairy and meat for the matter, you will find that the cholesterol levels are the highest compared to plant based ingredients. Plant based foods in fact usually have ZERO cholesterol, but actually aid in reducing it and help our body to detox instead. 

When it comes to substituting oil in cakes with applesauce I have to say that I can always tell the difference. But I have found that as long as I get to eat a dessert I am super happy. I am not the judge of forks over knives here, I just want some dessert some days. I don’t like feeling guilty after I eat a very unhealthy meal. Substitutions at least remind me that my delicious dessert has some added benefits and nutrition rather than just a rich satisfying bite of lard smothered in sugar! JK. But for some desserts that’s close enough. 

Now, my recipe calls for both whole wheat and white flour. If you are not used to using whole wheat in your recipes, you will be able to taste the whole wheat flour. I noticed that after a while you get used to it.

After all it’s still a yummy dessert. But if that is just a no go for you, fell free to use white flour instead of whole wheat for both cups. I’d say to give it a try. My first three bites were odd because I was comparing the flavor to the regular cake. But maybe you have never had the over version. And maybe you just won’t notice.

I’d say its worth giving it a try since adding whole wheat flour also adds some fiber to your meal. Fiber is essential for the majority of the population and it’s something we often lack so much of nowadays. You can overdo it and eat too much of it, but if you are not a quinoa or whole grain bread lover, most likely you don’t fall in that category. 

 

 

 

 

Nutella! Seriously such an amazing food. Growing up in Italy, I would often beg my mom to buy me  these store bought tarts to the store that came in a variety of flavors such as strawberry and peach. But my favorite one of them all, were the ones filled with Nutella.

We also often made a very similar version of this cake which is called Crostata in Italy. The difference was that a Nutella tart was that the top of the  Nutella dessert was covered with strips of the same pastry used for the crust. We would use a zig zag cutting tool to cut the strips and then criss cross them along the top of the cake.

For a regular tart, we used anything from fruit, crème patisserie, jams, and my favorite… Nutella or Hazelnut spread.

This cake is very rich. For that reason I will also publish a second version of it without butter and eggs. But even now our kids love it so it had to be written on the blog because even though we don’t make it all the time, when we do, we absolutely love coming home to a small slice of this decadent Nutella dessert easy to make.

The kids decided to photo bomb me while we I trying to snatch a photo of the Nutella tart, and I loved their smiles in it. I hope they will keep on experiencing that joy as they get older  and keep on developing that sisterly and brotherly bonds with each other. They say food bonds people, creates memories, and is often present in the most eventful moments of our lives. So it’d better be healthy and also good food what the kids look back to!

Adapted from here.

 

 

 

 

This Italian Chocolate Cake will melt in your mouth. Made with genuine ingredients with just a hint enough of sugar is perfect for an Italian “merenda”, a sweet breakfast treat, or just a a light dessert on  a weekend.

I made it first in October, the week after we came back from Italy. I wasn’ t quite ready for fall yet, but the pears at the local farmer shop looked so delicious and I had to snatch a bag.

Because I have a huge sweet tooth and I needed to reminiscence of Italy, I decided to bust out an Italian Cake Recipe.

Comes with a light hint of cinnamon but once baked it will be almost imperceptible. Because cinnamon is a good antioxidant but I don’t necessarily love it’s flavor, I like recipes that contain just that little hint of it.