Snacks! Snacks! Snacks!

Recipes for—and wrestling with—SNACKS

Hi friends, 

Snacks, man. We thought we were prone to grazing, but kids seem to need snacks all. the. time. Because “Snacks!” is the answer we hear so often whenever we ask you to identify your pain points in the kitchen, we decided to throw ourselves headlong into the snack space. (We, too, are often bereft of snackspiration.)

In the spirit of ease and convenience, we started by looking for some off-the-shelf options everywhere from Erewhon to our local bodegas. We pored over the ingredient labels and nutritional breakdowns, and neither of us could understand why there is so much STUFF in most kids’ snacks. (33 ingredients in a simple fruit-y oat bar? In this economy?) Regardless, we still tasted our way through all of the best-seeming options and what struck us above all was the redolent fakeness of the flavors. Virtually every bar, for example, is infused with "natural flavors” (do yourself a favor and read up on what this labeling loophole really means) and laden with ingredients like tapioca syrup, glycerin and even monk fruit—a low glycemic sweetener that has no business in children’s food. While none of these foods would be harmful to your child, the effect of added flavors and sweeteners is to distort the palate in a direction that leans away from unprocessed, real food. And so the vicious cycle begins.

So, what off-the-shelf kids snacks do we feel truly great about giving to our kids? Honestly, not a ton. We’re holding out hope that there are some out there we have yet to discover (and, if you have any you love, PLEASE SHARE THEM IN THE COMMENTS!). We know that as our kids get older, they’ll graduate to new categories of snacks that will hopefully boast less complicated ingredient panels. But for now, when we need to ply them with a quick snack, it’s fruit, vegetables with dips, string cheese and…bread?

We know snack time can’t always be as simple as just handing your kid an apple, or a carrot, or a tangerine, or some slices of bell pepper, but the closer the food can be to the thing it was made out of, the better. It’s better for their health, their developing palates, the environment, and the farmers who grow our food.  

In light of all of that, we decided to see what we could do in the DIY snack department. After weeks of recipe development and testing, we’ve come up with a solid handful of options, ranging from zippy to more labor-intensive. (It’s not a solution to The Problem in perpetuity, but it could be a solution to the problem this week.) All are high in nutrition, low in sugars, keep well for days or weeks, can hang out at room temp, and are loved by our children. So with these loose guidelines in mind, and with a whole lot of oats by our side, we give you recipes for Banana Sunflower Cookies; Multi-Seed Mushroom Crackers; Purple Sweet Potato Peanut Butter Balls and “Cheesy” Popcorn Dust.

Fanny + Greta

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These are an easy-peasy, little treat that live somewhere between "energy ball” and “cookie.” They taste pleasantly of banana which plays nicely with nutmeg, and have the protein and iron benefits of hemp and sunflower seeds.