“When it comes to food at birthday parties, it’s my experience that children are very happy with whatever is served and usually eat it all, starting with the fruit plate! We have to let go of our old expectations and trust our children to appreciate what’s healthy, but fun, food” Mamacino

Have you ever come home from a party and your child is bouncing off the walls, sick and irritable? It’s more than likely all the additives and the sugar-high from ‘traditional’ party foods.

My conscience just won’t let me serve that stuff up to kids anymore. There are so many yummy, healthy things you can make instead. Sure have a treat or two in there if you like, but balance it out with loads of the good stuff.

Okay, so here is my tried and true formula for catering a healthy kid’s party.

KISS – Keep it Simple Sweetheart. Remember my last post.

I serve four different types of food, plus the cake. I put them onto eight smallish serving plates, so it looks impressive. I do a fruit, a vegetable, a savoury and a sweet, plus the cake.

1. Fruit

♥ Passionfruit cups. From Rebecca Mugridge’s new book Happy, Healthy Mums. This is a sneak peek, the book isn’t out yet! Sign up to Bek’s blog to stay updated. All you do is scoop the flesh out of the passionfruit, make a fruit salad, add the passionfruit back in and serve it with some toothpicks. All compostable!

♥ Fruit skewers like these by Hayley at Doing it for the Kids.

♥ Apple Snax. Use some lemon juice to stop the apple browning, top with homemade nut butter and some yummy toppings. You could even make it a fun party activity and let the kids make their own.

♥ Or just do a simple fruit platter like the one pictured up the top. Fruit in season is cheap and delicious!

2. Vegetables

♥ I am deadly serious. Serve up some cherry tomatoes, baby qukes, baby carrots, snow peas and strips of capsicum with my yummy dip. Serve the dip in half a capsicum for a bit of fun.

♥ Easy Green Herb and Garlic Dip

♥  Kale chips. You can try!

3. Savoury

♥  Zucchini slice. Serve it cut into squares with half a cherry tomato on top.

♥  Vegie Smuggler’s amazing Cheese Puffs. My kids love these and we have been making them with lots of different vegetables like carrot and broccoli. Yum.

♥ Chicken drumsticks or wings, baked with a sticky organic tamari and honey glaze. Sprinkle with sesame seeds and chopped spring onion.

♥ Chicken nuggets. No, not the ones from a packet! Try some of my homemade, super healthy recipes. Serve with some easy home-made tomato sauce.

♥ Salad wraps. Choose a good quality wrap like Sorj or Mountain bread, add some boiled egg, organic chicken or organic ham, loads of salad, roll up and slice into small rounds. They looks so pretty.

♥ Popcorn. Buy the organic variety and pop it yourself in a popcorn machine or in a pan with a little coconut oil. Top with a healthy salt or some Vital Veggie Power. Do not buy the microwave popcorn – it’s horrid stuff.

♥ Sushi and rice paper rolls. You can buy these if you choose carefully!

♥ Kids love meatballs! Try my lamb meatballs or make some chicken or beef ones with loads of vegetables. Bake in the oven to make it quicker.

♥ Cyndi O’Meara’s healthy, vegetarian sausage rolls have pretty much gained legend status. The kids will never know they are healthy. If you haven’t tried them, you must! Get the recipe.

Repeat after me…….. Just say no to the cheerio! 😉

4. Sweet

♥ Really Healthy Chocolate Crackles. 

♥  Healthy Biscuits.

♥ Green Pikelets.

♥ Salted Caramel Popcorn

♥ Carrot, Pineapple and Zucchini Muffins.

♥ Thermomix Sorbet. If you are lucky enough to have thermomix, fresh fruit sorbet is pretty darn impressive. Use honey or rapadura sugar.

 5. Cake

We talked cake the other day. Check out my six healthy birthday cake recipes here.

♥ If you have children with any allergy issues, check out this range of cute flags and cupcake wrappers from Happy Tummies to mark your goodies with.

♥  Too busy too cook? Add in a few healthy packet snacks. Check out this post to find the best.

♥ You can easily make many of these ideas ahead of time and freeze.

Okay, who’s still with me? Let’s talk drinks.

♥ Water. Get a huge container of water and ice and jazz it up.

♥ Raspberry Lemonade from Jo at Quirky Cooking. Super healthy and easy to make. Doesn’t it look the bomb!

♥ Make freshly squeezed juice, smoothies or milkshakes. Set up your juicer/blender/thermomix on a table and you can make them to order like a juice bar!

♥ Alisha from Naughty Naturopath Mum has little kids and she uses plain Cocobella coconut water in poppers at her parties. She also told me to google this crazy idea.

♥ Make a watermelon your drink dispenser! See how to do it at Brit + Co. Fill it with a healthy watermelon drink and just watch the kids go nuts for it!

I could go on, but I won’t! I hope this has given you some things to think about and try for your next kid’s party.

I will leave you with some awesome blog posts about healthy parties from Mamacino and The Wholefood Mama.

As always, I would so love to hear your ideas. Add a link or let me know your fabulous tips for healthy party food!

 Click here to visit my Nutra Organics affiliate shop!