Healthy Bunny Snack for Kids - Food Fun

I first discovered bento box lunches featuring healthy foods transformed into super cuteness a few years ago. At the time I thought it was fun, but didn’t try it on my family because my son was too young to need a packed lunch for school and, lucky for us, he ate everything! It didn’t matter what color or texture, veggie or fruit, he would try it and like it. Fast forward to 4 years old and I now have a super picky eater on my hands. I don’t know what happened, perhaps it was the juice and snacks at Pre-School that slowly changed his palate or maybe he was bound to start being more opinionated and picky with age? Either way, I now need to get creative to get a variety of healthy whole foods into him without a meltdown. Smoothies work and so do some soups. I’ve also discovered having him help make things in the kitchen almost always ensures a few samples. Today I’m trying a fun food presentation (inspired by a lunch Jill from Meet the Dubiens made for her kids - love her blog!), a plate full of healthy snacks made to look like a cute bunny, the perfect snack to go along with our Easter egg decorating.

This bunny is made out of a brown rice cake topped with almond butter, apple wedges for the bunny ears, a carrot cut into strips for whiskers and a triangle for the nose.  I would have used blueberries for eyes, but we only have frozen right now, so I decided to make it a special treat by adding chocolate chips. My little man was so excited for his cute snack. Although he immediately asked, “What happened to the bunny’s feet and body?” apparently he wanted the bunny to be able to “hop, hop, hop”.

I was so excited to see him take a big bite of an apple wedge and enjoy it. This is a big deal, he typically refuses to eat the apple skin. He ate a few more bites of apple with skin, but to keep it real I must admit he then ate just the white part of the apples and left the rest of skin. I’ll take even a few bites to start as I want him to keep trying whole foods until he relearns to like them.

This cute bunny snack worked well to get my son to happily eat healthy snacks and was super easy to make, no special cutters required.  Next time I make a fun food snack, I’m going to try adding some green veggies...baby steps!