HOW TO MAKE KIDS ENJOY HALLOWEEN WITH TASTY, WHOLESOME TREATS
Children adore Halloween for all the candies and sweet treats they get. But all that sugar isn’t good for them.
However, it’s not impossible to produce treats that are wholesome, tasty and still Halloween-y.
Travel enthusiast, chef and writer Stephanie Zubiri Crespi knows that her two young boys should enjoy the thrill of Halloween just like other kids. She also knows that curbing their sweet intake is important.
Crespi cranks up her trusty La Germania oven and lets loose her creative side.
“It’s nice to go trick or treating and have a few candies, but it’s also good to have more filling, healthier treats waiting back at home when the kids come in from trick-or-treating around the neighborhood,” Crespi said.
“Having wholesome Halloween-theme snacks keeps them from attacking their candy stash right away. And when they’re not feeling hungry, it’s easier to negotiate a more reasonable schedule with them for eating the rest of their candy loot.”
Spider pizza and spooky pretzels are great examples of quick, easy-to-make, and hearty snacks for kids fresh from the candy trail. Crespi makes hers with one simple se- cret: She uses frozen pizza dough.
“It’s faster and easier than making pizza dough from scratch, it’s practically foolproof, and kids usually appreciate the taste of it,” she said.
To make spider pizzas, Crespi loads a small disk of frozen pizza dough with toppings of choice: tomato sauce, cheese, and ham bits.
She then takes an olive and cuts it into half for spider bodies, and then slices another olive for the spider’s legs. Another smaller slice forms the head, and voila, a large black spider sits on top of a tasty pizza!
“You can use any topping your kids like. As long as you decorate it with a Halloween theme, you don’t have to convince your kids to try it out. They’ll be excited to eat ‘scary’ food.”
Parents don’t need to push themselves too hard to create a “perfect” Halloween snack, she added. “If you’re stressed and you have less time to spend with your kids, nobody’s having any fun, and the holiday is all about having a good time with your children.”
If they like vegetables, slice up carrots, kamote, butternut squash, zucchini, and even potatoes into fun shapes like grinning faces, cats, and witch hats. Season with salt, pepper, and your favorite spices, drizzle with olive oil, and roast the veggies in the oven.
Bake whole-wheat muffins ahead of time, and just pop a store-bought decoration on top of it, she added. This can be done with almost any baked good: cookies, cupcakes, tiny pies, and toast slices.
The simplest treat of all is almost entirely store-bought. Gently melt some chocolate on the stove top, dip some storebought pretzels in it, and sprinkle Halloween-theme candy sprinkles on it, she suggested.