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15 easy finger food snack ideas for toddlers by Maxabella
Once toddlers start feeding themselves, it’s all over. You will never get them to play ‘airplanes’ with a spoon again. From this point on it will be all ‘meeeeeee dooooo iiiiit’. Of course, toddlers are nowhere near as dextrous with a spoon as they think they are. This is definitely the age to serve embrace finger food options.
Below are the finger foods that I served my kids when they reached this tricky stage. You want to serve nutritionally-dense foods so you know they are getting everything they need, no matter how much ends up on the floor.
Vegetable sticks like carrots, capsicum, cucumber, peas, beans and beetroot can be lightly poached to ensure they are soft enough for toddlers to manage, but still in a good format for little fists to grab. Broccoli and cauliflower florets also work well.
Tinned fruit slices like peaches and pears are perfect, as are cut up banana and kiwi fruit. I would cut up enough fruit to serve a variety over a few days.
You can make all kinds of pikelets for toddlers to munch on made with banana, peas, oranges, apples, raspberries or ricotta pancakes (yum!). Pikelets freeze really well, so put a few in a freezer-safe container to pull out and pop in your bag when you’re heading out the door. By snack time, they will be perfectly defrosted and ready to enjoy.
You can make any recipe into toddler-size by baking the muffins in a mini-muffin tin. Simply reduce the cooking time by about half. Mini-muffins take about 10-15 minutes in a moderate oven. Try some zucchini and cheese muffins; or ABCD muffins (which are packed with apple, banana, coconut and date); or tuna and corn muffins.
Are you seeing a theme here? Take a favourite and make it smaller and toddlers literally go ga-ga. Mini-quiches are great to have in the freezer for a quick lunch or snack for anyone in the family. You could try making cheese and bacon, mushroom, spinach or pumpkin mini quiches.
Fritters are a fantastic hand-held food. You can pack them full of a variety of flavours and nutrients and know that your toddler is getting everything they need. Fritters are soft enough to be safe for toddlers, but easily managed in their pudgy little hands too. A favourite for us are tuna quinoa cakes. Or you could try making them with broccoli, apple and sweet potato or golden vegetable fritters.
You can put a ton of good nutrition into a home-baked bar. Think of them as rusks for older babies. Two of my favourites are date-based fudgy bars or these no-bake honey and oat bars.
Basil is an excellent source of vitamins K, C and A as well as a myriad of minerals like folate, calcium and iron. Pesto is therefore a fabulous food for toddlers, especially if you make it with fun spirals or penne that they can grab and manage well.
You can put anything onto the top of a piece of bread, add some cheese on top and slide it under the grill. Cut it into fingers and your toddler will happily munch away. Good toppings include vegetables like cauliflower, broccoli or roasted sweet potato; meats like shredded tuna or chicken; and scrambled eggs.
Thread your fruit, vegetables or meat cubes onto a skewer, snip off the pointy end and you’re good to go. Try mixing it up with some toddler-friendly marinated meats like chicken satay, garlic, lemon and thyme lamb or honey soy chicken.
Everyone loves a nugget, but what we don’t love is the high amount of processing involved in producing the packet variety. Fortunately, it’s actually easy to make your own nuggets and there are some great recipes online.
Meatballs or veggieballs are tops for toddler eats. They are satisfying to eat and packed full of the good stuff. Some to try are: turkey meatballs; chicken, cheese and veggie balls orsweet and savoury pork meatballs.
What two-year-old can resist dipping things? I know I can’t! Make a healthy dip like a roast beetroot dip or a hummus dip. Your toddler can dip nuggets, meatballs, vegetable sticks and toasties (see recipe ideas above).
Potato chips and sweet potato chips are well-known stick food that are easy to make. You can add carrot sticks (delicious baked in a hot oven for about 20 minutes), tofu sticks and veggie chickpea sticks.
These drops are perfection on a hot day (or any day, really). To make them, you simply stir pureed fresh fruit like mango, raspberries, strawberries or blueberries through plain Greek yoghurt. Put the yoghurt into a zip-lock bag, snip a small hole in the corner and pipe dots of yoghurt onto a lined baking tray. Freeze then transfer to a freezer-safe container.
Do you have any go-to easy finger food snack ideas for toddlers?
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