photo by: Nick Krug

Banana Pops

Feeding kids is a huge challenge. They are picky, messy and prone to preferring preservatives and artificial color over fiber and vitamins.

At the Ballard Center, where I work, this is a daily task. We try to feed the children healthy things, but we also don’t want hungry kids running around all day because they refused to eat a quinoa salad full of kale for lunch.

Snack time can be a particular problem, because in kid world, snack usually = cookies, crackers or other homogenized convenience foods. In an effort to keep our sanity and also provide healthful options, we look to things that look fun but also provide actual nutrition over just full bellies.

Bananas are fantastic kid snacks. They are self contained, require no silverware (bonus: no dish washing!), and are chock full of good stuff like potassium and fiber and lots of vitamins. But bananas alone are fairly boring, so we try to dress them up. Kids love things that look like Popsicles or that come on sticks, and pretzels are a fairly good option for that. So banana pops often grace our snack tables in the afternoon.

They can be done lots of ways, but a kid-approved favorite is the granola pop. They love the crunch and the sweet and they’re super easy for our amazing cook, Miss Julie, to put together.

Ballard Banana Pops

2 bananas, cut into six pieces

1 cup granola (we like to mix in raisins)

1 cup jelly or fruit preserves (try to get naturally sweetened — costs more but worth it)

12 pretzel sticks

Cut the bananas into sections. With a spoon, smear about a tablespoon of preserves on one end of the banana, and dunk the sticky end into a bowl of granola. Sit the banana on the granola end, and pop a pretzel stick in the top.

Serve immediately. Bananas brown quickly and the pretzel sticks will get mushy inside the banana over time, so this is a make-and-eat treat. Kids love them and we all can feel good about ourselves for serving a sweet treat that came mostly from nature.