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I am guest posting today over at San Diego Deals and Steals with my recipe for healthy shamrock-shaped homemade tortilla chips (We made good use of those spinach and herb tortillas! ). Hope you enjoy!

***If you decide to pin this recipe, PLEASE click over and pin from San Diego Deals and Steals, and not this post out of courtesy to that site. Thank you!

 This simple meal served in a muffin tin is perfect for the little toddler in your life or anyone who wants to nibble on little bites. Muffin Tin Meals are a great way to get toddlers, preschoolers, and children to try new foods in a  fun and engaging way. To learn more, visit the Muffin Tin Meal FAQ page



In this Muffin Tin Meal for a toddler: 

• Puzzle piece mini ham sandwiches
• Sliced green grape pieces
• Mini orange slices
• Slices string cheese circles 
• Fresh spinach leaves (A stretch I know, but my kids love them)

Creating little-ish foods was fun!

I love The Lunch Punch brand sandwich cutters. They are easy to use and come in a variety of fun and engaging shapes for toddlers, preschoolers, and children.

For today's muffin tin lunch, I used the puzzle piece cutter. It's part of a 4 pack. The cutters are also dishwasher safe, which is a huge bonus for me. Find out more at TheLunchPunch.com



Disclosure: I was not compensated by The Lunch Punch to write about them. 


I would love to know what your toddler's favorite food is!

• Spinach & Herb Flour Tortillas (We used Mission Brand)
• Cheese of your choice, shredded or thinly sliced
• Heart-shaped mini food cutter
• Knife/or Pizza cutter

  
  

  Here’s the “How to”

There you have it, a green shamrock quesadilla lunch perfect for the kids on St. Patrick's Day

We are nursing some serious sickness over here in the Muffin Tin Household. Definitely on the mend, but the last week has been crazy.

As St. Patrick’s Day and spring approaches, I though it would be fun to celebrate with a rainbow fruits and veggies themed Muffin Tin Snack. Oh how we love fresh fruit!




In this muffin tin snack: Red Strawberries, Orange Carrot sticks, Yellow Banana slices, Green Cucumbers, Blue Blueberries, and Purple Plums


I used Martha Stewart’s delightful rainbow colored paper treat wrappers from Michael’s.




Get your Rainbow on with these fun activities and products:
-Inspire kids to eat from the Rainbow every day with fun Today I Ate The Rainbow Chart
-Play the Crunch-a-Color game
-Make a finger print rainbow
-Paint a water color rainbow craft with Make and Takes

• Cat in The Hat Red and White Strawberry Banana Skewers
• Kitty Cat Sandwich
• “The Cat’s Hat" filled with organic milk
• Whole Grain Gold Fish Crackers
• Yogurt with red pearl sprinkles
• Thing 1 and Thing 2 marshmallow treats 

I had fun thinking this up. There’s almost too much going on, which is why I didn’t include any tutorials.

Click on the included links to be taken the individual posts.

And click over for more Seussical ideas

I hope you will join with me in celebrating Muffin Tin Monday!

Simple and fun butterfly kids lunch as we patiently wait for the advent of Spring



Muffin cups from the Target “Dollar Spot.
Butterfly sandwich cut using The Lunch Punch Brand sandwich cutters We love them!
For more Muffin Tin Meals, visit MuffinTinMom.com

UPDATE: A few of you asked for the recipe directly in the post, so here it is. This recipe dates back to 2004 from my good friend Alicia. This recipe is also in the book 101 Things to Do with a Cake Mix


Ingredients:

• 1 box any variety, any flavor cake mix (I like Betty Crocker yellow cake, chocolate (pictured), or spice cake)
• 2 eggs
• 1/4 cup vegtable oil (canola works fine too)

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350 degrees
• Mix together in a bowl until dough forms
• Scoop spoonfuls into bowl of granulated sugar
• Place 1 inch apart on ungreased cookie sheet.
• Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes.
• Remove promptly and let stand for a few minutes
• Cover with cream cheese frosting and sprinkles (optional)

*Tips- I cover my baking sheet with foil or parchment paper to reduce clean up,
I role my my spoonfuls of dough in sugar, but that is an optional step (it makes them look pretty too!)
And I find that if I remove them from the oven right at the 10 minute mark, they are softer and more chewy.

I invited Emily to guest post today and share with you about her FREE Muffin Tin Meal planning page. I know you will love it, as well as Second Story Window as much as I do! It's great for tracking your little eater's likes and dislikes as well as brainstorming themed muffin tin meal ideas.  I'll let Emily tell you more.
Hi Muffin Tin Mom readers! My name is Emily. My sister Heidi and I run Second Story Window, a printable educational game shop. We also blog ideas and printables on our (new and improved) blog.

Michelle asked me to share with you a muffin tin meal planner that Heidi came up with. For Christmas she gave me the most adorable muffin tin meal kit. My daughter is only 22 months, so we are new to the muffin tin meal world. The kit was just what I needed to get started!

With the kit, Heidi included the muffin tin meal planner she created, which she had printed up into a planning book for me. Here's what it looks like.

• I can plan out what I want to go in each compartment of the tin and also keep track of which food groups I'm hitting. 
• I can make any notes on the side for presentation ideas or reports of how the meal went over. 
• There is also a handy way to note what your child thought of the food. 
• I can mark a smiley face for foods my daughter loved, a check mark for foods she tried, and an x for foods she didn't even touch. I find it so useful to be able to look back and see what foods I haven't offered my daughter in awhile and which ones she did and didn't like recently.

Here's an example of a recent meal for my daughter.



And here's the planning page in action. I forgot to photograph the page before I added her opinions but I think you can get the idea!


Now, I can remember that while she loved the applesauce, she probably wasn't quite ready for it since she enjoyed spooning it over all the rest of the food much more than actually eating it!

Come over to our blog and download the meal planner page and try it out yourself. We'd love to hear how it works for you and see how you use it!

The Little Mouse, The Red Ripe Strawberry and the Big Hungry Bear
Themed Muffin Tin Meal



Served in a muffin tin with muffin liners with strawberries on them.

The Little Mouse has heard that the big hungry bear wants to eat his red ripe strawberry. What will he do? I just adore this book and so do my kids.  Don't have the book? You can watch a video of this delightful children's book.


Other Ideas:
To make a strawberry mouse visit Little Nummies
Make a hand print strawberry craft with Meet The Dubiens
Big Hungry Bear Book Activities from Making Learning Fun

*To find more muffin tin meal theme ideas, visit the themes page and click over to the FAQ page for more info on muffin tin meals. Join in Muffin Tin Monday blog link up every Monday right here at Muffintinmom.com

Welcome to Muffin Tin Monday! This is the official blog link up for Muffin Tin Meals and the link up that started the "muffin tin meal" craze that you see all over Pinterest, other blogs and such. There are over 150 Creative Food and Muffin Tin Meal ideas on the Muffin Tin Mom site!


I used a plate full of reversed muffin liners to make up this week's muffin tin lunch snack and included broccoli, blueberries, raspberries, celery, carrots and hummus in the center.

After sampling the delightful sweetness of last weeks homemade donuts, I knew it was time for a fresh fruit and vegetable platter. The kids added a new taste to their pallette this week. Hummus! I was so excited. It's a healthy alternative to ranch dressing and other dips and sauces.

We made a fingerprint rainbow craft to go along with our rainbow collection of fruits and veggies in a muffin tin this week. Simple and straightforward stamping fingerprints with paint in rainbow colors. And it seemed  perfect to cheer up this rainy weather we are having.

 The included manual has a few recipes to get you started and they taste great! The recipes are essentially "from scratch" and you can make substitutions for gluten free and more. One of the best things about the maker is that the donuts are baked and not fried. So, if I am going to splurge on a treat like this for the kids, that's a bonus.

Muffin Tin Girl and I mixed everything together, but when it came time to pipe the dough in the maker, it was just too hot. So, I did that part. I guess you could say that's one of the only draw backs.

Tip: Babycakes recommends using a plastic bag to "pipe" the mix into the maker. In my humble opinion this is an eassential step.
Tip: They aren't going to taste like traditional donuts because they aren't fried, but MAN are they good



.

Muffin Tin Girl made received some fun cake decorating supplies for Christmas. She made us a cake today and decorated it herself. I helped her with technique a little, but she did most of it! It turned out great! She loves cake decorating shows and wants to be a baker when she grows up. Only one problem, she wants to bake a cake every day, and there's only so much cake we can eat! And it's not exactly healthy either, but it was a fun treat.



Hope you are enjoying the holidays!

A Christmas twist on the beloved apples snack with caramel dipping sauce. Changing how you plate up your toddler, preschooler and child's food can be a creative way to inject a little fun into mealtime.