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Chocolate Peanut Butter No Bake Cookies

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Chocolate Peanut Butter No Bake Cookies.

Chocolate plus peanut butter has to be one of our household’s favorite combinations.  Especially, our girls. The girls have been asking to make cookies recently, but I didn’t feel like baking them. Then, I remembered a no bake recipe I’ve made in the past.  Taking one bite of these chocolate peanut butter no bake cookies will leave your mouth full of deliciousness. The fact that kids can make these pretty much on their own is another added bonus. I’m constantly looking for ideas to let the girls explore in the kitchen and expand, not only their taste buds, but their love of cooking and enjoying treats that are healthy for them.

Watch the girls make them!

These no bake cookies are packed full of protein, so they are the perfect treat for high energy summer days where your kids have been going full steam.

I know, for us, many summer days are spent swimming for hours on end, which means they need to have energy to keep up. These chocolate peanut butter no bake cookies do just that. I’m also hoping to get out more this summer and explore some hiking trails and lakes local to us. That’s something we have never done but I’m really excited to try it as a family. We recently found a local park that allows you to rent canoes, so we would really like to do that too. I’ll be making sure that I pack some of these treats with us for whatever we do this summer!

This recipe is super simple.  It’s just eight ingredients and while a stove is involved, it’s still just a little help needed on your own. You can make them as thick or thin as you want. In a time crunch, throw them in the fridge to harden faster. Keep in fridge to up to 5 days in air tight containers.

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Chocolate Peanut Butter No Bake Cookies
Author: Larisha Campbell
Ingredients
  • 1/2 cup brown sugar
  • 1/4 cup honey
  • 1/2 cup milk
  • 1 stick butter
  • 3 cups oats
  • 1 cup PB
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • chocolate chips
Instructions
  1. Line sheet with wax paper.
  2. heat sugar, milk, butter and honey until butter is melted. Boil for 90 seconds.
  3. Add in PB, oats, and vanilla.
  4. Fold in chips and cranberries
  5. Using spoon, drop cookies onto prepared baking sheets. Flatten to round cookies
  6. Set 30 mins before serving.
  7. Air tight container for 3 days

What’s on your summer fun list? Leave a comment and let us know.

Coconut Peanut Butter Banana Bites

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Both of my kids beg for bananas. Great, right?  I used to think so too. There’s so many great nutrients in a banana.  One large banana yields 20% of the daily Vitamin C and 25% of the daily Vitamin B6, a great source of fiber, helps with digestion, and a great source of potassium and magnesium.  Who doesn’t want their kid eating bananas?  But lately, they both take like three bites of the banana and then bring it to me and say they are done?  Umm, nope. What’s that saying?  Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.  Except, they’ve fooled me about fifty-eleven times now.  Up until recently, when I was like nope, no more bananas.

Of course, they keep asking. I needed to figure out a way that we could all be happy. I didn’t want to waste food (or feel like I needed to eat the leftovers–come on we all know moms eat the leftovers because we feel bad about wasting food). 

Insert these Coconut Peanut Butter Banana Bites.  It’s a way for me to not only split one banana between both of the girls, but I can also freeze whatever they don’t eat for later, thus always having a fun snack on hand all the time.  It’s a win/win for everyone.

Watch them make it, then keep reading & grab the recipe below:

On top of all of that, it’s something that our 4 year old can make completely on her own. She knows how to peel a banana, use can cut it using our nylon kid safe knives, spoon the peanut butter, and top with coconut. Voila! Done! The 1 1/2 year old has a little bit of work to do before she’s ready to make these on her own.  When she was done (as you can kind of see in the video below) it just looks like it’s supposed to be a topping of some sort. Either way she was happy with her progress.

Enjoy!

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Coconut Peanut Butter Banana Bites
Author: Larisha Campbell
Ingredients
Instructions
  1. Cut banana into desired size chunks
  2. Spoon peanut butter on top of the bananas.
  3. Top with shredded coconut.
  4. Freeze for 15-20 minutes.
  5. Serve immediately.
  6. Store any leftovers in an air-tight freezer container in the freezer.

This things may help your littles make this recipe!


Spreading + Peanut Butter Jelly Spider Sandwiches

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spider-sandwiches-for-halloween

The Seasoned Kids

Lesson 4: Spreading

Making a PB&J is one of the first things that most kids know how to make on their own. It’s a great way to build confidence in their learning ability in the kitchen with something that a majority of kids love to eat. There’s no hot ingredients, you don’t have to use any sharp utensils, and it’s a fairly easy task, even for a kid as young as 2 or 3 years old.

How to Start

The main task here is spreading. It’s a critical skill to not only learn in the kitchen, but also for their physical development. It teaches hand-eye coordination and helps with muscle movement as well. It’s funny how tasks like these as adults seem like no big deal, but for a small child, it’s critically important and a huge learning activity.

We prefer to pour out the ingredients ahead of time so that our little one doesn’t get carried away.  If she has an entire jar of jelly in front of her, she will keep wanting to get more out.  In the beginning, this does create more dishes; however, it causes less meltdowns (and we all want less meltdowns).

peanut-butter-and-jelly-spider-sandwich-2036

Tips for teaching your kids to spread

  • Use a learning tower to get them stable at the counter
    • Standing on a stool or sitting on the counter, doesn’t stabilize kids as much as a tower will
  • Use a spoon in the beginning
    • Instead of giving them a butter knife, use the back of a spoon. It will not only help them grab the jelly easier, but it will also spread easier
  • As they get older move onto an appetizer spreader, then a plastic knife, then a butter knife.
    • We recommend a butter knife last because of it’s weight and length, it can be a bit awkward for most children.
  • After mastering a PB&J, you can move on to teaching bigger things like how to spread pizza sauce on pizza dough or spread frosting on cakes

You can also check out this awesome Peanut Butter and Jelly spreader we found on Amazon

(We haven’t tested this one out yet!)

Recipe Time!

We’re so excited to share this adorable Halloween inspired Peanut Butter and Jelly spider sandwiches. Watch her make it then grab the recipe below!

how-to-make-peanut-butter-and-jelly-spider-sandwich

peanut-butter-and-jelly-spider-sandwich

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Spreading + Peanut Butter Jelly Spider Sandwiches
Author: Larisha Campbell
Ingredients
  • Peanut Butter
  • Jelly
  • 2 slice of bread per sandwich
  • 8 pretzel sticks per sandwich
  • 2 chocolate chips per sandwich
Instructions
  1. Spread peanut butter on one slice of bread.
  2. Spread jelly on other piece of bread.
  3. Put two pieces of bread together.
  4. Use a circle cookie cutter or biscuit cutter to cut out of the sandwich.
  5. Place 4 pretzel sticks on each side of sandwich.
  6. Place chocolate chips as eyes

peanut-butter-and-jelly-spider-sandwiches

This post is a part of our “The Seasoned Kids”, kid’s cooking series. Learn more about The Seasoned Kids here.

Previous Lessons!

Week 1: Teaching Importance of Washing Fruits and Vegetables + Berry Parfait Recipe

Week 2: Learning to Stir + Cranberry Coconut Energy Bites

Week 3: 3 Ways to Mash + Overnight Oats Recipe 3 Ways

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Funny Blooper Time! 

Each week, we’ll share at least one funny blooper that happened during our shoot!  If you didn’t, watch the video, it’s full of funny moments!

Peanut Butter and Jelly Smoothie Bowl

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This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #MySmoothie #CollectiveBias

Peanut Butter and Strawberry Jelly Smoothie Bowl

When smoothie bowls became all the rage, I’ll admit, I didn’t get it. Who wanted to add another step when you can just stick the straw in the cup and start drinking.  But I took one for the team and tried it out anyway.  What I found is that it made not only a delicious breakfast option, but it also make for a sweet late night treat that you could feel great about. Most importantly though, my toddler, Skibbles, thought these things were amazing and I found a way to get more fruits and veggies into her.  Even the baby loves these. I like to imagine them as being ice cream since they are thicker than a smoothie, and then what I add on top is essentially my ice cream toppings, so the possibilities are endless.

We’re sharing today our girls’ favorite smoothie bowl – a Peanut Butter and Jelly smoothie bowl.  I feel like PB&J is the epitome of childhood. I know that Andrew and I both enjoy eating sandwiches still, but we both feel better about the ingredients when making a healthy smoothie bowl instead of the bread and sugary jelly.  What’s great about this is that we use strawberries for the “jelly” aspect which makes it pink and if there’s one thing I’ve learned from having a toddler is that she will eat anything pink.

how to make peanut butter and jelly smoothie bowl

I was excited to try out JIF’s new Peanut Powder and Dannon’s new Oikos Triple Zero Vanilla Greek Yogurt for this recipe as well. The JIF Peanut Powder is literally just peanuts, nothing else added, which, as a mom, I was insanely excited about. It also has 85% less fat than traditional store bought peanut butters, making this even better for you. The Dannon Oikos Triple Zero Greek Yogurt has 0 fat, 0 added sugar and 0 artificial sweeteners, plus 15g of protein for every 5.3oz. While is does not mean it’s a low calorie food, it is quite possibly the perfect protein snack™!

JIF PB Powder smoothie Bowl

We started by chopping up our peanuts and thinly slicing our strawberries to go on top of the smoothie bowl.

jif pb powder smoothie recipe

Next, we blended all our ingredients into our blender. If you are looking for a new blender, check out this Oster® Blend-N-Go® MyBlend®! Just Fill, Blend & GO!

BLSTPB-GWH My Blend Grey

Once blended, we poured that into our bowl.

how to make a smoothie bowl

The thick and delicious blended smoothie is the base for your smoothie bowl.

how to make pbj smoothie bowl recipe

Then it’s time to add your toppings.  When making smoothie bowls, the toppings possibilities are endless, but I really love trying to enhance our protein components going into here.

pbj smoothie bowl

So we used the chopped peanuts, chia seeds, and then the sliced fresh strawberries.

pbj smoothie bowl recipe

We topped it with more peanut butter powder to make that flavor really shine through.

peanut butter bowl recipe

The end result is simply to die for.  Anytime we make this one, Skibbles wakes up the next day and asks for it again.  Of course, we keep making it because why wouldn’t I want her to have all this healthy and deliciousness going into her growing body!  Yum!

Peanut Butter and Jelly Smoothie Bowl

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Peanut Butter and Jelly Smoothie Bowl
Author: Larisha Campbell
Ingredients
Smoothie Bowl Base
  • 2 Frozen Bananas
  • 12 frozen strawberries
  • 3 tbsp JIF Peanut Butter powder
  • 1 cup Dannon Oikos Triple Zero Vanilla Greek Yogurt
Toppings for Smoothie Bowl
  • 2 fresh strawberries thinly sliced
  • 1/4 cup peanuts roughly chopped
  • 1/2 tbsp chia seeds
  • 1 tsp JIF Peanut Butter Powder
Instructions
  1. In a blender, combine the 4 base ingredients very well.
  2. Pour that into a bowl.
  3. On the top sprinkle the chopped peanuts and chia seeds.
  4. Add the fresh, sliced strawberries
  5. Using a small mesh sieve, sprinkle the JIF Peanut Butter Powder.
  6. Enjoy!

Right now you can get $1.50 cash back on the combination of Jif Peanut Powder and Oikos (Vanilla) Triple Zero Greek Yogurt OR$1.50 cash back on the combination of Jif Creamy Peanut Butter and Dannon Vanilla Yogurt when using this Ibotta Offer when you shop at Wal-mart.

jif peanut butter powder

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