Snacks made from dried or dehydrated fruit are a healthy alternative to candy and crisps at a kid’s birthday party. There are a huge variety of dried fruits on the market that you can buy and if you make your own dried or dehydrated fruit and food, you have the perfect ingredients to host a very healthy party for your child and his/her friends.
Word of warning: Many of the dried fruit characters are put together with the aid of florist wire and cocktail sticks; bring it to the attention of younger party guests. Otherwise you can substitute the florist wire with sewing thread (the tails of the mice) and attach pieces of fruit with a small dot of icing sugar!
Here are some ideas for animals made from dried fruit:
Mice:
Use prunes for the bodies and thread a few sultanas on florist wire to form the tails. Cut sultanas in half and attach to the prunes with small pieces of cocktail sticks for the eyes.
Sheep can be made with prunes as well. Use cocktail sticks for the legs and make eyes and tails from sultanas.
Worms can be made from dried banana spears, add raisins or currants for the eyes. String sultanas or raisins together to make caterpillars.
Butterflies: Cut dried apple/pineapple rings in the shape of wings and attach with icing on dried banana or mango spears. Decorate with pieces of dried fruit of choice
Here is a whole family made from dried prunes, apple rings and dried peaches.
Faces: Soak 15ml (3 teaspoons) gelatine in a little cold water by sprinkling it on top of the water and leave for a minute or two until the gelatine has absorbed the water.Do not stir as it will lump. Dissolve the spongy gelatine in 25ml hot water, leave to cool.
Add this mixture to 175 ml yogurt and mix well. Leave until it starts to set, then spoon into pear halves. Use currants for the eyes, raisins for noses and pieces of glacé cherries for the mouths. Ears can be made with dried banana slices or dried apples pieces (see image above). Hats can be made from dried apricots or peaches and dipped into dry jelly powder.
With dried fruit characters like these, the party guests won’t even mind about the absence of candy or potato crisps. Let them feast on all the lovely dried fruits that are available, and you can sleep well after the party knowing that you have filled their stomachs with some good wholesome food from mother earth.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=fdd6eef5-61fa-425d-8659-928c0986f906)
Twitter: mybloghealth
Hi Elsie
A brilliant post and I really love the use of colour and the animal idea. I am sure that kids will love this and its also a healthy alternative to the normal crisps and sweets.
Look forward to more posts from you
Raj
Thank you Raj
Glad you enjoyed the post. It can also be quite satisfying to try your hand at drying fruits and other vegetables and always have something healthy on hand to nibble on.
…your healthy fruits look sooo good for the kids too… but may be you could also do something for adjult people… like dry
olives, some cheese, served with dry red wine !!!
KH, I think the red wine is fine for adults, lol… but for a kid’s party we should rather serve some smoothies – it is also made from fruit and another healthy alternative to fizzy drinks.
[...] cold meats and veggies like carrots, gherkins, cherry tomatoes cut into different shapes or even dried fruit to decorate the paper plates [...]
[...] a few gummy sharks and healthy “seagrass” (buy mango or banana spears) as a snack. If you like, you can also add a keepsake seashell with the party information written [...]