Healthier home baked snacks

[AliasGrape]

Can I have some ideas for sweet treats you make for your kids please?

We’re just getting a bit bored of our usual favourites (banana choc chip muffins, granola bars and just basic flapjacks) and even though there’s a million recipes online (and I’ve got books somewhere) I’m just drawing a blank for some reason.

Any good recipes to satisfy the sweet craving whilst ideally being a teensy bit healthier (or if not at least I can comfort myself they’re home made!)?

https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/6865/to-die-for-blueberry-muffins/

These are good

Hoping for more suggestions and thinking muffins are the way to go.
My contribution
Raspberry & Coconut Muffins - The Credit Crunch Cooke https://share.google/GnPUo9NVr2GCpTdgS

Has anyone made muffins in the air fryer?

Thank you for the suggestions so far! Yes it looks like muffins might be the way to go. We do make them a lot, mostly because we always have bananas to use up as DD won’t eat them the second they’re not perfectly yellow/ borderline green. But I’ll try some other flavours.

The trouble with the healthier recipes for things like cookies or granola bars etc; which we do make, is that they usually feature nut butter. DD is fairly peanut butter obsessed to be fair, and it probably makes up a larger portion of her total diet than it should (we do get the natural, 100% stuff) but we have to send snacks in on the days she does after school activities and those need to be nut free. So that’s another reason I was looking for other ideas.

She’s got a real sweet tooth but is weirdly fussy and specific about which ones, I can never quite predict how a new recipe is going to go, so good to have a few ideas to try.

I regularly make mine banana bread because they love it. And rock cakes because they keep well, you can use half white half whole meal flower and mix up what you put in. Often raisins, sometimes mixed peel, cherries, coconut, chocolate, whatever you fancy really.
When I was little we used to have a buttered scone very often for school, cheese, fruit or plan often made with whole meal flour.

I’ve got a glut of fruit in the freezer so fruit based loaf cakes feature a lot in my household (apple, pear and rhubarb). I’m also quite partial to a cheese scone.

if the school have a no nuts policy you can get seed butters that might be acceptable as an alternative (some schools also ban some seeds but it seems less common so it’s worth checking)

Sweet potato dark chocolate brownies - these do not use caster sugar, eggs, butter or milk. Uses maple syrup to sweeten.

I add flaked almonds and almond butter in mine and DH's.

For the children I use the no nut butter, so they are safe to take in to school.

I also make a no sugar fruit crumble using any fresh or frozen fruit and wholemeal flour.

Roasted chick peas with paprika and a little chilli are also a favourite snack in my house.

I make Nigella’s breakfast bars in a variety of ways. It’s a very forgiving recipe - you can basically add and swap what you like,

Using light condensed milk instead of the full fat version.

My favourite variation is to miss out any nuts (although I do still add desiccated coconut) is to add cacao nibs and chia seeds along with chopped dried apricots. Honestly you can mess around with the recipe in a thousand ways.

It’s not necessarily healthy, but it is a healthier treat without palm oil or ultra processing.

Scones are pretty healthy as they are usually lower in sugar than cakes but these date scones are lovely because you get little shots of sweetness through them.
https://traybakesandmore.com/date-and-wheaten-scones/

Marbled choc/banana bread. Fun to make different patterns too!
https://www.theppk.com/2011/11/marbled-banana-bread/

Carrot cake panckes, I freeze them then defrost and warm in microwave. I also freeze normal fluffy pancakes.
https://www.theppk.com/2010/11/carrot-cake-pancakes/

Moist apple muffins

Mix 2 C whole meal flour, 2 t baking powder 1/3 C sugar. Mix 1 C grated apple, 1 t cinnamon 1 egg 1/2 C oil 1/2- 3/4 C milk and 225g tin crushed pineapple. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients.

Spoon into muffin tins and bake at 180 for 20 minutes

Carrot cake

Mix 2 1/2 C self raising whole meal flour, 1 t bicarbonate soda 1 C brown sugar. Mix 2 eggs 2 T oil 1/2 C milk and 3/4 C apple sauce Grate 3 carrots to get 350g. Mix all together. Bake in greased and lined cake pan for 70 minutes at 180. Leave in tin 5 mins before turning out.

Icing: 1 C cream cheese 1/3 C icing sugar and 2 t lemon zest mixed together

Cranberry orange and hemp balls

Mix 1/2 C dried cranberries 1C chopped dates 1/2 C ground hemp seeds 1 T cocoa zest 1 orange 1 t mixed spice and 1/2 t cinnamon in food processor. Add 1 T orange juice to get mixture to come together. Roll into balls and store in fridge

Not baking but freezing - these are delicious

rachlmansfield.com/easy-chocolate-fudge-ice-pops-vegan/

Dip dates in melted dark chocolate. This was recommended by physiotherapist at hospital for DD who needs energy boosts as part of her disability.

Great suggestions here.
Loving @Icecreamisthebest contributions.

Some great ideas thank you, we're going to enjoy working through these.

We actually made the blueberry muffins from the first post this weekend, they went so quickly that there's none left for her to take for her snack today (wasn't just us I have to add, we had a fair few visitors, not all planned!).

We also made these https://www.myfussyeater.com/chocolate-weetabix-bars/ - not particularly healthy but we had both excess weetabix now DD has deemed it no longer acceptable as a breakfast option, and quite a bit of Christmas chocolate to use up.

I like the idea of dipping dates in dark chocolate too. We all really like dates, I tend to stuff them with nut butter and freeze them, which DD loves as a snack, but doesn't solve the school/ nut free issue. However the chocolate would work.

There’s a website and partner FB page all about this