Healthy Chocolate Ice Pop Recipe

The best thing about these easy to make ice pops is that when you and your kids are enjoying them, you will think you are eating a sinful treat when really, they contain protein, healthy fats, and antioxidants. The sweeteners are the banana and the maple syrup, so they contain no refined sugars. Enjoy!

Thanks to Kim Corrigan-Oliver for sharing this recipe.

***

Summer weather is coming and that means popsicle season, but not just any popsicles, homemade, delicious, healthy popsicles. Both Justin and Reece love popsicles, I could take them or leave them. I often make them up for the two of them to enjoy as they play in the yard on a hot summer afternoon.

Here is 1 of their favourites:

Chocolate Ice Pops

1 avocado*, peeled and pit removed 1 banana 6 tbsp coconut milk 3 tbsp maple syrup 2 tbsp organic cocoa powder 1 tbsp almond butter

* Check out this great tip to ensure you are buying a good avocado.

1.  In a food processor, blend the avocado and banana until smooth. Add coconut milk, maple syrup, cocoa powder and almond butter, blend until well mixed. You can taste test now to see if you would like to increase the sweetness with a little more maple syrup. You may also wish to add a little more coconut milk if it seems a little thick.

2.  Once you have perfected it to pass your taste bud test, fill your ice pop molds and freeze for a couple of hours.

Kim is a holistic nutritionist and author, who has a passion for health, wellness, real food and cooking, and is dedicated to helping parents raise happy healthy babies. Kim is the founder of Your Green Baby and also blogs at Mothering with Mindfulness.

You may also like...

• Why We Love Kinderville Ice Pop Molds
• Homemade Strawberry Banana Ice Pop Recipe
• Refreshing Pineapple Ice Pops Recipe

This post originally appeared on Nayla Natural Care's blog - thanks for sharing it with us!

Celebrate Canada Day with a Flag Cake

by Alison One of our favourite Canada Day traditions is our Canadian Flag Cake. It’s really quite simple, but a big hit. All you’ll need is a 9X13 rectangular cake pan, your favourite cake recipe (even one from a mix), white icing to cover the full cake, red sprinkles and a maple leaf template.

Once you’ve baked and cooled the cake, cover it completely in white icing. The proper dimensions of the Canadian Flag can be found here but for the simplicity of the cake, I roughly divide into 4 parts. The middle two parts stay white (for now) and then my daughter covers the end quarters with red sprinkles. To make sure the sprinkles spread somewhat evenly, I cover the sprinkle jar with aluminum foil and poke holes in the foil.

Place your maple leaf stencil over the middle half of the cake, and cover with sprinkles. We make a stencil by printing a picture of a maple leaf, covering the paper in packing tape and cutting out the leaf with an exacto knife. This prevents the paper from picking up all the icing, and we can usually reuse a stencil for two or three years (after it’s been wiped down).

Happy Canada Day! We'll be enjoying our cake in Seattle this year.

Alison is the mom of two wonderful kids, 6 and 2. She’s recently relocated to the Pacific Northwest but considers Ottawa home. She blogs at Ali’s Adventures.

The Swedish touch

by Amy A little while ago I posted on my own blog about the dos and don'ts for servers in family restaurants and Lara asked me about doing reviews of how kid friendly restaurants around Ottawa are.

Now, I have my own criteria, but I've discovered that one of my favourite places to take the kid for a meal right now is Ikea. Yes, Ikea.

There are a number of complaints about shopping at the actual store, but the Ikea restaurants is great for kids. There are a lot of reasons we've eaten at Ikea twice in the past two weeks. One is cost - who can resist a dollar breakfast when you're buying a $600 piece of furniture? But the other things that I liked surprised me.

Variety: The restaurant has a pretty good number of choices for on the children's menu and it all seems fairly good. Some places your choice is between something fried or white pasta, but my daughter had meatballs with mashed potatoes and a milk to drink. She was a big fan of the lingonberry jam, which is a bit weird.

Serving size: The servings are absolutely reasonable for a child.

Utensils: Ikea uses their own stuff to stock the restaurant and for the children's meals that means plastic plates, kid sized utensils, plastic cups. This is the only place I remember eating that a fork she looked comfortable using.

And the best part? After spending more than two hours walking around the store, kid actually napped.

Amy is mom to two year old Maggie and a 6 year old schnauzer named Henry. You can read her blog at amyboughner.ca where she writes about motherhood and anything else that’s on her mind. She also shares a blog with her husband at boughner.ca where they talk together about parenting a daughter.