Healthy Valentine's Treats: 18 Fresh Food Ideas for the School Party (2024)

Just when your fam­ily had started to recover from the hol­i­day sugar binge: Along comes Valentine’s Day to pro­vide yet another excuse for a class party laden with candy, cup­cakes and other sweets. I don’t know about you, but I am not too excited about the idea of my kids down­ing 10 pounds of sugar and who knows what kind of arti­fi­cial ingre­di­ents. I’m all for an occa­sional treat (prefer­ably at home), but the last thing they need is another over-the-top junkfest.

Valentine’s Dayis an anniver­sary of sorts for me. It was this time last year that I finally freaked about all the empty-calorie treats being fed to my son (a kinder­gart­ner at the time) at school. My frus­tra­tion had been build­ing for a while, but the week of Feb­ru­ary 14 put me over the edge. It wasn’t just the sweets served in class on V Day itself. It was all the candy that came attached to his Valen­tines. The cup­cakes and gummy bears to honor his classmate’s birth­day two days later. And the ice cream at the school’s annual 100 Days of School cel­e­bra­tion two days afterthat.

“It was a spe­cial week,” my son’s teacher explained after I emailed her about the moun­tain of sugar that had been con­sumed over the span of five days. She was right: Valentine’s week was excep­tion­ally bad, unlike any­thing we had seen so far that year. But the truth was, unhealthy food had been mak­ing reg­u­lar appear­ances in the class­room all fall and winter—at least once a week, by my esti­mate. It was too much. And I felt that it was under­min­ing my efforts to teach my kids how toeat.

As those of you have been fol­low­ing my blog know, I acted on my frus­tra­tion. I asked to start a well­ness com­mit­tee (and help start one I did!). And while things are far from per­fect, I have noticed some pos­i­tive changes this school year, includ­ing a push for health­ier food at class­room par­ties. My son’s new fitness-minded teacher only per­mits one group birth­day party a month and has specif­i­cally requested par­ents stick to nutri­tious snacks. It’s been much bet­ter, with­out a doubt. But what will hap­pen dur­ing Valentine’s week is still up in theair.

That’s where this list comes in. The head of our new Well­ness Com­mit­tee asked me to pro­vide some healthy Valentine’s Day food ideas to share with teach­ers and par­ents. Because it seems a lot of fam­i­lies want to be health­ier but may default to junk food out of lack of bet­ter ideas. I’m a firm believer that kids will get excited about a spread of healthy nib­bles if they taste yummy and look spe­cial. So with no fur­ther ado…The List:

Heart melon pop*I did a vari­a­tion on this idea at Christ­mas using kiwi. This time, I took a miniheart-shaped cookie cut­ter and care­fully cut out pieces of can­taloupe. While I’ve strug­gled to make shapes out of water­melon in the past, the can­taloupe held up well. For color, you could trymak­ing heart shapes out of other fruits like hon­ey­dew, kiwi and pineap­ple. Flower shapes made into a Valentine’s bou­quet would be cute,too!

Heart-shaped brownie bitesOh, how my 4-year-old twins and I love these faux brown­ies, made with raw almonds, unsweet­ened cacao pow­der, dates, and a table­spoon of honey. Instead of rolling them into lit­tle balls like I nor­mally do, I took about a third of the “dough” and made a big ball, then flat­tened it out with my hand until it was about 1/2– to 3/4-inch thick. Next, I used a mini heart cookie cut­ter to make shapes. If your child goes to a nut-free school, you can sub­sti­tute half a cup of sun­flower seeds plus half a cup of hemp seeds for the almonds (I added an extra table­spoon of honey when I did this because the almonds felt were nat­u­rally sweeter–but judge for yourself!).

Healthy banana split*A healthy twist on a favorite kids’ dessert–I subbed Greek yogurt (I used plain, but you could try vanilla to make it sweeter), heart-shaped straw­ber­ries and dark choco­late shav­ings for ice cream, choco­late sauce and a maraschino cherry. To make the shav­ings, I used a choco­late bar and a car­rot peeler. This would make a per­fect item for a break­fast party or at any time of day. You can do a make-your-own ver­sion: Slice the bananas for the kids, then pro­vide the top­pings in bowls. For extra top­pings, try sliv­ered almonds, gra­nola ornat­ural pink sprin­kles.

Be-still-my-beating-heart sand­wich*Organic unsweet­ened Sun­But­ter and red rasp­berry pre­serves on locally made honey wheat bread–YUM!

Sweet potato-cheddar crack­ers Move over, Gold­fish: These lit­tle guys taste just as good but are bet­ter for you.I cut the recipe in half and still had enough dough to make 108 crack­ers. One warn­ing: Not long after tak­ing the crack­ers out of the oven, they got soft (even though I trans­ferred them to a wire rack imme­di­ately after cook­ing). My kids still loved them, but they were more bready than crack­ery. And cute as canbe!

Angel food and fruit kabob*For this, I used store-bought angel food cake (no arti­fi­cial ingre­di­ents) and alter­nated chunks of cake with heart-shaped straw­ber­ries and black­ber­ries on long skewers.

Choco­late zuc­chini mini “cup­cakes” Made with whole wheat flour and shred­ded zuc­chini, these are much less sin­ful than tra­di­tional frosted cup­cakes but plenty sweet enough to please the kids.I put mine in mini muf­fin lin­ers adorned with pink and red hearts. Add a Valentine’s cup­cake top­per to fur­ther up the appeal.

Valentine’s fruit cup*To make this one, I just put a lit­tle fruit (includ­ing a heart-shaped straw­berry) in a mini cup­cake wrap­per. Fun andeasy!

Love potion smoothie*Put a fruit smoothie in a col­or­ful up, add a whim­si­cal straw, and what do you get? A spe­cial love potion! I made this smoothie with fresh straw­ber­ries, man­goes, car­rot juice, plain Greek yogurt and a lit­tle ice.For a pinker color, try this Pink Smoothie from Bake Your Day or theBerry-Banana Smoothiefrom Two Peas and Their Pod. Silly Straws Kit (makes 6) pur­chased at Target.

Pop­corn party favor*Home­made microwave pop­corn becomes a fun treat when placed in a food-safe Valen­tine favor bag (I got this one–made by Amer­i­can Crafts and sold in a pack of 6–at Tar­get). I wanted to fig­ure out a way to dye the pop­corn pink using beet juice but didn’t get a chance. Nexttime!

Plus.…a few more fes­tive ideas from around theweb:

Heart-shaped boiled eggs

Chocolate-dipped fruit on astick

Love this fruit salad*

Roasted straw­berry fruit dip with dark chocolate

Heart-shaped pep­pers and dip

Sweet­heart yogurt par­faits*

Heart-shaped stacked sandwich

Dark choco­late fruit hearts

*All starred items can be done with store-bought food for those who have a store-bought-only food pol­icy. Items could be trans­ported to school in sealed pack­ages and then assem­bled imme­di­ately before theparty.

Valen­tine CardIdeas

I don’t know when it became the norm to attach candy to Valentine’s Day cards. Last year, I was shocked by the amount of sugar that came home with my then kinder­gart­ner (and my then 3-year-old twins at preschool). It felt like Hal­loween all over again! My kids get excited just to receive a sim­ple card and wouldn’t even notice the absence of candy. If your child wants to send in some­thing extra in addi­tion to a card, here are some non-sugary options:

• Fun sticker
• Fake tatoo
• Small bag of popcorn
• Glow­stick
• Lip balm
• Pho­to­graph
• Pen­cil orpen
• Party favor