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One thing that irritates me about Pinterest is how impossible it is to track down the original source for ideas you find pinned. For instance, a few days ago one of my friends pinned a photo of raw, vegan cookie dough bites with the caption, “OMG, really tastes like cookie dough!” Claims like that make my Food Puncher ears perk up, so I clicked the link and found the recipe posted on some blog and printed it out. But today when I went back to Pinterest to find it (I hadn’t pinned it because, like I said, I mostly hate Pinterest) I found a bazillion identical recipes attached to dozens of different adorable photos overlaid with cutesy banners and fonts. So long story long, I don’t know exactly where this recipe came from because there are numerous pastel and polka dot blogs out there laying claim to it.

Anyway, this recipe made 12 little “cookie dough” balls and Teno ate 10 of them the first night. I know that sort of gives away what his review is all about, but in truth, he spent most of his camera time reading the recipe out loud and talking about soy milk (don’t worry, I edited). All in all these were a pretty tasty little snack, easy to make and good for you, too. Oh, and if you are on Pinterest, be sure to check out my Shit I’m Sick Of board. I think it’s the crabbiest board on the whole website.

Raw Vegan Cookie Dough Bites

By BakeandDestroy Published: March 3, 2013

• Yield: 12 (4 Servings)
• Prep: 5 mins

These are on the sticky side, although refrigerating them for a few hours helps. You could also roll them in a little cocoa powder to make them easier to handle.

Ingredients

• 2/3 cup raw cashews
• 1/3 cup oats
• 2 Tbs raw agave nectar
• 1 Tbs maple syrup
• 1 tsp vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup sweet cocoa nibs or dark chocolate chips

Instructions

1. Combine cashews and oats in a food processor until the mixture resembled flour.
   
2. Add agave, maple syrup and vanilla, and blend until smooth.
   
3. Transfer mixture to a mixing bowl and stir in cocoa nibs.
   
4. Roll 1 Tbs of mixture at a time into balls, set on a plate and refrigerate for a few hours before serving.
   

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Ok, full disclosure: I work for Lifeway Foods. Teno is, of course, never biased by things like that, but I thought you should know just for the sake or transparency. That being said, we bought these ProBugs Frozen Kefir pops at Whole Foods with real cash money – about $6 for a box of six.

Kefir, for those of you who aren’t hip to Dr. Oz’s jive, is a cultured dairy product – similar to yogurt, but with more probiotic activity. Lifeway makes a wide variety of drinkable kefir – conventional, organic, lowfat, nonfat, whole milk, etc. as well as frozen kefir – which is kind of like fro-yo, but again, more probiotics. Everything is gluten-free, lactose-free, and GMO-free so it’s pretty kid-friendly across the board. Anyway, here’s Teno’s take on these frozen pops, which are 70 calories each:

Note: Teno has trouble opening every package always. But I have found that these are easier to open when they’re really cold, right out of the freezer, than they are after they’ve warmed up a bit.

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Teno and I are going to have to agree to disagree about roasted seaweed. I personally think it’s one of the finest snacks on Earth but…well, you can watch the video. Frankly I’m shocked at how polite he was with his opinions on this one, but maybe he’s saving the mock barfing for something homemade that I actually spend a bunch of time on.

Anyway, if you want to try Sea Tangle Snacks you can find them at Whole Foods. No Whole Foods near you? Sea weed snacks can be found at Trader Joe’s and lots of major grocery chains, too!

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Teno and I admit we have a lot of kinks to work out in this whole reviewing stuff process. After posting review-after-review of Pringles potato snacks on YouTube this summer (seriously, watch them, they’re hilarious), and even a few guest spots on The Snackpot, we figured posting regular reviews of healthy kids snacks and recipes for kids would be no big deal. But it’s taken us months to finally get around to doing some actual reviews for Food Puncher, and we’d apologize except that we’re too busy playing Nintendoland.

This week, Teno checked out Fruit Roll-Ups Simply Fruit ($2.99/10 pk). We usually buy him fruit leather from Trader Joe’s but he brings his lunch to school and there’s a lot of pressure on these little dudes to have cool stuff in their lunch bags. Sadly for Trader Joe’s, hippy fruit snacks are not considered cool. Honestly, though, Simply Fruit is pretty decent. It’s 90% juice, no artificial coloring, no HFC, and one roll counts as one serving of fruit. But what does Teno think? Well, if he can get the package open, he’ll tell you…

PS We promise to buy a tripod. 

Do you have a healthy kid’s snack or recipe for kids you want Teno to try? Let us know about it in the comments!

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Meet Teno Slater, a first grader from Chicago who has already made a name for himself with his video reviews of Pringles and other junk food his mom doesn’t want him to eat.

But kid cannot live on junk alone, so we here at Bake and Destroy are proud to announce the launch of Food Puncher – Teno’s healthy snack review blog. Sometimes Teno takes on supposedly kid-friendly recipes, other times he gives all-natural packaged snacks a whirl. If he can manage to stay still long enough, he’s sure to give them all an honest review, providing a service to all of kidkind.

Got a healthy recipe or interesting snack you want Teno to try? Use the contact form!