Healthy Canada Day Treats

Next week is the beginning of July which means us Canadians will be celebrating Canada Day! For me Canada Day is often filled with a barbecue, strawberry shortcake, and if I’m lucky fireworks. I know for many people it can be easy to let the whole day go to the dogs nutritionally speaking, so I decided to put together this post with a couple healthy Canada Day treats!

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The first idea is for red and white fruit sorbet!

Recently the lovely folks at Yonanas sent me one of their classic machines to try out. I have been eyeing these machines for years so was pretty amped to try it out. I’m not even a fan of bananas but I am in love with Yonanas! I’ve made a few different combos so far but the mint chocolate chip has been my favourite. For Canada Day I thought it would be fun to serve red and white Yonanas. To make enough for 2-4 people (depending on how much dessert you want to serve) you will need 3-4 frozen bananas, and about 1 cup of frozen strawberries.

Because strawberry Yonanas is more pink than red I got out my beet root power to add to the mixture to make it appear more red, but you could leave it as-is, or add red food dye instead.

Using Yonanas couldn’t be easier. You plug it in, turn it on, put a bowl under the chute and toss in a banana!

For this recipe I used two bananas to create the “white” fruit sorbet, then used the 1 cup of frozen strawberries and third banana to make the “red”

Once you have your two colours, you can pop the white into the freezer to set a bit, and this is when you can add the optional colour to the red. I used 1 tsp of beet root powder and mixed it in.

Then I popped the red into the freezer as well, and left them both in there for about 30 minutes. Then all there is left to do is scoop a combination of red and white sorbet into a bowl and get ready to celebrate!

My second idea for healthy Canada Day treats is to make Maple Leaf Watermelon lollipops and fruit kabobs!

To make these you will need:

• 1 seedless watermelon
• 1 honeydew melon
• 1-package of lollipop or cake pop sticks
• 1-package of wooden kabob sticks
• 2-different sized Maple Leaf cookie cutters (local folks, I got mine at Absolute Fabulous in New Minas, but you can also get them on Amazon here and here).

These are super easy to make, and really cute! You simply cut thick slices of watermelon for the lollipops and cut maple leaf shapes of watermelon using the larger cookie cutter. Then you pop a stick in the bottom and you’re done!

For the kabobs you will want thinner slices of watermelon to cut out the smaller maple leaf shapes, and do the same with the honeydew melon. I chose honeydew because it is close to white in colour, but if you wanted something that is actually white you could use Asian Pears or apples. If using apples, remember you will need to treat them with lemon juice to prevent them from turning brown. I think apples would work better because you could anchor the bottom of the kabob with a maple leaf apple to keep all the fruit from sliding down. Having said that, I didn’t really have any issues with my honeydew sliding down.

Once made you can serve them displayed in styrofoam like I did, or arrange them on a tray. Both ways look very patriotic!

These are also great treats to get your kids to help make with you! You can do the chopping and they can do the cutting. And with the fruit sorbet they will be more than willing to help feed the fruit in the chute, and will then no doubt be glad to take all the credit for making the treats!

If you give either of these ideas a try at your Canada Day festivities please let me know! I’d love to see your pictures so don’t forget to tag me on Instagram or Twitter @suziconfesses.

Have fun!

Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. Also, the Yonanas machine used was sent to me free of charge in exchange for a review, all opinions expressed are entirely my own.