A weekend experiment that turned out successfully, so I'm delighted to share with you this recipe for cinnamon-and-semolina-coated snack sticks, made mainly from fruits!

As always, my recipes are sugar-free and natural, and suitable for both children and adults. If our children observe us using fruits rather than sugar or artificial sweeteners in our baking and cooking, they will grow up with it firmly fixed in their heads that fruity sweetness is all that's needed!

The textured coating gives them an irresistible bite - I used coarse semolina which, in the mouth, gives a texture similar to brown sugar... so if that's your favourite thing about cinnamon sticks, then you won't miss a thing even with this sugar-free version! The coconut flour too provides sweetness and 'fluffiness', giving a soft inside and crispy outside.

Ingredients (organic recommended):

2 large ripe bananas

150g coconut flour

100g wholegrain spelt flour

1 tsp baking soda

4 clementines

coarse semolina

ground cinnamon

sugar-free fruit jam (I used apricot)

Directions:

In a large bowl, puree/mash the bananas.

Add the flour and baking soda to the bowl, and rub the banana into the flour using your fingertips until the mixture resembles fluffy breadcrumbs.

Puree the clementines (to retain the fibers rather than simply extract the juice), and add to the dry mixture. Squeeze together with your hands to form a firm & sticky dough.

On your kitchen top or table, smear an area of jam, and also an area of (generously sprinkled) semolina & cinnamon (this makes it easy to coat the dough sticks).

Tear off a small piece of dough... roll with your palm to form a stick... roll in the jam to coat it... then roll in the semolina & cinnamon mixture.

Place the sticks onto a baking tray, and bake in a preheated oven at 200 degrees Celsius for 12 minutes.

Enjoy warm or cold!

And once again, here's the little 'un proving children will happily eat sugar-free snacks!

Many thanks to @lenasveganliving for continuing to host this wonderful weekly contest! For inspiration and details how to join in, please see Lena's competition post here.

If you have any healthy suggestions or recipes that would make great snacks, please tag your post with #makeithealthy and they will feature in the new curation series "Make It Healthy LUNCHBOX". Let's get our children eating healthy NOW so they don't have to learn how to heal later on in life!