18 Kid Friendly Vegan Recipes That My Toddler Loves (2024)

This simple steel cut oatmeal is my daughter's go-to breakfast on busy mornings when I don't have time to make anything more elaborate. It's healthy, filling, and really easy to make in the Instant Pot.

I usually make a big batch of these oats once a week, and then reheat single serving portions with a splash of almond milk for baby J's breakfast.

I know what you're thinking - there's no way a toddler would ever eat Brussels sprouts! That's what I thought too until one night I put a few roasted Brussels sprouts in baby J's dish along with other foods, and by the time I made my own plate, she scarfed down every last piece of her sprouts!

This is the recipe I've been using to make my toddler-adored Brussels sprouts. Even if you're not usually a fan of sprouts, I'm sure you'll enjoy them roasted this way just like my daughter does.

Once baby J became proficient with utensils, I started serving her various soups. This simple vegan soup with lentils, rice, and cauliflower quickly became one of her favorites. It's a good source of protein, fiber, and healthy carbs.

I often mix in some chopped avocado to make its fat content a little higher (kids need more fats in their diets than adults because fat is used for a variety of growing tissues and organs including brain).

This vegan minestrone is another well-enjoyed soup in baby J's diet. She loves picking out pieces of potatoes and pasta with her hands, and dips bread in her bowl to soak up the broth (of course she uses her spoon too).

I have instructions to make this minestrone soup both in the Instant pot and on stovetop - click the button below to see how it's done.

This fajita filling with soy curls is another dish that took a few tries before baby J started eating it regularly. Since she's been vegan from birth, she's never had meat, so the meatiness of soy curls wasn't anything special to her.

She does like vegan "chicken" nuggets, so once I told her that the soy curls were "just like nuggets", she eventually gave them a try. These days she'll eat a good-sized serving of this fajita filling every time I make it.

This is hands down baby J's favorite recipe from the blog as of today. When her speaking skills started getting better at 18-20 months, she would point at boxes of jumbo shells at the grocery store and exclaim, "Stuffed shells!"

I usually give her a couple of these cut up into quarters when we sit down to dinner, but lately she's asked to keep the shells whole. That gives me lots of opportunity to practice my patience as I watch her make a mess of the spinach-ricotta filling 🙂

This vegan bruschetta pasta is one of the quickest recipes from the blog, taking only about 10 minutes to make. It's also one of my earliest recipes, hence the less than stellar pictures 🙂

Anyway, baby J likes the simplicity of angel hair noodles (which I usually cut up for her to make them shorter) tossed in a simple tomato-based sauce. I try to serve these with some extra veggies on the side.

You're probably surprised to see a spicy Cajun classic like jambalaya on a toddler-friendly vegan recipe list. Believe it or not, baby J enjoys spicy food, so as long as I don't jack up the Cajun seasoning to the max, she'll eat it just fine.

If your toddler isn't a fan of spicy foods, you may want to skip this recipe for now - although you never know, they may surprise you.

For a while baby J wasn't very proficient with eating hard cookies or crackers, so these lovely vegan oatmeal-raisin cookies became one of her favorite sweet treats. Raisins are a hit or miss with her: sometimes she picks them out, while other times she eats every last bit.

If you've always found oatmeal-raisin cookies underwhelming, I suggest that you try this recipe - it's gotten rave reviews both from kids and adults.

I don't think I need to sell you on chocolate muffins, and it's probably safe to think that you trust me that baby J loves these. In fact, our whole family is a fan: not only do these muffins taste heavenly, they are also quite healthy, made with no oil and hiding an entire grated zucchini in every batch (but you'd never tell that zucchini part, of course).

So if you'd like your kids to eat more vegetables, I can't think of a better way to do it than by offering them some chocolate muffins. Yum!