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3 Ingredient Homemade Pixie Sticks with Real Fruit!

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Learn how to make healthy homemade pixie sticks! Pixie Sticks ( actually spelled pixy stix) are one of those candies that kids always love. They love eating the sweet and sour powdery candy. I loved them as a kid and now my kids love them.

I wanted to try making some healthier homemade pixie sticks with real fruit. They have all natural flavor. And, they are made with just 3 ingredients!

 

Homemade Pixie Sticks

 

We tried it out and had success!! It was fun and delicious.

You can make these for gifts or for parties. It would even be fun to make together at a party then let the kids eat them! They are also just a fun special snack for kids.

How to Make Healthier Homemade Pixie Sticks:

To make homemade pixie sticks you just need 3 ingredients:

Freeze Dried Fruit (we used strawberries)

Citric Acid – This is what gives it the sour fizzy feeling in your mouth.

Sugar (We used organic as it is a little less processed, but any sweetener would work.)

Paper Straws ( I found these ones at the dollar store!)

homemade fruit pixie sticks

I’ve seen other homemade Pixie Stick recipes that use Kool Aid or other powdered drink mixes. While that’s fun, it’s basically the same thing as the original. And while we are not perfect in our eating, I try hard to give my kids better ingredients as much as possible.

The original Pixy Stix are full of artificial flavors and colors, so even though this recipe contains sugar, it is a huge improvement over the original!

These Are the Ingredients of Regular Pixie Sticks:

Dextrose, Citric Acid, Flavors Artificial, Colors, Carmine, Blue 1, Blue 1 Lake, Blue 2, Blue 2 Lake, Red 40, Red 40 Lake, Yellow 5, Yellow 5 Lake, Yellow 6, Yellow 6 Lake

I definitely want to stick to ingredients I know and things that are better for my kids. Don’t you agree?

So, back to our healthier pixie stick recipe.

Take your three ingredients and put them in a food processor to grind up. You could also pulse it in a blender or coffee grinder.

how to make homemade pixie sticks

Once it is a fine powder, you will need to prepare your straws. If you are using paper straws, you can easily fold them over at the bottom, We added a tiny piece of tape to secure them. If using plastic, you would have to melt them to seal them closed. Paper is more like the real thing, so try these!

paper straws for homemade pixie sticks

Filling the Pixie Sticks

Filling the straws is the trickiest & most time consuming part. You can make a paper funnel to put it in, but ours kept getting clogged. We found it was easiest to just spoon it in and tap it down.

I put my kids to work on this one- child labor can be a great thing sometimes. 😉

These do have a tendency to harden up a bit, since they are made with real fruit, but they are tasty and my kids didn’t seem to mind that a bit. If they got clogged, they just peeled the paper bak and kept eating.

Variation Ideas:

Try it with other freeze-dried fruit to get more delicious flavors.

I think raspberry and blueberry would be delicious. Freeze dried peaches would be great! Oh, do they freeze dry pineapple? Mmm!

These would be SO great for gifts for friends, on Birthdays or various holidays, including Valentine’s Day!

You could make a giant homemade pixie stick with smoothie straws, too!

Try Some More Recipes for Kids:

Kids Cooking Lesson: Peanut Butter Balls
Homemade Elderberry Syrup Recipe
Kitchen Science: Homemade Hard Candy Lollipops
Kids Cooking Lesson: German Pancakes
Zucchini Gummy Recipe Kids Love

 

 

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