GETTING children to eat more fruit and veg can often be a challenge.

One dad who knows this more than most is Nick Coffer. Author of ‘My Daddy Cooks’ and one of the founders (the other is his young son, Archie) of mydaddycooks.com Nick has shared some tops tips and a few recipes with Taste to help get your young ones to embrace fruit and veg.

“It is important to try to be a role model to your children,” he says.

“You are the one they are learning from. If they see you enjoying fruit and veg without fuss, they will often try to emulate that.

“Parents with a healthy attitude around food are more likely to have children with a healthy attitude.

“Parents who are faddy and on and off diets may be giving their children the wrong message.”

He says ‘don’t stress’ when trying to get your children to eat fruit and veg.

“No child is going to eat every kind of fruit and veg.

“Nor would any adult.

“Even if your children only enjoy one or two specific fruits or a vegetable, that is still much better than nothing.

“Their tastes will develop as they grow older.

“Help your children to connect with where their fruit and veg comes from. Take them shopping with you, let them pick out the things they like the look of.

“Better still, grow some of your own in your back garden.

“Get your children into the kitchen with you and let them join in with the preparation.

Nick says he is not an advocate of ‘hiding’ fruits and veg, but there are ways to make them less visible.

“Simple savoury muffins can take all manner of fillings, as can scones. Also, a good tomato pasta sauce base – just one onion, a couple of cloves of garlic and a tin of chopped tomatoes – is a great thing to chuck almost any vegetables into.

“I am a firm believer that home-made cakes are good.

“You know exactly what is in them, there are no nasty additives and children love cake.

“A simple Victoria sponge, topped with some whipped cream and strawberries is a great way of getting fruit into your children’s diets.

“Dips are a great way of making vegetables more fun.

For more information visit viviastrawberry.co.uk and mydaddycooks.com

Fruit kebabs with strawberry milk

200g strawberries sliced

1 mango sliced

2 tangerines segmented

100g green grapes

For the milk:

200g strawberries

300ml milk

On wooden skewers, thread on the sliced fruit, alternating the strawberries with the mango, tangerines and grapes.

To make the milk, blitz together the strawberries and milk until smooth.

Easy strawberry ice cream

500ml good quality custard

400ml double cream lightly whipped

1 vanilla pod, split

500g strawberries

4tbsp caster sugar

In a bowl, fold together the custard, the whipped cream and the vanilla seeds scrapped from the pod. Take 400g of strawberries, and blitz together with the sugar. Stir into the custard mix. Chop the rest of the strawberries, and add to the mix, folding through.

Line a 1 litre loaf tin with cling film and pour the mixture in. Freeze for a minimum of four hours. Take out of the freezer 10 minutes before you want to eat.