Last week, Grace and I were very lucky to be invited to a Nutella breakfast briefing, along with some other lovely bloggers, at Legoland. Grace was beside herself with excitement as it was her first visit to Legoland. I was beside myself with excitement because I LOVE Nutella! Seriously, it is difficult to put into words just how much I love Nutella – so much so, in fact, that I can happily eat it with a spoon from the jar. Of course *ahem* I don’t actually ever do that 😉

Couldn't resist taking a photo 🙂

Despite my love of Nutella, it’s not something I’d ever considered giving my children for breakfast. After all, it’s chocolate spread, right? Actually, no it isn’t, it is a hazelnut spread with some cocoa added and I also found out that it isn’t as unhealthy as I expected. The nutritionist, Sian, who gave us a great talk on breakfast and how to encourage our children to eat more and try out different foods, pointed out that per serving Nutella has less sugar than jam. Also, you don’t need any butter on your toast if you are having Nutella. Whether this means I should refrain from giving my children jam for breakfast or start giving my children Nutella, I’m still not sure!

There was also a great talk from Karen Pine, who is a Psychology Professor, with some brilliant ideas for picky eaters. I am extremely lucky that, at the moment, my girls are very good eaters and I don’t have trouble getting them to eat breakfast. However, it was great to hear some useful tips and I was especially interested to hear that you need to present new types of food to your children 10 or more times before they’ll try and begin to accept it.

Next we had the chance to try out some recipes with TV chef, Alan Coxon, who has the most wonderful memory for food trivia! We worked in teams to try out our own Nutella creations, ours being a very sophisticated crepe style dish filled with Nutella and fruit! I think Kelly, Liz and I could have a big future in recipe creation!

Grace was well entertained and made friends with lots of other children, especially Top Ender 🙂 Afterwards, we spent a great afternoon in the Legoland park, went on loads of rides (including the Spinning Spider – twice!), got very wet, avoided many wasps and bought lots of Lego. It really was a great day out.

Grace and her Lego friend

On the way home I told Grace about the recipes we tried out and she insisted we stopped at the supermarket to buy the ingredients to make some ourselves. So here are some photos of what the girls created the next day with the jar of Nutella we were given.

Grace making a wrap

Faith lining up the fruit in her wrap

Thanks again to Nutella and Legoland for a brilliant day out!