The Kids' Table at Christmas, and What Actually Gets Eaten

By Dewi Salim, Hamper Building Lead at The Gourmet Pantry.

Children eat the plain end of the table. Put out plain crackers, a jam drop biscuit, a gingerbread shape and one boiled lolly each, keep whole nuts and hard sweets at the adult end, and give them something savoury at eleven so nobody is desperate by two.

The kids' table is planned last and cleared first. It usually gets a shrunken version of the adult menu, which is how a plate of cold prawns, olives and a truffle crisp sits untouched beside a child who has eaten four plain crackers and gone back outside.

Worth knowing before you shop, because it changes what you buy. Almost nothing on a children's plate needs to be expensive, and most of it comes off the biscuit shelf and out of the confectionery range rather than the deli counter.

What actually gets eaten

Plain wins, and not because children have no palate. At a table where the food, the room and half the relatives are unfamiliar, the recognisable thing is the safe thing. A cracker that tastes of cracker gets picked up. One with rosemary and sea salt baked in gets turned over, inspected and put back.

Plain Crackerthins are the clearest case: $3.49 for a 100g box, thin enough to snap into child-sized pieces, with nothing in them to pick out. The kids' table is the one part of Christmas Day where a $3 box outperforms a $30 one, and the sooner you accept that, the less food goes in the bin at four o'clock.

The same rule runs through the sweet side. Things that look like biscuits do better than things that look like dessert, because dessert is understood to be later. Jen's jam drops, $9.95 for 300g, do two jobs at once: a plain butter biscuit with a spot of jam in the middle, so it reads as a biscuit to a cautious child and as a lolly to a bold one. Gingerbread Folk Christmas minis, $7.49 for a 70g bag, are small shapes rather than one big one, which matters more than it sounds. A large gingerbread man gets held, admired, carried around the garden and abandoned. A small one gets eaten.

A plate that works, and what it costs

Seven things, none of them cooked, all shelf stable, so you can buy in November and stop thinking about it. Pick four of them, set them out on small plates rather than one platter, and hold the rest back for the long afternoon.

Buy for the number of children, not the number of guests. Four will not get through 300g of biscuits and a bag of lollies in one afternoon, and what is left keeps sealed. Six or more and a second bag of the gingerbread minis is the cheapest way to stop the plate looking bare by three.

One plate each, set before anyone sits down, is the other half of it. A shared platter in the middle of a children's table turns into a negotiation. Individual plates end that, and show you who has eaten and who has only rearranged.

The gap between arriving and eating

Australian Christmas lunch tends to land late. People arrive at ten or eleven, the food comes out at one, and in between a child who ate breakfast at seven quietly runs out of fuel. Most kids' table trouble starts there, and it is a timing problem rather than a food problem.

Put something savoury out at eleven and hold the sweet things back. Plain crackers, cut fruit and cheese in cubes will carry a child to lunch without ruining the appetite for it. Sugar does the opposite, and returns the child at half past twelve asking for more. The adult version of the same tray, olives and crisps included, is set out in nibbles before lunch.

Pulling something is half the point of the day when you are small, and the shorter tubes built for smaller hands are covered in how many crackers a table needs, along with the ones made for the dog.

Whole nuts and hard lollies, in plain terms

Two things are worth a second look before they sit within reach of small children: whole nuts and hard boiled lollies. Both are meant to be eaten sitting still and slowly, which is the opposite of how children eat on Christmas Day, standing up on the way to somewhere else.

The practical version. Keep the bowl of whole nuts at the adult end rather than in the middle. Hand the raspberry drops out one at a time to children who are sitting down, and swap in the soft sweets once everyone is running. Candy Kittens wild strawberry are soft gummies rather than boiled sweets, and vegan, so they are the easier thing to leave on a table you are not watching. If you are unsure what a particular child manages, ask their parent.

Allergies are the simpler job, because the labels do the work. Read the pack, ask before you hand anything over, and if nuts are the issue in your family, our nut free range narrows the catalogue down rather than leaving you to check every ingredient list on the shelf.

Questions we get asked

What food should I put on the kids' table at Christmas?

Plain crackers, cheese, cut fruit, two kinds of biscuit and one sweet each. Keep it recognisable and keep the pieces small. Anything with truffle, chilli, blue cheese or seeds in it belongs at the adult end, where it gets appreciated rather than turned over and put back.

What Christmas food will fussy children actually eat?

The plain end of whatever you have bought. A plain cracker beats a seeded one, a butter biscuit beats a spiced one, a small shape beats a large one. Serve things separately rather than mixed, because a fussy eater will reject a whole plate over one thing touching another.

How do I keep children fed before Christmas lunch?

Savoury at eleven, sweets after lunch. Crackers, cheese and cut fruit take the edge off without removing the appetite. Put it somewhere they can reach without asking, top it up once, then clear it when lunch is called so the table is not competing with itself.

What can I put on a Christmas plate for a toddler?

Soft, small and plain. A jam drop broken into pieces, gingerbread minis, soft fruit, cheese cut small. Leave off whole nuts and hard boiled lollies, and cut anything round down first. Their parent knows what that child manages, so ask before you hand anything over.

Buy the plain end early

Biscuits, crackers and boiled lollies keep sealed in a cupboard for months, which makes the children's half of Christmas the part you can order in September and forget. Everything above sits in the confectionery range and on the biscuit shelf beside it, with free Australia-wide shipping over $100. If you would rather it arrived packed, the same biscuits and lollies go into the Christmas hampers we pack by hand in Corio, Victoria.