Healthy Sticky Chicken & Veggies Tray Bake
Of all the questions I am asked, the most common is ‘what can we cook thats makes dinner time easy and is baby friendly’. I get that being a parent is busy job in itself. Take yesterday for example, by the time I had done the food shopping, cleaned the house, hung out 3 loads of washing and helped my little boy with his homework I was thinking that never ending question ‘whats for dinner?’ and with no real urge to do anything but play football in the park with the kiddies I decided to do the simplest dinner I know – a tray bake.
Tray bakes (sheet pan recipe) are so handy, you just throw all the ingredients into a baking tin, make a yummy sauce and bake it until cooked. The brilliant thing about this dish besides the fact that is so fast and easy to make is that it is cooked in just one tray. I always line mine with parchment paper because afterwards you can peel it off and throw away with not even a pan to clean up!
I love the mixture of these vegetables, roasted sweet potato is just delicious and I crave roasted peppers and garlic every week. You can mix match with any vegetables you have in your fridge too so by all accounts this could very well be this evenings dinner for you without having to go to a shop!
Sticky sauce was one of my favourite as a kid but I wanted to make a healthy version with only the best nutritious ingredients. I used 2 really ripe peaches that smelt so deliciously perfumed and blended everything up into what looked like an almost smoothie like mixture. My 9 year old sniggered and thought I had gone a little insane when I poured it over the vegetables, the exact words were “your actually using a smoothie in the dinner, are you o.k Mam?”. The great thing about this dish though is that it is a great way to get your little ones to eat their veggies. When baked in this yummy sauce they are gloriously sweet which the little ones just love. I think I will take credit for having the last laugh 😀
There will be lot’s more baby friendly, family dinners over the next while all designed to make life that little bit easier. If you have a quick dinner that your family loves I’d love to hear about it and hope you all make this one because its delicious!!!
Happy Wednesday.
Aileen & The Family 🙂

Healthy Sticky Chicken & Veggies Tray Bake
Ingredients
- 4 chicken breasts
- 4 small sweet potatoes
- 4 baby sweet peppers or 2 regular sized peppers
- 2 red onions
- 1 white onion
- 1 bulb garlic
- 8 baby tomatoes
- Small bunch fresh coriander
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 ripe peaches
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- Sprig fresh rosemary
- ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
Instructions
-
Preheat oven to 170ºC.
-
Line a large baking tray with parchment paper – this saves on a lot of cleaning afterwards.
-
Chop the chicken into bite sizes pieces then add to the tray.
-
Peel the sweet potatoes and slices into thick chunks then chop the baby sweet peppers in half and deseed, then peel and chop the onions into quarters roughly and add to the tray.
-
Don’t peel the garlic, just remove the loose skin around each clove and add to the pan.
-
To make the sauce firstly separate the leaves from the coriander and leave them aside to decorate when the dish is cooked. Keep the stalks though and place them along with all the remaining sauce ingredients into a blender and blend until it becomes smooth and creamy.
-
Pour the sauce over the vegetables and chicken and using your hands make sure that everything is totally coated.
-
Scatter the baby tomatoes over the mix or if the tomatoes are still on the vine place on top then bake for 45 minutes. The vegetables should all be soft and squishy if you press them between your forefinger and thumb and the chicken should be lovely and moist.
-
Roughly chop the coriander leaves you set aside earlier and sprinkle over to serve.
Healthy Sticky Chicken & Veggies Tray Bake

Ingredients
- 4 chicken breasts
- 4 small sweet potatoes
- 4 baby sweet peppers or 2 regular sized peppers
- 2 red onions
- 1 white onion
- 1 bulb garlic
- 8 baby tomatoes
- Small bunch fresh coriander
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 ripe peaches
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup
- 1 teaspoon Dijon mustard
- Sprig fresh rosemary
- ½ teaspoon ground black pepper
Method
- Preheat oven to 170ºC.
- Line a large baking tray with parchment paper – this saves on a lot of cleaning afterwards.
- Chop the chicken into bite sizes pieces then add to the tray.
- Peel the sweet potatoes and slices into thick chunks then chop the baby sweet peppers in half and deseed, then peel and chop the onions into quarters roughly and add to the tray.
- Don’t peel the garlic, just remove the loose skin around each clove and add to the pan.
- To make the sauce firstly separate the leaves from the coriander and leave them aside to decorate when the dish is cooked. Keep the stalks though and place them along with all the remaining sauce ingredients into a blender and blend until it becomes smooth and creamy.
- Pour the sauce over the vegetables and chicken and using your hands make sure that everything is totally coated.
- Scatter the baby tomatoes over the mix or if the tomatoes are still on the vine place on top then bake for 45 minutes. The vegetables should all be soft and squishy if you press them between your forefinger and thumb and the chicken should be lovely and moist.
- Roughly chop the coriander leaves you set aside earlier and sprinkle over to serve.
*
Recipe Notes & Tips

Writen by Aileen Cox Blundell - number one bestselling author, award winning blogger and Mum of 3 kiddies who all eat their veggies.
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