Easter is often a time of indulgence, with people buying countless chocolate eggs, tucking into cornflake nests, and filling up on lots of marzipan in Simnel cake. Just because it is tempting to buy into the hype that you need to consume unhealthy foods to make the most of the long weekend, this is not the case, as there are plenty of delicious treats you can enjoy that are much healthier for you.
- Choose raw chocolate boxes
Most people have a chocolate Easter egg at this time of year, but an average 71g Dairy Milk plain chocolate egg has as much as 1,346 calories, 18.6g of fat and 34g of sugar.
If you opted for a large egg from Thorntons, this would amount to 3,542.5 calories, 209.3g of fat and 349g of sugar. Though most people wouldn’t eat 650g of chocolate all in one go, it still shows just how nutritionally insufficient these treats are.
Instead, you could choose a delicious box of raw chocolates, which are healthier versions of the nation’s most popular goodies. They are made with the likes of tahini, buckwheat, cacao butter, dates, maple syrup, coconut oil, nuts hemp, oats, cacao powder, lucuma and caramel medicine flower, instead of the usual sugar, cocoa butter, cocoa mass, milk and emulsifiers.
As well as offering nutritional benefits, they are also better for you in terms of calorific content, with the bars containing an average of 331 calories.
- Healthy Easter cakes
Whether you prefer a traditional Simnel cake with layers of almond paste or you’re more into moist, squidgy chocolate cakes covered with miniature speckled eggs, you don’t have to give up a scrumptious pudding on Easter Sunday to be healthy.
Why not make your own pudding using superfood ingredients instead of traditional butter, sugar and cream? For instance, swap chocolate for cacao powder, flour for coconut flour, butter for coconut oil, and sugar for agave syrup or stevia leaf powder. You can also boost the nutritional content of your cakes by adding spices, such as cinnamon, turmeric or ginger.
- Encourage kids to be healthy too
Children love making simple Easter egg nests, and containing only a few ingredients, the recipe is definitely easy for them to follow.
If you want your little ones to adopt a healthier approach to eating, there is no need to avoid making these treats. Saucepan Kids has created a recipe for Easter egg nests containing cacao powder, honey, coconut oil, oats, desiccated coconut, ground almonds, raspberries and blueberries.
Although it involves a handful more ingredients, all children have to do is melt the coconut oil and honey together, and stir in the organic chocolate powder, oats, desiccated coconut and ground almonds before leaving to set in the fridge.
Once they have hardened, the berries can be placed on the top in replace of mini chocolate eggs.
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