With everyone staying safe at home this Easter, there’s never been a better time to try your hand at cooking up some healthy Easter recipes.
At 28, we don’t believe in restricting carbs or any of your favourite meals for that matter, however, it’s still important to find a healthy balance and avoid excessive amounts of sugar. To help you stay healthy during what could be a traditionally sugary and over indulgent time of year, we thought we’d share some healthy Easter treats that the whole family can enjoy!
Running low on some ingredients? You don’t have to give up on cooking healthy if you learn how to make the most out of what you have in the cupboard. To help you, I’ve listed some ideas at the bottom of this post so you can make healthy ingredients swaps.
Healthy Easter Ideas
Keep on reading for common healthy ingredient swaps
Do you have a fussy eater at home?
It’s quite normal for kids to turn their nose up at foods & flavours they don’t recognize. One of the tricks Sam & Snez always recommend is to get the kids involved in cooking. By being hands-on in the kitchen they’ll see all the ingredients going in, and they’ll be so proud that they helped you make it, they’ll be much more likely to eat it with the family too.
Healthy Easter ingredient swaps (if you don’t have all the ingredients at home)
If you or someone you know has a nut allergy, you can easily make recipes nut free by swapping any nuts for a seed alternative. Use ground-up sunflower seeds instead of almond meal, tahini instead of nut butter, and coconut milk instead of almond milk.
Healthy flour swaps
- No buckwheat flour?
- Use a quinoa flour, brown rice flour or a gluten-free flour blend
- Use a quinoa flour, brown rice flour or a gluten-free flour blend
- No wholemeal spelt flour?
- Swap with any wholemeal flour
- Swap with any wholemeal flour
- No wholemeal flour?
- Use any non-self-raising flour
(just bear in mind this reduces the fibre content)
- Use any non-self-raising flour
- No almond meal?
- Swap with ground sunflower seeds
(if you have sunflower seeds a blender might not get it fine enough, try a mortar & pestle, or even a coffee grinder if you have one)
- Swap with ground sunflower seeds
Healthy Easter sweetener swaps
- No rice malt syrup?
- Swap with maple syrup or raw honey
- Swap with maple syrup or raw honey
- No maple syrup?
- Swap with raw honey or rice malt syrup
- No 85% or 90% dark chocolate?
- Swap with any dark chocolate, or
- Swap with cacao powder and cacao butter, or
- Swap with cacao powder and coconut oil
- NB: If you don’t have any dark chocolate or cacao you can use milk chocolate (but the sugar content will be much higher)
Healthy Easter butter swaps
- No cacao butter?
- Swap for cocoa butter (ideally a plain version, with no added sugar)
- Or, swap with coconut oil
(but note this may change the consistency)
- No cashew butter?
- Swap with almond butter, peanut butter, sunflower butter or tahini
- NB: If you’ve only got dairy butter, ideally grassfed/organic, go ahead but please bear in mind it will contain a lot more fat than a nut butter and could a create slightly oily consistency (and, of course, the recipe will no longer be vegan-friendly!)
Healthy Easter milk swaps
- No coconut milk?
- Swap with coconut cream, and just water it down
- Or any milk/milk substitute is fine
How to stay fit & healthy at home with 28
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