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 for common healthy ingredients.
Healthy Easter Treat Ideas
Keep on reading for common healthy ingredient swaps for Easter baking
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.
Sugar alternatives for your Easter baking recipes
| INGREDIENT | REFINED SUGAR-FREE ALTERNATIVE |
| Rice malt syrup | Swap rice malt syrup with the same quantity of maple syrup or raw honey. |
| Maple syrup | Swap maple syrup with the same quantity of raw honey or rice malt syrup. |
| 90% dark chocolate | Swap with any dark chocolate. |
| Dark chocolate | If you have cacao powder + any healthy oil that is solid at room temperature (eg cacao butter or unprocessed coconut oil) then you can make your own homemade dark chocolate alternative. |
| Cacao powder & Cacao butter mix | If you don’t have any dark chocolate or cacao you can always use milk chocolate (just be mindful that the sugar content will be much higher). |
Healthy Easter flour swaps
| INGREDIENT | HEALTHY FLOUR ALTERNATIVE |
| Buckwheat flour | Replace with either quinoa flour, brown rice flour or a gluten-free flour blend. |
| Wholemeal spelt flour | Swap spelt flour with any wholemeal flour to maintain a similar flavour/texture. |
| Wholemeal flour | Replace wholemeal flour with any non-self-raising flour (just bear in mind white flour reduces the fibre content of your healthy Easter recipes). |
| Almond meal | Swap almond meal with ground sunflower seeds. You can use a blender to bring sunflower seeds to a flour like consistency, otherwise a mortar or pestle or coffee grinder can do the trick. |
Healthy Easter butter swaps
| INGREDIENT | HEALTHY BUTTER ALTERNATIVES |
| Cacao butter | Swap for cacao butter (ideally a plain version, with no added sugar). Or, swap with coconut oil (but note this may change the consistency). |
| 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
| INGREDIENT | HEALTHY MILK ALTERNATIVE |
| Coconut milk | Swap with coconut cream, and just water it down to a similar consistency as coconut milk. |
| Almond milk | Replace with any plant milk of your choice. |
Healthy Easter Meals for a Good Friday Feast
A long-standing tradition of Good Friday is the abstinence of eating meat, which originates from the Catholic religion. Many people, whether religious or not, also choose to abstain from eating meat and opt for fish or vegetarian meals on this day instead. Here are some of our suggestions to add to your Good Friday menu:
How to stay fit & healthy at home with 28
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