Here’s our guide to enjoying Easter without the sugar rush!

Prepare homemade treats

Get busy in the kitchen with your kids and create some delicious and healthy goodies. We love, Home-made Creamy Chocolate Easter Eggs, Hot Cross Muffins, Bunny Rabbit Biscuits with Blueberry Filling and Chocolate Almond Scones. No nasties and they’re all fun and easy to make.

Go for quality over quantity

The beauty of buying good quality chocolate is that you tend to be satisfied with less. When buying Easter eggs, choose plain, hollow eggs made from good quality chocolate rather than eggs filled with lollies, or crème fillings. Alternatively, melt a good-quality dark or milk chocolate such as Green & Black’s and make your own creations with fun bunny moulds or eggs. Biome also have a great range of Easter goodies which includes fair trade, organic and dairy-free options, as well as cute activity books. Visit Biome: www.biome.com.au. For more information on how to choose the best quality chocolate for your family check out our blog article, The Dark Side of Chocolate.

Have fun with Easter craft

Easter is about so much more than just chocolate eggs. Getting the kids busy with craft activities can be heaps of fun. Make Easter bonnets, try egg dipping or felting, or create Easter chicks and bunnies with pompoms. Fill a vase with branches and hang with decorated eggs to create your own Easter tree. Use a mix of hard-boiled, dyed eggs and good-quality mini chocolate eggs in your Easter egg hunt, and hide them far and wide so your little ones get plenty of exercise in racing around!

Read the labels

Have a quick look at the ingredients label before you make your Easter purchases. The main ingredients to watch out for include preservatives, flavourings and colourings. If the ingredients list is as long as your arm and includes lots of ‘E’ numbers, put the eggs back on the shelf. As an example, a Lindt chocolate bunny contains the following: sugar, cocoa butter, whole milk powder, cocoa mass, vegetable fats, lactose, skim milk powder, milk fat, emulsifier (soy lecithin), barley malt extract, flavouring. By comparison, a Cadbury’s Cream Egg contains a whopping four different types of sugar, all under different names; Milk chocolate (Milk, Sugar, Cocoa butter, Cocoa mass, Vegetable fat, Emulsifiers (E442, E476, Soya lecithin), Flavourings), Fondant (47%) (Sugar, Glucose syrup, Invert sugar syrup, Dried egg white, Flavouring, Colour (Paprika extract). If you can afford to splurge, then you may be interested in purchasing a chocolate Easter bunny from Organic Times ; (in order of amount of ingredients): Milk Chocolate (Rapadura Whole Cane Sugar, Cristallino Cane Sugar, *Cocoa Butter, *Whole Milk Powder, *Cocoa Mass, *Soya Lecithin, *Vanilla Bean Powder). These are also available in dark chocolate.

Choose carob, not chocolate

Carob is a great alternative to chocolate and we love the products from Australian-owned company The Carob Kitchen. They have a range of delicious goodies including large and mini Easter eggs as well as chocolate bars. Visit The Carob Kitchen to buy online or find a stockist near you.

Food First

Allowing kids to eat a whole chocolate egg first thing in the morning is a recipe for disaster. Keep chocolate as an after-meals snack, that way they won’t have a huge spike in their blood sugar and subsequent crash, which ends up being unpleasant for everyone! So make sure they have a decent protein-based meal before tackling their stash.

Happy Easter!