Easter: Alternatives to the chocolate egg

Easter is the holiday of Jesus and bunnies and, most importantly, chocolate. But what do you do if you or someone you want to surprise with an Easter treat does not like or cannot eat chocolate?

No need to worry: we’ve compiled a list of Easter egg alternatives that are just as good as a milky treat!

The diary-free egg

Easter must be a disappointing holiday for children (and grown-ups!) who can’t eat chocolate. Luckily there are a few diary-free alternatives:

Hotel Chocolat has a range of vegan choices (some nut-free) whose appearance more than equals their milkier counterparts. 

Asda make a good budget alternative that is gluten, wheat and dairy-free.

The real egg

Instead of giving someone an egg made of chocolate, why not return to the real thing?

Place some bacon in a cupcake tin and bake it for 10-15 minutes. Then crack an egg in the now hardened bacon shell and bake until the egg is hardened as well.

This is a really easy snack that you can easily customise with more ingredients and surely won’t disappoint.

The Easter bunny

Instead of focusing on the egg exclusively, think broader! Bunnies give you more room to play.

You can, for example, make carrot cake (the Easter bunny’s favourite) or carrot cake cupcakes, and decorate them with bunnies and eggs made of icing. 

The decorative egg classic

If you want to move away from edible things all together you might want to give decorative eggs a try.

All you need for decorative eggs is the following:

Large free range eggs (ideally white eggs)
Needle
Bowl
Straw
Bowl of water
Watercolours and a brush

1. Carefully pierce a small (but not too small) hole into the top and bottom of the egg. Try to get the hole to align, that will make the next step easier.
2. Now use the straw and place it over the hole in the top of the egg to blow the egg white and the yolk via the bottom hole into a bowl. It might be a bit tricky at first, but don’t let that discourage you. (If you need help with blowing out the egg, you can watch a tutorial on YouTube.)
3. One the egg is hollow you can wipe it down and remove all of the residual yolk from the surface so it’s nice and clean. Be careful though, as the hollow eggshell is very fragile.
4. Now you can start decorating them. There are two methods you can opt for: either use watercolours on them directly or use watercolour colouring via a bowl of water. If you opt for the second method, draw a pattern into the water so that the whole surface of the water is covered in colour. Now slowly dip the egg shell into the bowl so that the colour pattern will be transferred onto the egg shell.

While this can be a bit messy and time consuming, decorated eggs make great presents that are sure to be kept for many years to come. 

The egg flower

Another inedible egg idea that is surely to be the talk of Easter is “green egg”.

You’ll need:

Tiny flower pot with earth
Extra earth
Flower seeds of your choice
Large egg

Similar to the decorative egg, you’ll need to clean out an egg shell, but you can crack the top of the egg to make it easier. Once you’ve done that, you can place the egg in the tiny flower pot. Make sure it stands securely. Drizzle some more earth into the egg shell along with some flower seeds. Try to select a smaller flower that won’t break the egg as it grows, cress is especially good for this process as it grows very quickly.

Now you can gift your egg flower!

Luisa Kapp