Alternatives to Easter Chocolate
Candy and Gift Ideas for Kids' Holiday Treats
If your child can't or won't eat chocolate, here are some ideas for Easter treats that are just as much fun as a chocolate egg.
Easter time can be difficult if your child is allergic to chocolate or simply doesn’t like it. The stores seem to be full of Easter treats that they can’t have and it can seem impossible to find alternatives. Read on to find out how you can make a no-chocolate Easter lots of fun.
Sweet Alternatives to Chocolate Eggs
It’s easy enough to find sweet alternatives to chocolate but the challenge is in keeping things festive, particularly if other children in the family will be receiving chocolate eggs.
If you’re making up Easter baskets, jelly beans or sugar eggs are a colorful alternative to chocolate eggs. Add a few tiny chick or rabbit novelties, which can be found in a drugstore or stationers.
If you’d like to present your sweet treats in an egg shaped container, buy a container containing chocolate and replace with your own choice of sweets. And of course, there’s no reason why you can’t eat the chocolate yourself! The same applies to children’s egg cups containing a chocolate egg; the egg can be removed and replaced with your own treats.
Many supermarkets and cake decorating stores stock edible Easter shapes, usually made of rice paper or royal icing. These look very festive on top of a batch of fairy cakes and placed in a small basket lined with tissue paper.
Non-Food Easter Treats
As long as your child feels special, he's unlikely to feel left out of the chocolate frenzy. If you know that friends or relatives will be giving eggs at a family event, contact them beforehand to suggest suitable alternatives in the same price range.
An Easter-themed book is a nice keepsake. Popular titles include The Night Before Easter by Natasha Wing and Cathy Couri [Grosset & Dunlap, 1999], The Bunny Who Found Easter by Charlotte Zolotow and Helen Craig [Houghton Mifflin, 2001] and The First Easter by Jesslyn DeBoer and David Austin [Zonderkidz, 2005]. These are all available from Amazon.
If your child’s going to a party or easter egg hunt where chocolate eggs will be exchanged, send him along with non-chocolate treats to share with the other children. The feeling of being different will be offset by the pleasure of giving out treats to his friends.
An Easter tree is a good way to display festive treats and decorate the room at the same time. Buy a small potted tree from a garden center or bring in one from the garden. Attach Easter novelties such as chicks, rabbits and lambs to the branches and tie on small bags of sweets. Many sweets bought in packets from a store have a hole at the top for attaching the bag to the shop display and this hole can also be used to attach the sweets to your Easter tree.
Chocolate is a big part of Easter, but most children are just as fond as other sweets and with a little planning, you can be sure that your non-chocolate treats will be a big hit with the kids.
