Carnival sweets: 5 tips for light, gluten-free and vegan recipes

There is a saying in Italy which can be translated literally to: “during Carnival every joke is allowed”, but not from the point of view of health. This is a time when we eat a lot of sweets and, especially for children, we have to be careful not to exaggerate with sugar and fried food. Discover how to prepare vegan and healthy carnival recipes!

Carnival sweets traditions

Everyone has his or her own family recipes for carnival, and there are many typical sweets that you will find in all the pastry shops, at parties and at grandmothers' houses! By now, however, we all know that refined sugar is bad for us, that we must reduce or eliminate animal proteins, but also the consumption of some oils and fats, preservatives, colorants and in some cases even gluten. 

Let's say that you have to prepare some carnival sweets for your children, maybe for a school party where there will be other children, including some celiac, children of vegan and healthy parents. Or that you simply feel like making healthy, gluten-free and vegan carnival sweets. How can you please everyone? Here are 5 very useful tips!

1 Gluten-free carnival sweets

For celiacs, intolerants, or for those who do not want to exaggerate with gluten, you can very well replace wheat flour with one of the many gluten-free flours available on the market. The list is potentially very long:

Amaranth

Buckwheat

Corn

Mile

Quinoa

Rice

Sorghum

Teff

These flours often need a starch to replace the thickening and sticky power of gluten, such as corn starch, rice starch, konjac flour, tapioca or potato starch. In some cases, you can also use hemp flour, carob flour or the sweet and delicious Banana flour, which you can find in many of our products and also packaged individually. 

2 How to replace eggs in sweet recipes?

Here is a problem that affects many carnival recipes: how to replace eggs for vegan carnival sweets? It's easier than you might think. In addition to the starches we just talked about, you can use:

Apple puree

Mature banana

Linseed eggs (finely chop 1 tablespoon of linseed with 3 of water)

Vegetable yoghurt

Mature avocado

Chopped tofu

3 How to replace butter in sweets?

Butter is very rich in cholesterol, it is an animal derivative and it is better to replace it with vegetable variants. Here's how to do it:

Use olive oil, hemp oil, almond oil, sesame oil... 

Replace it with vegetable butter, non-hydrogenated and not palm oil margarine, or vegetable cream

Use a mature avocado

Cocoa Butter: perfect for desserts, gives flavour and softness. Try it!

4 How to replace sugar?

We at Iswari are specialists in this. First of all, we must to say that in many recipes, if you use fresh fruit, dried fruit like dates, or sweet flours like our banana or carob flour, you won't need to add sugar. But if you really need it, use unrefined and healthy sugar. 

The two best alternatives are Coconut Sugar, with a caramelized taste, and Xylitol, which looks the same as cooking sugar, but has a lower glycemic index.

5 Which oils to use for frying?

Many times you don't even need to fry your carnival sweets, but just bake them in the oven! If the ingredients are healthy, natural and nutritious, they will certainly be tasty too! But if you want to fry them, use oils that maintain high temperatures well, such as non extra virgin olive oil and peanut oil. 

In general, don't exaggerate with frying: it’s very delicate and not very "light", but it can even be dangerous for your health!