For the animal-conscious, Easter can seem a little off-putting, what with all the marshmallow monstrosities and the overdoses of ova. But when the kids in your life start begging for every princess-themed egg-dying kit and foil-wrapped hunk of candy they see, there’s no need to barricade yourself in the bedroom with pastel-colored Oreos and dare anyone to open the door until you’ve achieved a sugar-induced coma. Savvy vegan companies have got Easter all wrapped up in a tidy little basket.
Let’s start with the inescapable eggs. Craft companies are offering easy-to-decorate versions that aren’t the product of factory farming in wood, craft foam, and clay. PETA is featuring EggNots, dye-able ceramic eggs that come packaged in a realistic carton, on its website. Of course, I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid doing an Easter-egg hunt at school, I always made a beeline for a certain type of egg: the plastic ones. They held all the candy! Unless things have changed a lot in the past (mumble) years, the plastic egg still reigns supreme.
To stuff these little plastic treasure troves, there are a wealth of drugstore-variety candies that are vegan, including Airheads, Bottle Caps, Dum Dums, Fun Dip, Jolly Ranchers, Laffy Taffy, Runts, Smarties, Sour Patch Kids, Super Bubble gum, Sweet Tarts, and Twizzlers. And for fun basket-stuffing options, check out some of the cool vegan versions of common Easter fare, such as PETA’s chocolate bunnies, Sweet & Sara’s Veeps (vegan Peeps), Sjaak’s peanut butter eggs, and Allison’s Gourmet’s “Speckles” Chocolate Rice Crisp Bunny.
And then there are the pastel Oreos that you’ll no longer be hoarding in the bedroom.
by Michelle Kretzer