Simple recipe swaps

Here, we give you some advice to help with choosing recipes to use in your school or service.

STEP 1: CHOOSE YOUR RECIPE

Try to find a recipe that includes mostly ‘everyday’ foods from the five food groups:

Fruit
Vegetables and legumes/beans
Grain (cereal) foods (bread, rice, pasta…)
Lean meats and alternatives (meat, poultry, fish, tofu, nuts, seeds, legumes)
Dairy and alternatives (milk, yoghurt, cheese or non-dairy options e.g. soy milk, mostly reduced fat)

Ideally, the recipe doesn’t use sugar, or only uses a small amount.

Aim for a maximum of ½ cup of sugar to 2 cups of flour in sweet recipes. The amount of sugar for many recipes can be reduced without losing flavour.

If the recipe includes ‘sometimes’ ingredients, can they can be swapped?

For example: lollies, processed meats (e.g. bacon or sausages), condensed milk, coconut cream.
*see below for swap suggestions

STEP 2: MAKE SIMPLE INGREDIENT SWAPS

Add fruit or vegetables.

Be creative – add fruit or vegetables to the recipe where you can or serve them on the side.

Choose reduced fat dairy for children two years and older.

Choose reduced-fat milk, cheese and yoghurt.

Swap to heart-healthy fats.

Use unsaturated oils (such as olive, canola or sunflower) and margarines instead of butter or coconut oil.

Reduce the salt.

Instead of using salt or stock to add flavour, try using herbs, spices or reduced-salt stock.

Include high-fibre ingredients in sweet recipes.

For example: swap white flour for wholemeal (or half and half) or try adding in fruit, vegetables, nuts or oats.

Decorate sweet foods with ‘everyday’ options.

Choose fresh or dried fruit, nuts and seeds or coconut to decorate rather than lollies, icing or cream.

Simple ingredient swaps.

Lots of recipes include ‘sometimes’ ingredients that can be swapped for ingredients that are lower in saturated fat, salt and/or sugar to make the recipe more ‘everyday’. Try our top ingredient swaps:

Food type	Instead of this…	Try this…
Bread and pastry	Puff pastry	Reduced fat puff pastry
Bread and pastry	Shortcrust pastry	Filo pastry
Dairy and alternatives	Cream	Evaporated milk, Greek yoghurt or natural yoghurt
	Sour cream	Natural yoghurt or Greek yoghurt
	Full-fat cream cheese	Reduced fat cream cheese, ricotta or cottage cheese
Meats and alternatives	Sausages	Lean meat or poultry
	Processed sliced meat (ham, bacon, salami)	Sliced lean meat (e.g. thinly sliced chicken breast)
	Other processed meat (kabana)	Cold roasted meat
Fats and oils	Butter	Poly- or monounsaturated margarine
	Coconut oil, copha or ghee	Polyunsaturated oil (olive, canola, peanut, sesame, sunflower, safflower)
	Coconut cream	Coconut flavoured evaporated milk or reduced fat coconut milk
Decorations	Chocolate chips	Seeds (e.g. sunflower or pumpkin), nuts* or Berries (frozen or fresh)
	Lollies	Berries or seeds (e.g. sunflower or pumpkin), nuts*
	Icing	Reduced-fat cream cheese or yoghurt
	Sprinkles	Cocoa, sifted over lightly