Beyond Guilt-Free Sweets: Priyasha Saluja On Mindful Festive Eating
Priyasha Saluja, founder of The Cinnamon Kitchen, discusses creative ways to enjoy festive desserts.
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Festivals and indulgence have always gone hand in hand, with food bringing together cherished traditions, familiar flavours and the joy of sharing something special with loved ones. As conversations around mindful eating continue to evolve, the focus is shifting towards finding a balance between enjoying festive favourites and being more conscious of the ingredients that go into them.
Priyasha Saluja, Founder of The Cinnamon Kitchen, shares her approach to reimagining festive desserts with thoughtful ingredients, exploring alternatives to refined sugar, and creating indulgent treats that bring together flavour, texture and mindful choices, without losing the joy of celebrating through food.
Festive celebrations are synonymous with indulgence. How can we enjoy our favourite festive treats without the guilt?
Priyasha Saluja: I think the first thing we need to change is the idea that enjoying something sweet during a festival is something we need to feel guilty about. Food is such a big part of how we celebrate in India. It’s about family, tradition, sharing and so many memories we’ve grown up with.
For me, it’s not about avoiding your favourite mithai or counting every calorie during Diwali. It’s about being a little more conscious of what you’re eating, choosing good-quality ingredients where you can, and actually enjoying what you choose to eat.
Today, we have so many possibilities to make desserts differently, using ingredients like dates, nuts, millets and dark chocolate. So you can absolutely enjoy a rich, satisfying dessert while also being more mindful of what goes into it. I don’t think the two have to be mutually exclusive.
And if there’s a traditional sweet you absolutely love, have it! One festive meal isn’t going to define your health. What matters is how you eat and take care of yourself consistently, throughout the year.
What does “guilt-free indulgence” mean to you?
PS: I’ve always found the term ‘guilt-free’ quite interesting because I don’t think food should come with guilt in the first place.
When I started The Cinnamon Kitchen, I wasn’t trying to create a separate category of desserts for people who wanted to eat healthy. I wanted to make really good desserts, just with more thoughtful ingredients.
I think for the longest time, we’ve accepted that if something is gluten-free, refined sugar-free or made with better ingredients, it probably won’t taste as good as a conventional dessert. And that’s exactly the perception I’ve wanted to change.
Why can’t a brownie made with dates be just as rich and fudgy? Or a cake made with millets be just as soft and chocolatey?
For me, that’s what mindful indulgence should look like. You shouldn’t have to choose between something that tastes good and something made with ingredients you feel good about eating.
With festive mithais and desserts often loaded with refined sugar, what are some alternatives you prefer?
PS: I think there are so many interesting ways to make our traditional festive desserts with more thoughtful ingredients, without taking away what we love about them.
For instance, instead of using refined flour, you can experiment with millets like ragi and bajra, or even amaranth, in laddoos, halwas and baked sweets. They’re naturally gluten-free, nutritionally dense and bring their own lovely flavours and textures. Dates are another favourite of mine. You can use them to sweeten nut-based mithais, chocolate fudge or even certain kinds of laddoos, without relying on refined sugar.
I also love using nuts, nut butters and spices like cardamom and cinnamon to build richness and flavour rather than depending entirely on sweetness.
We’ve actually used a lot of these ideas in our Diwali collection this year, from our date-sweetened Fudge Brownies to our Chocolate Crunch Millet Cake made with amaranth flour. I think the exciting part is discovering that these ingredients don’t just make good substitutes; sometimes they make the dessert even more interesting.
Can festive desserts actually be healthier without compromising on taste?
PS: Absolutely! And I think that’s probably the part of my work I enjoy the most.
People often assume that making a dessert healthier means taking something away from it. But when I’m developing a recipe, I’m usually thinking about what I can add to make the flavour or texture even better.
For example, this Diwali, we’ve created a Pecan & Caramel Cookie Tin, which has that gooey, almost molten-cookie texture with toasted pecans and dark chocolate. It’s the kind of dessert you want to dig into with a spoon and share with everyone.
Neither of these desserts started with the thought of making a healthier version of something. They started with a particular taste and texture I wanted to achieve.
The challenge was figuring out how to get there using ingredients I believe in. And I think that’s what makes recipe development so exciting. Sometimes the alternatives don’t just work as well; they actually make the dessert more interesting.
What are some ingredients you love incorporating into festive desserts at The Cinnamon Kitchen?
PS: I love working with ingredients that are familiar to us in India but aren’t necessarily the first things people think of when it comes to baking.
Millets and grains like amaranth are a big part of that. When I first started experimenting with gluten-free baking, most recipes I came across used rice flour, oat flour or processed gluten-free flour blends. But I didn’t just want my desserts to be gluten-free. I wanted them to be nutritionally dense as well.
And we have such an incredible variety of ingredients available to us in India. Something like rajgira or bajra is naturally gluten-free, nutritionally rich, and can give you beautiful results when you understand how to work with it.
Apart from these, I love using dates, almond flour, nut butters, cacao, hazelnuts and pecans. And for festive recipes, ingredients like cardamom and almonds are wonderful because they bring in flavours that feel so familiar.
You’ll find a lot of these combinations in our Diwali collection, whether it’s our Chocolate Crunch Millet Cake, our date-sweetened Fudge Brownies or our Cardamom & Almond Biscotti.
I think what excites me is that these ingredients aren’t just healthier substitutes. They have their own flavours and textures, and so much potential to create desserts that feel completely new.
How can people balance festive indulgence with their everyday eating habits?
PS: I think the biggest mistake we make during festivals is treating those few days as something completely separate from how we normally eat.
People either become extremely restrictive before a festival, or they decide they’ll eat everything now and figure out how to compensate for it later. I don’t think either approach is particularly healthy.
My advice would be to keep your everyday habits as consistent as possible. Eat your regular meals, stay hydrated, include enough protein and fibre, and don’t skip meals just because you know you’re going to have dessert later.
Also, I think there’s a difference between eating something because you genuinely enjoy it and eating it simply because it’s available. I’d much rather have a really good brownie or a piece of my favourite mithai and enjoy every bite than eat five different things without even paying attention.
And the next day, just go back to your normal routine. You don’t need to punish yourself for having enjoyed Diwali.
What is one festive dessert swap you would recommend to someone trying to cut down on refined sugar?
PS: I think the best swap is one that doesn’t actually feel like a swap.
If someone loves chocolate, I wouldn’t tell them to replace their favourite dessert with fruit or something they don’t particularly enjoy. I’d rather introduce them to a really good brownie made with dates instead of refined sugar.
That’s exactly what we’ve done with our festive Fudge Brownies at The Cinnamon Kitchen. They’re intensely chocolatey, have that lovely fudgy centre, and come in four different flavours.
I think people are often surprised by how much you can do with ingredients like dates, millets and nut butters. It’s not about recreating the same dessert with something missing. It’s about finding another way to make something just as satisfying
What is your philosophy when it comes to celebrating festivals through food?
PS: For me, food is one of the things that makes festivals feel like festivals. There’s so much emotion attached to it, whether it’s a sweet you’ve grown up eating, something your family makes every year, or a box of treats someone has thoughtfully picked out for you.
And I think gifting food is particularly special because it’s something people get to enjoy and share together.
When we were putting together our Diwali collection this year, I wanted to create that same feeling, but with our own approach to ingredients and baking.
So we have everything from rich chocolate desserts and gooey cookies to familiar flavours like cardamom and almond, date-filled Maamoul Cookies, and savoury millet bites and crackers. We’ve also curated hampers that bring these different flavours together, with little festive touches like hand-painted diyas.
I wanted there to be something for different tastes and preferences, rather than assuming everyone wants the same box of sweets.
I also think festivals are a wonderful opportunity to make food more inclusive. If someone is gluten-intolerant, avoids dairy or is trying to reduce refined sugar, they should still be able to enjoy what everyone else is eating.
I don’t believe celebrating more mindfully means giving up the food traditions we love. I think it means finding new ways to enjoy them, while making room for more people at the table.
For more information, visit: https://cinnamon.kitchen