CELEBRATE this Easter with scrumptious beauty products for your bathroom and you can get your chocolate fix the healthy way - and smell good enough to eat. We reveal the tastiest treats.

By Lisa Haynes

IT'S the time of year that has chocoholics rubbing their hands with glee and weight-watchers running for the hills. Easter can be a calorific celebration but it is possible to avoid temptation with a guilt-free chocolate fix.

Indulge your cocoa habit - and pamper yourself - without putting on a pound using scrumptious chocolate beauty products instead.

Forget the Easter eggs this year and focus on mouth-watering make-up and other gorgeous goodies. They're sure to have more staying power than sweet treats too.

Go choc crazy with our beauty guide to Easter ...

ADDICTED TO CHOC

White, dark or milk, we all love nibbling on chocolate bars every now and again but what's the allure of slathering our bodies in cocoa-based products?

Helen Ambrosen, Lush product creator and co-founder, explains: "Chocolate is such an inspiration on all sorts of levels - it's the smell, colour and texture.

"It's a really fun ingredient to work with and makes beautiful products. At Lush, we've found that if we use the word chocolate somewhere in the product name or description, it sells well so there's definitely something about chocolate.

"Enjoying chocolate products as an alternative to eating it also means avoiding adding inches to your waistline!"

For maximum choc-appeal, look for ingredient lists that include cocoa butter or powder, chocolate extract, vanilla, honey and shea butter.

CHOCOLATE BATHING

You may have fallen in love with the smell of chocolate but cocoa ingredients are also the perfect concoction for pampering your skin, according to Helen.

"Chocolate-based products have a luxuriant quality that appeals to people," Helen says. "The smell is especially appealing - but as an ingredient it's also softening, moisturising and relaxing due to its cocoa butter content."

TRY: Anatomicals Hey Tubs Want Some Chocolate? Bath Creme, £1.97, Boots nationwide, Lush Heavenly Bodies Butter Cream, £3.75 per 100g (www.lush.co.uk), Mark Hill Gorgeous Brunette Choc to Espresso Shampoo and Conditioner, £5.49 each, Boots nationwide, John Frieda Brilliant Brunette Moisturising Conditioner in Chocolate, £4.48, Boots nationwide, Lush Sonic Death Monkey chocolate shower gel, from £3.75 (www.lush.co.uk).

COCOA PAMPER KIT

If you're on a strict nil-by-mouth chocolate ban you deserve the utmost indulgence in other ways. Luxurious chocolate products are the perfect way to reward yourself - and can even evoke the same endorphins in the brain.

Hide away in the bathroom and gorge on the calming, mood-enhancing qualities of chocolate without putting on a single pound with some beautifying products.

TRY: B Never Too Busy To Be Beautiful Sweet Lips Sugar Scrub, £4.25 (www.lush.co.uk), Germaine de Capuccini Chocoscrub, £26 (0845 600 0203/www.germaine-de-capuccini.co.uk), Crabtree & Evelyn Naturals Botanical Body Butter in Cocoa Butter, Nutmeg & Cardamon, £15.95 (www.crabtree-evelyn.co.uk), Montagne Jeunesse Chocolate Mud Masque, 99p (www.montagnejeunesse.com), Superdrug Skin Rescue Warming Chocolate Mud Face Mask, 89p.

MAKE-UP CHOCOLATE BOX

If you're not so keen on strong cocoa fragrances, sprucing up your make-up bag with chocolate-inspired products is a great alternative to bathroom pampering.

Neutral brown and toffee colours are a must-have essential of any make-up kit and, unlike some shock bright colours this season, will never fade out of fashion.

TRY: Bobbi Brown Pot Rouge For Lips and Cheeks in Chocolate Cherry, £16 (www.bobbibrown.co.uk), Clinique Colour Surge Eye Shadow Duo in Chocolate Kiss, £14 (www.clinique.co.uk), Givenchy Prismissime Eyes palette in Tempting Chocolate, £31 (01932 233 824), Bellapierre Shimmer Powder in Cocoa, £12.99 (0800 0234 190/www.bellapierre.com), Stila Lip Glaze in Brown Sugar, £15 (www.hqhair.com), B Bitten Lip Cream, £8.50 (www.lush.co.uk), Elite nail polish in Dark, Milk or White Chocolate, £5 each, Superdrug nationwide.

BEAUTY NEWS

Banish chocolate altogether and cuddle up with a cute Easter bunny. Throughout March, Paul Smith Parfums is giving customers who buy any 50ml or 100ml fragrance a Limited Edition Bunny, which features the brand's famous signature on its foot. Available from major department stores nationwide, fragrances include Paul Smith Women, Men, London, Rose and Floral. Prices start from £26 for 50ml EDT. You'd be hopping mad to miss it ...

Boys can smell as delicious as your favourite choc snack for Easter with Lynx's new Dark Temptation fragrance. Dark Temptation mixes the fragrance of chocolate and whipped cream - yum! The deodorant is available nationwide now priced £2.79, and anti-perspirant and shower gel is also available.

Sick of hoarding endless styling products to straighten your hair? Look no further than the Babyliss BEliss 2x. The hairdryer tackles three jobs in one - de-tangling, smoothing and straightening your locks as it dries the hair.

Babyliss spokesperson and hairdresser, Beverley C, says: "The BEliss 2x is a multi-functional dryer that enables you to achieve straight styles in half the time and without the fuss of juggling a dryer and hairbrush."

The time saving device costs £35, available at Argos, Boots and leading electrical retailers. Call 08705 133 191 for stockists.