Egg Hunt 2015

One difference that struck me for the first time this year about the whole Easter candy experience is the lack of Easter baskets. In the U.S. you don’t (usually) just get a chocolate bunny (their equivalent to the Irish chocolate egg), you get a whole basket full of candy. Baskets can be wooden, plastic, or other material and miniature up to gallon bucket size. They usually have paper or plastic shreds pretending to be grass and assorted candies and/or small toys are placed inside. The Easter Bunny would hide our basket and we would go in search of it on Easter morning.

In Ireland you only get the chocolate egg (which often comes with a few other candies inside, so that helps explain why they are fairly large.

I found out from a co-worker that in Lithuania, they didn’t do the chocolate/candy thing at all. It was all about coloring/painting eggs (mostly the hard boiled variety). Coloring Easter eggs isn’t a big thing in Ireland, either. Traditions are as variable as the countries.

I’ve may have egg-hausted the gamut of Chocolate Easter Eggs in previous posts. However, each year there’s usually something worth noting.

New for this year was a large Guinness egg. No, it wasn’t full of Guinness, but rather Guinness infused chocolate. For those not in the know, Guinness has been selling a line of chocolates and truffles for some years now. I did not purchase one of those, not being much of a beer drinker and thinking beer and chocolate doesn’t have anywhere near the same appeal as wine and chocolate.

What I did try new this year were the Cadbury Egg ‘n Spoon that come 4 to a carton with little spoons for scooping out the mousse in the middle. Oddly, the carton with 4 eggs only came with two of the mini-spoons. Does that mean you get to eat two at a time? (I can hear the nutritionists around the world screaming).

They’re actually quite tasty and the mousse comes in either white or milk chocolate, though the outer egg is milk for both. I think they were around last year but this is the first year I’ve tried them. The chocolate coating is softer than most filled eggs which means if you aren’t going to use the dainty spoon, you’ll have to wolf it down in fairly short order because it melts in your mouth and in your hands.

Also new this year was the split level egg from Marks and Spencer (made in Ireland). I thought the gold filigree egg from last year at M&S was pricey at around €30, but they went above and beyond with a large lacy egg encompassing a smaller filigree egg in the center. This came in at a whopping €60!!! Here’s a screen shot from their web site, as it was way over my budget.

My personal favorites continue to be Lindt truffle eggs and the Ferrero Rocher dark chocolate small eggs. I’m still waiting for Cadbury to bring the dark chocolate mini-coated-eggs, but based on the shrinking bag sizes and rising prices of the milk chocolate mini-coated-eggs, I may have a long wait.

Hopefully 2016 will bring more eggstra-special eggs (or at least another carrot race).

Have a ‘heathly’ and happy Easter.

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