Chocolate Cream Eggs

Ah - the cream egg in all its variations! We have to start with the most beloved, classic Cadbury Egg - first in its standard size:

And then in the mini size:

I swear I thought the "yolks" used to be more yellow, but that might just be a childhood memory/delusion:

What can I say?  These are awesome - the chocolate is that delicious, creamy Cadbury chocolate.  The filling is a little bit rich for me, but they are good.  I find the little ones are a lot easier to eat - the big one is just too much.  But, hey - they rule the creme egg category rule and I don't think Cadbury should change a thing!

Russell Stover continues to suck.  The chocolate can't even come close to Cadbury's and this strawberry cream has little strawberry taste - just sweet and fluffy rather than creamy (like Cadbury).  Kinda gross:

The raspberry - in dark chocolate rather than milk, but still in that thin, crummy RS chocolate was better:

Better because the dark chocolate offsets the super sweetness of the "whip" and the raspberry taste was stronger than the strawberry.  But not something very good.

This was the worst of the three - just way too sweet (and the chocolate is not so good):

Of course, RS is better than Palmer because while their chocolate can't hold a candle to Cadbury's, it's way better than Palmer's.  I didn't even try these - the chocolate is so thick and so bad, no filling can save it:

But the flower is cute!

Sorry, Palmer.

These Kisses are special for Easter/spring and are buttercreme:

You all know I tend to really like Hershey's Kisses. But these I do not like. I do not like them, when I dream, I do not like the buttercreme. They have a kind of weird flavor to me - I guess I don't like buttercreme. The chocolate overpowers the weird taste after a minute, but why go there at all? I wouldn't waste my time with these if I were you. Sooooo many better options.

See's has a ton of eggs at Easter (last year they sent me some to review).  I wanted to try some I hadn't so I got this little egg assortment:

This one is chocolate butter:

I thought it was kind of dry.  Basically this is chocolate fudge covered in chocolate.  It really didn't do much for me.

This one is vanilla chip:

I thought this one was kind of dry too.  The filling was like vanilla fudge with some chocolate chips (which I thought would be good) but it wasn't.  Think dried out fudge - not so good.

This is Bordeaux:

This was the best of the three and Bordeaux is kind of like a brown sugar fudge coated in chocolate. 

See's has tons of larger eggs - these are sightly less than twice the size of a real egg.  The chocolate butter in the larger egg has walnuts:

And while I MUCH prefer this egg with the walnuts, it just doesn't blow me away.  For some reason all these eggs were kind of dry - dried out fudge is just no good.  The Bordeaux eggs were not dry, though.  Another mystery.

This is the big version of Bordeaux:

I like the addition of the sprinkles:

But, at the end of the day, this just doesn't do it for me.  Butter cream and brown sugar is too rich and sweet, I'd rather have peanut butter or caramel.

I haven't had great luck with Sanders in the past, but this egg surprised me:

I like maple and this had a great maple flavor with little bits of pecan coated in dark chocolate.  It's VERY rich though - like maple pecan fudge. 

As usual, this sucked:

Fluffy, sugary, vaguely mapley stuff inside a thin layer of crappy chocolate.  Glack!

Sanders also had a dark chocolate cherry egg:

But it wasn't very good - not much cherry taste.  The dark chocolate overpowered what little cherry flavor there was.  Not so good.

This is my favorite of all the creme eggs - See's Mayfair:

Hunks of cherry and pecans and wrapped in dark chocolate - I love this egg!  For me, all these flavors and textures work wonderfully together.  It is really delicious!!

I have to confess, after this, I'm just not buying anymore butter cream eggs.  They are too rich and kind of creep me out.  I do not like them in a box, I do not like them in my socks, I do not like them in a jar, I do not like them in my car, I'd rather have a chocolate bar.

The 2.5 Pound Box of Chocolate

Today was the most gorgeous day I have seen in months. As a result, I felt compelled to abandon my office and go in search of chocolate.

I looked for the Cherry Raisinets, but found these:

I didn't even know Raisinets came in dark chocolate. These are the ones I'm used to:

And you know what? I didn't think they were very good. The dark chocolate ones had a funky aftertaste and the milk chocolate ones were nothing special. There are so many chocolatiers covering fruit in really great chocolate that these aren't worth the calories. Zzzzz......

The box has antioxidants printed in giant letters and says again "30% less fat than the leading chocolate brands." Does that mean in comparison to the leading chocolate brands' chocolate covered raisins? Or in comparison to the leading chocolate brands other candy bars? Which are the leading chocolate brands? What the does this statement MEAN?

I say they have 80% less taste than other chocolate covered raisins.

Remember this? I bet you thought I forgot!! This was the amazing 2.5 pound box of chocolate I got at Walmart for a whopping $11. In the dog food aisle. Nice.

The miniature Butterfinger is there for scale:

I opened it and look!!!! Yay!!!! A diagram for the chocolates!

There are TWO levels:

Are you getting an idea of how enormous this is?

I decided to try some. This is coconut:

As you can see it's creamy. No chunks of coconut like an Almond Joy. This was WAY too sweet and way too creamy. Yuck.

Now this one was interesting - dark chocolate pineapple:

This wasn't done well - all the creams in the box are just too sweet and sugary. But I LOVE the idea of combining these flavors!! Someone needs to do this right - great idea! Great potential!

This is a peanut cluster:

I actually liked this one - packed with peanuts and I LOVE peanuts.

I soon learned that the labels were not always right (it says in the small print at the bottom that from time to time it may be necessary to substitute). This one was labeled maple cream:

Hmmmm......doesn't look very mapley, I thought. Didn't taste very mapley either. Had to be a way too sweet vanilla cream.

THIS is a maple cream:

Can you see the grains of sugar? All these creams are just way too sweet, way too sugary. They are the equivalent of Palmer chocolate.

This one was is the coconut slot, but is clearly not coconut and correlated to none of the listings - it has nuts and cherry in it and wasn't horrible, but was still too sugary sweet. Not sure what it is.

Apparently, I can now not escape from - cherry:

Like the fact that there is actually a bit of fruit here, but still too sugary and too sweet. The box also had lots of caramels, but they were not so great. Too hard, nothing special.

What have we learned?

Sometimes you really do get what you pay for. Cheap chocolate can be crappy.

BUT - look at the great idea for pineapple and the packed-with-peanuts peanut cluster.

And who expected a label that doesn't really label? There's a twist! Forrest Gump would be happy.

The biggest takeaway for me, however, is that it takes not so great chocolate to really make you appreciate great chocolate. They same way reading the work of a bad writer makes you REALLY appreciate a good writer. (I didn't know how amazing many of my favorite writers were till I branched out. Oh dear God.) And we've all come to appreciate good people more when exposed to bad ones. And hasn't all the bad weather made us celebrate the spring more than ever?

Oh, the things we take for granted.

Here's to what might be the best $11 I ever spent!