More Easter Eggs - Candy Coated & Dark

Hi Gang! Are you loving the spring weather? I had to take a few days off from blogging to recovered from the great cake pig out. Good grief. But I won't be parted from sugar, fat and chocolate for long!

These candy coated chocolate Easter eggs are a great spring celebration - like M & M's but with more chocolate - what could be better than that?

Cadbury Mini-Eggs are my favorite of these:




This was the first year I saw the tube packaging:



Here they are:

They have a more powdery candy coating (more matte, less smooth and shiny) than the Hershey's version (below) and are a little smaller, but the chocolate is better.

Here's Hershey's:

They look great and chocolaty, but Cadbury's taste better.

Brach's offered these life-size milk chocolate robin eggs:

Wow - too sweet! Too much sugar - closer to Palmer in the sugar content - wow!! Sugar lovers rejoice!

Harry and David tries to compete with M & Ms with their Chocolate Gems (and I have to admit, I was skeptical):

While I love these crazy bright spring colors from M & M:

Harry and Davis wins this contest easily:

They have a much smoother and better taste. There really is a big difference - I was surprised at how much better the Gems were! Once again my preconceptions are dead wrong. Big advertising budgets do not mean quality. Market domination does not equal excellence.

I found these Italian Chocolate Truffle Eggs at A Southern Season and they really are different than most of these. They have the candy coating:

But they have a rich, creamy, truffle filling and there is definitely some hazelnut flavor here.

These are extraordinary! This is a creamy dark chocolate - more on the sweet side of dark and the hazelnut is what really makes them fabulous. It's really not fair to compare them to the others. Holy candy coating, Eggman!

I hadn't see the dark chocolate Cadbury mini-eggs before:

and they are good, but I like the milk chocolate ones better. But this is really a matter of personal preference - dark chocolate lovers will probably love these!

I picked these up at Harry and David. I love this line - Glimmers:

Also in dark chocolate, I thought these were about a million times better than the Cadbury Eggs. I like the Glimmer coating - it's soft, not crunchy and does a much better job of enhancing the chocolate. Delish!!

Milk chocolate still seems to be more popular than dark chocolate (just judging by the fact that there are so may more milk chocolate Easter offerings than dark chocolate ones). But I found a few!

See's had some dark chocolate eggs:

These were my least favorite - a little less creamy than the others. Also less of that fabulous dark chocolate taste:

Dove's pretty pink dark chocolate Elegant Eggs were better:

But not quite as good as Godiva's:

Godiva's dark chocolate had more depth and a richer flavor than the other two.

But the best of all was Neuhaus' dark:

This had the richest, deepest flavor and was smoother than Godiva and less sugary. If you love dark chocolate, this will put you in a state of ecstacy.

Lindt made their famous Lindor truffles in egg shapes for Easter:

(We already reviewed the peanut butter ones) - the dark blue foil eggs are dark chocolate:

Again, it's not fair to compare a truffle with a solid - that delicious creamy filling is sooooo wonderful! It should probably be illegal.

My chocolate adventures keep teaching me the same lessons:

Keep an open mind - what you think you know isn't always right.

Just because everybody likes something (or believes something or does something) doesn't mean it's right or the best or what you should do. The hardest voice to hear in this life is your own.

Candy is fun! Are you giving yourself permission to have any fun?

Ch-ch-ch-Cherry!

Valentine's Day candy is half price!! But it's going fast - so if you want any - get out there! And CVS has some crazy deals on Easter candy. I got some Snickers Eggs and some Reese's Pieces Eggs for eight cents! I have no explanation for it, but I was thrilled. I also am clearly insane in my candy consumption but that's another matter.


I've reviewed these before and I'm standing by my earlier review.

They have a cherry taste (obviously there ain't no real cherries in there). If you like cherry, I think you'll like these, but I prefer regular M & Ms. These are not so great. But, hey, I always like it when companies try something new. So, go Mars!

Now look at these - new from Harry and David:

They are called Glimmers and come in assorted flavors. (I have a bag of caramel Glimmers for a future post.) This bag is cherry, blueberry and raspberry and they are shimmery! Look at how pretty they are! For some reason the shimmer here doesn't bother me like it did on the Fling bar. I think it bothered me there because they took it away when they made it a Three Musketeers bar. It was a hokey, girlie thing and it still pisses me off!

But these are all about the shimmer! They are a LOT like the premium M & M's, but yet not. The flavors are completely different.

Pretty, shiny, sparkly! They are chewy rather than crunchy - no hard candy shell. And MUCH more fruity than the M & M's. I have to say, these are really, really good. Holy smokes! They are much better than I thought they would be. Why do I doubt you, Harry & David? Cherry is pink, raspberry is red and blueberry is, well, blue. The fruit taste is stronger than the chocolate taste, and the blend is good. Harry & David does a great job with their chocolates and these are no exception. I'm impressed.

Now let's get to the real fruit!! This Harry and David assortment has chocolate covered cherries, blueberries and peaches.

An autopsied cherry:

See the layers? Cherry, chocolate, and a red coating. I'm not going to pretend to know what the red coating is made of. Overall effect? Tart -which is good - the way a cherry should be. The chocolate and the red mystery layer add a nice sweetness. I like these - a lot. I can tell they are addictive and I'm already convincing myself of the antioxidant content of the cherries.

Here's a peach:

Peach, chocolate, and white coating. The blueberries were too small to autopsy. I can only do so much. These are good too, although a little sweet for my taste. I can still taste the fruit, which is really nice, but it's mighty sweet. I don't know if a dark chocolate would work here though - it might overpower the delicate peach flavor.

The blueberries are also good - nice and tart. But these were kind of puny. I get these at A Southern Season and they are much bigger. Flavor is great in both.

I found this assortment in World Market:

This assortment contains (starting with the pink and moving clockwise) pink strawberries, raisins, orange mangoes, Bing cherries, white apricots, and cranberries. I autopsied a cherry and a strawberry and you can see we've got the same layers as in the Harry & David fruits.

The red mystery layer is much thinner here and the chocolate thicker. These are not as sweet, or quite frankly, as good as the Harry and David ones. These cherries don't even taste that tart. Also there's an an odd aftertaste. You would think the increased chocolate would help, but it's not a great chocolate. BOO!!!

This one is more like the Harry & David chocolate to mystery layer ratio. And it is horrible. Truly horrible. Too sweet with a fake strawberry flavor. Also has a weird aftertaste. Ewww! These are all bad - the mango thing was also all orange stuff - no chocolate center with a tiny bit of mango. Apricot also has a funky aftertaste. The only two that were edible were cranberry and raisin and that was because they were covered only in chocolate. Avoid these like the Swine Flu.

I found these at Trader Joe's:

They look more like the World Market cherries than the Harry & David cherries. These are MUCH better than the evil and heinous World Market ones, but they are still not as good as the H & D ones. Their coating is cherry flavored in that weird maraschino cherry way. And you don't get that tart H & D cherry taste. I'm surprised at how much H & D is standing above the rest.

These are Trader Joe's dark chocolate covered cherries:

No red mystery layers - just cherries and dark chocolate. But taste? These could be giant chocolate covered raisins for all I can tell. There's no cherry taste at all. The chocolate is good, but it's so strong it completely overpowers the cherries. H & D kicks butt in this competition!

Now these don't have anything to do with cherries. But they were what I found in Trader Joe's for Valentine's Day.

Aren't they gorgeous?

Chocolate is so pretty! I love chocolate. And these are delicious - look at that creamy, dark chocolate truffle filling. Wow!!! These are a must for you dark chocolate lovers - that creamy center is to die for! Trader Joe's comes through after all!!

I think the best chocolate covered fruit enhances the fruit flavor. Only in the Harry and David chocolates could I still taste the fruit. The best partnerships are like that, aren't they? One person doesn't completely overshadow the other - both work to bring out the best in each other. Good friends listen to each other. Happy couples divide up work so one doesn't carry the full load. Love isn't about giving everything and losing yourself. It's about finding the person who brings out the best in you.

Or maybe it's just about covering yourself in chocolate.