I was pleasantly surprised to find a Hotel Chocolate Easter Egg to review on my doorstep on Friday. For me, one of the greatest attractions of Hotel Chocolate, is the unusual and sometimes quirky yet always tasteful, chocolate products offered by the company. So different from the usual mass produced offerings at eater. This year, their eater selection is no exception.
Another plus of Hotel Chocolate, as far as I am concerned, is their Engaged Ethics sustainable Cocoa program. This program draws in over 100 independent Saint Lucia Island cocoa growers to Hotel Chocolates’ Rabat Estate. The aim is to provide a sustainable future for the growers on Saint Lucia and Ghana. But I digress. Back to the Easter egg! The egg itself comes in a lovely, elegant tall round box (if such a thing is grammatically possible) tied with a black ribbon. If your looking for an Easter gift to make a favorable impression, then the packaging of this Easter egg will do it in spades. On opening the lid, you find the milk chocolate egg, each extra thick half wrapped in gold foil and containing, nestled in white tissue paper, the individual Easter chocolates. The box also contains a ‘Menu’ card that features pictures and descriptions of each of the chocolates.
The product contains:
- 2 Egg Halves – Extra Thick Milk Chocolate (40% cocoa house milk chocolate)
The egg halves contain (1 of each per halve): - 2 Milk Praline Fried Egg Chocolates
- 2 White Soldier Chocolates
- 2 Cocoa Pod Bunny (40% cocoa milk chocolate)
- 2 Chirpy Chicks (40% cocoa house milk chocolate, caramel pieces and sea salt)
- 2 Crunchy Praline Smiley Face Chocolates
- 2 Chocolate Brownie Smiley Face Chocolate
On tasting I could immediately tell the quality of the chocolate, you can easily tell you are eating a product that contains the 40% cocoa chocolate. Being a milk chocolate, I found the products a little sweet for my taste, however I am a confirmed dark chocolate lover, 80% cocoa content being my favorite! But overall the taste of the product lives up to the promise of the packaging. A couple of points I would make – and you may feel I am being picky here! The Menu card only gives a description, with cocoa percentage on the plain chocolate items. It would be nice to see this description for all of the chocolate items. Also, the individual chocolates were a little ‘ bruised’ shall we say.
I imagine this is the result of being sent through the mail system to me and I would be interested to see if a shop bought product is the same. It is unrealistic to expect that the chocolates will look like the pristine versions of themselves featured on the menu card, but perhaps the chocolates could be individually wrapped to preserve their beautiful appearance as the extra thick egg halves, which are individually wrapped, were unmarked, pristine and wonderfully shiny. All in all however, the marks did did not detract from my eating pleasure. I would recommend this product. It is pricey at £26. But if your wanting to impress with your Easter gift, then the ‘You Crack Me Up’ extra thick Easter egg, with its fun smiley faces, fried egg and white soldier chocolates, will do it for you.