This was an egg I have to admit I might not have chosen for myself. The gianduja vegan eggs are not my usual choice, going for the standard favourites but as it was given to me and I like Hotel Chocolat chocolates, I thought I’d give it a swing.

The first thing I noticed was that in this case Hotel Chocolat had gone for a halfshell of dark chocolate. Now, while this is not necessarily my favourite chocolate in the whole world, I have nothing against it and it is a really nice dark chocolate. I prefer their dark milk as my preference in dark runs to the more exotic but there is nothing wrong with a slid chunk of Hotel Chocolat dark chocolate.,

The eggs inside are also available separately as with other eggs. You can get a little carton filled with these eggs or you can get them in this dark egg. I think either way you’re going to get some yummy chocolate so really you can’t go wrong.

The outer shell of sugar crystals on the vegan gianduja eggs was slightly off-putting but I thought how bad can it really be and so took a big bite. They are shaped just like the other eggs with a solid dark chocolate shell, gianduja soft smooth interior and questionable use of sugar coating. Definitely a chewing egg.

Personally – given my tastes, I’d spend the £14 on a different selection but I think the dual attractions of this being a vegan option and so completely animal product free as well as it being dark chocolate and slightly nutty means a *lot* of people are going to love this.

I seem to be a bit of a sucker for Hotel Chocolat and trust them far too much with my palette. Not only am I picky with my “no squidgy raisins” and similar food restrictions, I tend to favour a more fruity style of dark chocolate, complete with robust, well-rounded flavours left undamaged by over refinement or over conching.

I chose this egg to review because of several reasons. I felt that this was the right egg to choose if you want to share one egg between two people and given the size and THICKNESS of the Hotel Chocolat eggs, this is actually quite advisable! I chose this egg because it had both milk and dark chocolate shells. I chose this egg because of the mini eggs it held inside. I chose this egg for several reasons but also because it was Hotel Chocolate and so I know it’ll be miles better than that stuff you get at the supermarkets.

It is absolutely worth it to go to a local Hotel Chocolat and pick this egg up. In fact, if you don’t have a Hotel Chocolat near you, I’d recommend travelling to one because not only will you get this egg there, you’ll be able to get a back of Quail Eggs, some of those ADDORABLE Nibblatron robots (or the giant one) and more, Me, I’m a 50% milk chocolate caramel egg fan.

The milk chocolate is standard milk chocolate which I think is fine. The milk is not stand out gold medal but it isn’t bad either. It is what I would choose as a milk chocolate – and often do and to get this in one of the shells of the egg is excellent (or eggsellent as they would say). You then swap over to the dark chocolate and I have to admit I’m not as in love with this half of the shell. The chocolate is slightly drying and is slightly less robust than many of the Purist range bars. This makes it no less enjoyable and I think means that it is the perfect couples egg (also illustrated by how my husband *claimed ownership* of this egg before I had a chance to even look at it to review it).

The small eggs that you get inside are lovely. In fact, I chose the egg I buy from HC every year based on the eggs you get inside and I vary between this one and the other large one (I forget what it is called) depending on alcohol eggs or non-alcohol eggs. Now, you already know from my review of the H box of Easter eggs that I love these little eggs and you can tell that I’ve munched my way through champagne, caramel, apricot brandy, and rum and I’m moving on for more. These little eggs are lovely though and well worth the indulgence of the larger, thicker egg which at £24 is slightly more expensive than most but worth it.

I had so much fun digging in to this egg that I forgot to photo any of it so am using the HC official piccie. It was just lovely and as evidenced by how my husband and I fought over this egg, it is going to be one everyone loves. I do love these Hotel Chocolat eggs and I know so very many of you will as well!

The worry of something exploding with this Gorvett & Stone Exploding Chocolate Easter Egg was offset immediately upon turning this egg around and reading it was made with Valrhona Jivara milk chocolate which had me near ripping the cellophane off this egg. The egg itself is large, thick and looks fab with the cute “BANG” on the front in piped Valrhona Ivory chocolate. At a weighty 120g minimum of chocolate you know this is excellent value from a quality egg. YUM before I’ve eaten it I have great expectations.

Tied with a cute turquoise ribbon in the Gorvett & Stone colour, I carefully took a smell. The sweet milk chocolate scent rose up and unlike other chocolates this one was absolutely fabulous. The egg took three solid punches to break and as you can see it is extremely thick. It has 2 layers to it – each of them filled with popping candy. There is a generous amount of chocolate in here and it is complimented by the popping candy rather than the popping candy detracting from it or overwhelming it.

The milk chocolate is typical Valrhona – it is sweeter than the dark chocolate but it still have a lovely flavour which is enhanced by the popping candy in the chocolate shell. While writing this review in fact I have found that I have eaten more of this egg than originally I had intended and just before lunch as well – oh dear I’ll have spoilt my lunch!

This is a lovely egg and being available from the extremely convenient shop on Henley on Thames this makes it a place worth getting yourself to. Whether for the novelty of the popping candy or the high quality chocolate or the supporting small chocolatiers, this egg is certainly work getting this Easter and really any time

I’ve been a ling time Cadbury Mini Eggs fan and so when I saw that a fair trade, farmer co-operative company like Divine had made some, I jumped at the chance to try them. I’m very particular though about my sugar-coated chocolate and so these eggs had a lot to live up to.

They look just like other candy-covered chocolate but there is an important difference here – a farmer’s co-operative fair trade company is making these. I love to warm mine up to just below body temperature and then bite in to them. This chocolate may be milk but it tastes a bit darker – perhaps they have cut down on the added sugar and because this is a quality product ytou’re getting better chocolate inside.

These eggs are delicious and really surprising. I really expected something extremely sweet and I actually found these weren’t as sweet as I was prepared for. The chocolate is lovely, especially warmed to body temperature, and the thin sugar shell is sweet. You would only know the difference after biting in to one you realised you weren’t growing fur on your teeth – a much better experience!

All in all, these are a great product. Instead of some giant cheap tub of sweet chocolate or a major brand’s alternative offering, why don’t you do your body and the planet a favour and grab a bag of these instead?

These speckled eggs come in bags weighing 170g, and are available from Waitrose, Oxfam and online at www.divinechocolateshop.com, RRP £3.50

After being met with rave reviews, much as the Marmite XO bar was, I wade in to the fray with a less than glowing review due to purely personal taste. The Paul A Brown Brownie is amazing and I love it to bits. This one is like making a hot cross bun into a brownie. And there’s a reason I don’t eat hot cross buns either and that is one of pure personal taste.

I am sure many of you, my dear readers, will have fond memories of hot cross buns. Perhaps it is the taste of one, fresh out of the toaster, perhaps still piping hot, spread with a bit of butter and slowly bitten in to. The way that you first were greeted with the delightful smell of the hot cross bun, then the delightful textures and finally that heady mix of fat and sugar which drives our brains insane. I, regrettably have no such memories.

I have said many times – I’m not a fan of fruit in my chocolate and while Hotel Chocolat have converted me a bit, I’m still adjusting to my new found fruit-in-chocolate eating. It’s the raisins you see – I can’t take it when they are squidgy. I like them chewy but squidgy… well, all I can think is that I had a bad experience when I was a kid.

For those of you who were drooling at the thought of a toasted hot cross bun though, read on:
This brownie is an intense chocolaty hot cross bun. The chocolate brownie is trademark Paul A Young with the dense, thick, gorgeous flavour they always are but this time with an added depth of flavour from the sugar. The crust on top is speckled with marzipan at irregular intervals, giving everyone something to squabble over. The scent of the cinnamon and nutmeg are unmistakable as they rise up to greet your nose just before you pop a piece in your mouth and experience the fruit, marzipan and chocolate all combining together.

I’m confident that a lot of people are going to like this brownie. Heck, I think I’m the only person so far who has said she isn’t a massive fan of this brownie. So I know this is going to be a winner for Paul and he certainly deserves it. For those of us who just can’t take squidgy fruit in out brownies, there is still the caramel pecan and the plain brownie available so there’s just lots more for us!

When I was lucky enough to go to the Pierre Marcolini chocolate factory, I was also lucky enough to get one of these eggs. This egg not only smells divine, it is filled with divine chocolate shapes. But I get ahead of myself…

Pierre Marcolini is a bean to bar chocolate manufacturer who has his chocolate factory on the edge of Brussels. I spent a stuffed up weekend with a cold in Brussels where I experienced what can only be called one of the single greatest disappointments in my life. Luckily I discovered chocolate shops such as Alex & Alex or I would have sunk into a great despair, only to be lifted when I finally visited the Pierre Marcolini factory.

Pierre Marcolini himself enjoys bringing delight and joy to people’s lives. He was delighted by my reaction to his visually stunning eggs which I was lucky enough to see an entire rack of in the factory. There were both beautiful and delicate and I can understand why the eggs they made have a high breakage rate when shipped overseas.

The egg itself is made with a delicious high quality dark chocolate whose scent fills your nostrils as you open the lid. The scent is heady and makes you want to break right in to it but you’ll notice that although it seems hollow, it isn’t. No, there are lots of little chocolates filled with caramel on the inside (and some are solid) and that just adds to the delight of this egg. A delicious dark chocolate shell, filled with delicious dark and white chocolate chocolates all secured on a dark chocolate base. How could you not want that?

I have to say that this is worth the Eurostar to Brussels for. Ya the tickets aren’t cheap and ya it takes time but you’ll thank me when you get your hands on one of these beauties and try it for yourself. From the first scent to the last bite, this is a delicious chocolate Easter egg.

Imagine what something that looks like this must taste like. Imagine what something with these swirls of chocolate must taste like as you break pieces off something as big as a rugby ball. Imagine the increased delight of getting a box of chocolates with four trays of chocolates, all different with it.

I had received this egg from Thorntons after a particularly difficult three weeks. I got back to the office to find a huge box with this egg inside of it waiting for me. I extracted it from the box and it drew immediate attention from everyone. There were “oooo”s and “aaaaaa”s all around – this egg made an immediate impact – and that is with the office used to me getting chocolate all the time.

To talk about the chocolate of an Easter egg is slightly unfair sometimes I think. While Pierre Marcolini, Soma, William Curley, Paul A Young and others are creating chocolate eggs where the chocolate stands front and centre, this is an egg made for those who just want to enjoy them without caring whether that slight peanut scent comes from an additive (no) or the flavour of the bean (which it does).

This is an egg for someone who knows that on Easter morning the delight in the eyes and on the face of the person receiving this egg will be worth a thousand words. This is the kind of egg for those who want to shun the cheap chocolate from questionable sources and buy good chocolate from a company who hired a professional artisan chocolatier to create new chocolates like their key lime and chilli cocoa pod chocolate. This is a chocolate Easter egg for someone who knows Thorntons is still a high street brand many view as luxury. This is an Easter Egg filled with chocolate and the promise of more.

The promise of more chocolate comes in the form of the box of four trays of chocolates, including eight special chocolates celebrating the 100 years Thorntons has been around. There is a mix of chocolates in here I have reviewed before, plus these new ones and a few I have not yet reviewed but this is all about Easter and so the best way for you to learn about this egg is to buy it and enjoy the milk chocolate goodness with all the unique chocolates inside.

If you’d like to buy this chocolate egg with its extra box of lush chocolates, hustle your butt down to your nearest Thornton’s shop or visit them online.

I have to admit, the egg on the soldier looked so realistic that I could hardly bring myself to try these. I know they are chocolate and I know there is no real egg on it but the idea of encountering that sulphuric flavour on chocolate really made me squeamish. In fact my husband couldn’t even try one.

These chocolates are a lot of fun. There are 2 layers in the box – one of eggs and one of soldiers. One unexpected element of these eggs is that besides the topping of white chocolate eggs frying is the cocoa pod design on the back. I mean, who expects that on the back of their chocolates and yet to the inquisitive mind you’ll uncover this fun embellishment. You get five of these mellow milk chocolate, praline-filled half shells which topped with that white chocolate fried egg in one layer. This layer has underneath it five creamy white chocolate soldiers, already dipped with a dollop of creamy chocolate yolk which is a bit realistic looking. It is solid white chocolate with a bit of colouring so it isn’t real yolk…

The flavour is typical Hotel Chocolat and in that way we know it is inoffensive. You can smell the praline and though it isn’t obvious in this picture where I cut through one of the eggs, the praline isn’t too strong and so even I liked it. It did look like solid milk chocolate at first but it was also too easy to cut through and smelt too nutty to be solid milk chocolate. I can’t tell where the milk chocolate ends and the praline begins but it is absolutely all praline in my mouth.

I think these are a great novelty item and as usual the Hotel Chocolat chocolate is really nice and the praline isn’t offensive. The white chocolate is pretty standard and so there isn’t anything that really stands out but that is both good and bad.

When the original Second egg came out, it was amazing. It came in several sizes (not mini interestingly) and it was the most lush thing I had ever tried. It was the one candy I got a smaller one of because I knew I just could not eat it all and I’d want to and yet I knew I’d be sick if I tried so it was the one thing I was reasonable with.

I think the old saying is true that you can never go back. As you can see, unlike the smaller ones this one clearly has a yellow interior and yet like the smaller one, there is no difference in taste. The inside is sticky interior and it all tastes the same. Not too sickly sweet but I’m really disappointed. Thicker shell then on minis but still not as I remember them.

In my mind, the inside is smooth but the yellow is thicker. It is sweet but the yellow has this different distinctive buttercream flavour. In reality the inside is of uniform flavour and while different colours, there is nothing distinctive about it. I’m really disappointed. I’m not sure if the recipe has changed, my memory has changed or my tastes have changed.

Then I went on to the Superior egg. Now, in my childhood I was never a fan of this egg so I was coming at it with fresh eyes and an uncluttered mind (as it were). I had no preconceived notions but I do love Laura Secord so I wanted it to be good. It wasn’t great. The sticky chocolate buttercream was a carrier for the cashew nuts which at least were nice. But this egg just wasn’t what it could be. There is a lot of potential to make this a really nice treat – caramelise the cashews, make the buttercream nicer – but they went with the easy/cheap option. Sad.

Lastly I tried the crunchy peanut butter egg mainly because I was foolishly treating this like a chocolate tasting. Who exactly was I kidding? I actually didn’t mind this one and I think fo the three I can say that I actually liked this egg. As you can see it even has a vaguely egg-shaped sizing and it is, I think, larger than my beloved Secord egg. The peanut butter egg here has a crunchy peanut centre with peanuts & crisps inside which you can clearly see is both a different colour and festooned with inclusions. Then you have the peanut butter which I used to say was hard to screw up but now realise it is just as easy to mess up peanut butter as anything else.

All in all I was overwhelmingly disappointed. The Secord egg has really gone downhill since my childhood and I am disappointed by the lack of quality. I really feel that with the increase in good-quality chocolate shops popping up all over that Laura Secord really has to up its game or risk losing their loyal fan base.

Easter is a time for chocolate. I remember getting sugary, fatty eggs for Easter from my parents/the Easter Bunny (because as we all know, it is really the Easter Bunny that brings Easter eggs ). I remember getting Maple Buds and absolutely loving them. I mourned the day they stopped making Maple Buds *sobs*.

So on to the modern era when chocolate is now full of a lot more nasty stuff than I remember it being full of and people are looking for alternatives. Well, *adults* are looking for grown-up eggs because quite frankly this will be wasted on the kids… Yaaaaa…. don’t give it away… keep it for yourself!

So this egg… it is a really heavy egg but I ate it before I weighed it… sorry… Anyway, it is heavy. I was struggling to eat it all… at times… but then I remembered I had to leave it behind and continued to munch my way through it. So this egg is, as you can see, quite thick. I used a knife to open it. Not, traditionalists among you may argue that any Easter egg should be able to be manually broken and given some time I am confident that I would have been able to break it. Wanting instead to immediately get into the egg, find the prize inside and eat the chocolate, I used a knife.

Besides the thick dark chocolate shell (and it comes in milk too!), there is a wonderful surprise inside – a macadamia nut jawbreaker made of chocolate, macadamia nuts and is delicious. The egg itself is all chocolate. The clear cellophane it comes in is the only packaging there is. No cardboard bok, no plastic trays, not excessive packaging – just a simple clear plastic bag and the egg. Even the way they make the egg stand up is environmentally friendly – it is on a base of delicious solid dark chocolate. Even more for me… I mean to share with friends and family!

This egg is delightful. From the spackled chocolate exterior complete with additional chocolate drizzling making each one unique, to the chocolate base, this egg is extraordinary. Even better, you can start your kids off right with the milk chocolate version. Less sugar and oil than the cheap chocolate and more deliciousness. So you’d best also grab one of those ultra-cute chocolate bunnies too!