Saturday, May 7, 2011

Once A Year: The One Chance To Bulk Up On Cadbury Creme Eggs Should Be Taken!


The Good: Good taste, Great bulking, Generally decent ingredients, Stores well, Good chocolate
The Bad: Pricey until after Easter.
The Basics: The Cadbury Creme Egg is an annual treat I stock up on to make last an entire year!


Now that I know there are actually people reading my blog, I decided to give my readers some of what they asked for (see, I DO take requests!). Not long ago, I got a request for Easter Candy reviews and while it might seem odd to do that after Easter, there are still some places that have Easter candy and the best Easter Candy comes back each and every year. The peak of Easter candy, and a damn fine confection in its own right, are the Cadbury Creme Eggs.

For years, decades now, I have been a huge fan of Cadbury Creme Eggs. I've been such a fan, in fact, that it's surprising that it has taken me this long to get around to reviewing them! But with that in mind, I can think of no holiday treat - for any holiday - that is better than the Cadbury Creme Egg.

Basics

Cadbury Creme Eggs are an Easter delight manufactured by Hershey in Canada, whatwith Hershey having a license from British chocolatiers Cadbury UK Limited. Each egg is an oblate spheroid one and three-quarter inches tall by one and a quarter inches in diameter at its thickest point. Cadbury Creme Eggs are, as their name implies, egg-shaped and each one comes individually wrapped in a foil wrapper. Cadbury Creme Eggs are sold individually at prices that range from $.50/ea. to $.99/ea, depending on where one finds them. Seriously, there seems to be no consistent manufacturer's suggested retail price. This year, I discovered the ideal way to get Cadbury Creme Eggs: the five pack at midnight on Easter. That's when the packs got discounted to 50% off locally and it made the price per egg a phenomenal deal at $.25/ea. While this is one of the few chocolates I would not say is overpriced at $.50, stocking up on them at a quarter each is the best I've done the last few years!

Cadbury Creme Eggs are an egg comprised of milk chocolate surrounding a sugary goo that is delicious. The shell is about an eighth of an inch thick. This shell covers a thick vanilla-flavored cream center.

Ease Of Preparation

These are candy, so preparing them is as simple as opening the box and then opening one of the foil wrappers around the actual Cadbury Egg one wishes to eat. There is no special way to unwrap or eat Cadbury Creme Egg truffles, though sometimes the Cadbury Creme Eggs are not sealed perfectly and their sugary center leaks out, sticking to the foil. This can make it harder to unwrap the egg, but a good thumbnail takes care of all of the foil and leaves one prepared to devour or savor this seasonal treat.

Taste

Given the way I usually keep Cadbury Creme Eggs (see below under "Storage"), it is a rare thing for me to enjoy them fresh and yet unwrapping one for review tonight, I had a chance to smell one for the first time in a while and it smells delicious! The Cadbury Creme egg smells like fine milk chocolate and I realized when smelling it tonight that it made me think immediately of hot chocolate. That is the precise scent these delights emit.

Unless one has the Cadbury Creme Eggs in an annoyingly warm environment (ick, the melting of the Cadbury Creme Eggs!), the shell of the egg must be bit into in order to consume the egg. The chocolate is delightfully hard for a milk chocolate and any fear that these would have the waxy, mass-produced flavor of most Easter chocolates is dispelled the moment the chocolate hits the tongue. Cadbury Creme Eggs have a very simple, not-entirely-sweet chocolate for the shell. It has good give without fracturing too much.

The real treat comes inside the Cadbury Creme Egg. The center is a white (and yellow for the "yolk") cream that is like slightly liquefied frosting. This is thoroughly sweet and entirely sugary in its flavor with only a mild hint of vanilla to the center. What makes it so perfect in the taste is that the chocolate shell is just bitter enough to be sweetened by the center cream and the cream would be sickeningly sweet, were it not for the chocolate.

Nutrition

Cadbury Creme Eggs are candy, so it is tough to look at these for something nutritious and then blame them for not being healthy. Cadbury Creme Eggs taste amazing and are limited, which is probably why they are so expensive. The primary ingredients are milk chocolate, sugar, and corn syrup. There is nothing unpronounable in these candies, which I appreciate.

A serving of Cadbury Creme Eggs is considered one egg. From one egg, one consumes 150 calories, 150 of those calories being from fat. There is less than five milligrams of cholesterol, a marginal amount (15 mg) of sodium, and there are no vitamins in these. There is 2% of one's daily calcium, but this is hardly enough to justify gorging oneself on them!

Honestly, these are candy and anyone looking to them for actual nutrition needs to get a reality check. These are not Vegan-compliant, nor are they recommended for anyone with a nut allergy as they are produced on the same equipment that peanuts (and tree nuts) pass over. They are, not marked as kosher, nor gluten-free.

Storage/Clean-up

One of the reasons I love Cadbury Creme Eggs is because they keep so exceptionally well. I buy them on clearance and freeze them in my deep freeze for the year! And they keep! Without aid, they ought to be kept at room temperature out of sunlight, lest they melt and make a real mess. In that form, this year's batch was only good until July 2011.

As for cleanup, throw the wrappers in the garbage and you've taken care of cleanup! Outside that, there is no real cleanup needed, unless one is eating them in a hot environment. In that case, it is likely one would need to wash their hands. If Cadbury Creme Eggs melt into most fabrics, they will stain, both for the chocolate coating and the cream center. For that style of cleanup, be sure to consult a fabric guide for whatever you stained.

Overall

Delightful to the tastebuds, all I could ask from Hershey - outside keeping these around year-round and lowering the price - would be to make them dark chocolate. But even with milk chocolate, Cadbury Creme Eggs are a perfect treat and one worth stocking up on . . . for the limited time they are available!

For other chocolate reviews, please check out:
M&M's Premium Mint Chocolate
Irish Creme Hershey's Kisses
Russell Stover Mississippi Mud Truffle

10/10

For other food and drink reviews, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2011 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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