It is hard to diet this time of year. First, February brings about Valentine's Day, with its boxes of chocolates, and then Easter comes with its vast array of chocolate eggs and bunnies to eat ears from, and other delights.
The best delight of all is the Cadbury Crème Egg, and I can't stay away from the darned things.
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| Box and Egg |
About the Egg
The Cadbury Egg is a creamy chocolate shell that encompasses a fondant that is supposed to look like the inside of a chicken egg. Why people want to eat the raw inside of a chicken egg remains a mystery to me, but the stuff is delicious.
The Cadbury Egg has changed over the years. Yes, yes it has. It is smaller, for one thing. Prior to 2006, the Egg weighed 39 grams and had 170 calories. Now they weigh 34 grams and have 150 calories (does that mean I can eat another?) Cadbury/Hershey's denied this for a time, but finally came clean, the buggers.
A Little History
For another thing, in 2015 Cadbury changed the shell from dairy milk chocolate to plain ol' "standard cocoa mix chocolate." This was especially loathsome in the U.K., as I suspect we here in the U.S. had been eating substandard chocolate shells for a few years anyway.You see, Cadbury was purchased by Kraft in 2010 (and apparently it is now owned by some company called Mondelez, which I have never heard of, although Hershey markets them in the U.S.). Ah, American industry. Why keep a chocolate egg the same size and taste when you can make a few minor little changes and save, oh, .001 cent per egg? Who cares about quality, anyway? Certainly not the U.S. consumer.
These little lovelies were first created in 1923 by the Cadbury brothers and were mass produced in 1963 as Fry's Crème Egg. In 1971, they were renamed Cadbury Crème Egg.
Today they come in singles at the grocery store, where you can "buy two and get one free" or you can purchase a box of 4 or 5 (depending on what store you are in) for about $3.99 or if you're lucky you can get a box of two for $4.00 during a sale.
What It Looks Like
The egg, at least here in the U.S. is, wrapped in a colorful foil. The words "Cadbury Crème Egg" are in blue with a yellow background. Said background is squiggly on the sides, looking, I suppose, like my scrambled eggs in the fry pan. The remainder of the foil is green, blue, and red, with white on there where the scanning thing is so the store clerk can ring up the purchase. There are also words which I presume to be ingredients or warnings but I couldn't read them if I had to. |
| A recently purchased Cadbury Crème Egg |
When picking the eggs out of the bin for single purchase, one must be sure the aluminum foil completely covers the egg. I never purchase one if I can see the chocolate sticking out of the foil. (Actually, I seldom purchase the single ones in the bins because little kids can reach it and you know how grubby they can be, with their snotty little noses and unwashed hands. I much prefer to buy a box of them simply for the sake of sanitation.)
Generally speaking, it is easier to simply buy them by the box.
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| Purchase by the box for sanitation purposes. |
How to Eat It
Once the egg is safely purchased, then comes the eating of it. This is not always simple. The foil must be carefully peeled away. You wait breathlessly to see if the egg has leaked, because sometimes that fondant comes oozing out and then the foil gets stuck and you know then that this particular egg, while edible, is not going to be a delight. The fondant, having had air reach it, will have hardened a bit.Also, it is easy to leave the tiniest bit of aluminum foil on the chocolate, and accidentally swallow it. At that point, it will become stuck somewhere near your larynx, and you will spend the rest of the day clearing your throat, drinking water, and coughing, until the foil finally slides on down (or the scratch it created is no longer bothersome, whatever the case).
But let's say now you have the perfect little egg in your hand, foil unwrapped. The egg has a line around it where it is put together; a seam that indicates that via some technological manufacturing magic, this thing was once two halves. There is also a stamp on it, a kind of star on each side, and lines for decoration.
There are many ways to eat this egg. I have even heard of some people who put them in the freezer because they want the fondant hard and cold, but I prefer mine mushy and warm. These small eggs are, I imagine, little enough that someone with a big mouth could pop the entire thing inside and chow down, but I can't do that.
So I take the tiniest bite from the smallest end, opening up the egg to the fondant. And there it is, the fake innards of a chicken egg, white with a bit of yellow.
I suck out the fondant. Yes, I eat the crème first. This is why I always eat a Cadbury Crème Egg alone.
Once that fondant has been savored, I eat the chocolate in a few bites. It's really a quick process, taking less time to do than it has to write it out.
So there you have it. I will be so glad when Easter is past and these things are off the grocery shelves.
