Hotel Chocolat Easter Egg Selection

With Easter rapidly approaching it’s probably a good time to give you a quick review of some of Hotel Chocolat’s Easter Eggs. I was sent as small selection to try, and for a change I found myself getting involved with the sweeter end of their 2014 Easter Collection.

First up is a box of four ‘Goose Eggs’ – three of which are made from Hotel Chocolat’s high cacao white chocolate (one flavoured with strawberry) and the fourth is made from their Caramel Chocolate (which seems to be getting into a lot of this year’s Easter Eggs).

Not being the greatest fan of either white chocolate or strawberry I confess I had a few problems getting into these, but as ever I had a selection of brave volunteers who were willing to endure a few mouthfuls on my behalf, and while a hardened dark chocolate fan like myself might not go for these, they don’t fail to deliver what they promise. If you’re going to eat white chocolate you may as well go for something ‘proper’, and these eggs do have a lot of flavour (as well as the inevitable sweetness). The caramel chocolate egg has that added richness to it but the size of the eggs means that you’re never going to overindulge.

The eggs themselves are very pretty. The scattering of vanilla seeds on the surface of the eggs gives them an interesting look, and this season’s choice of pastel shades works really well with the colour scheme of the packaging.

The Facet Egg on the other hand is an altogether more grown up affair. Cast from Hotel Chocolat’s house blend 70% dark chocolate, the designers have had a bit of fun creating a very modern looking egg. The box itself is a clever design, but the egg looks almost too pretty to smash. (I did say ‘almost’). The chocolate is the good old reliable 70%, so there’s no surprises there.

Finally we have something a little more lighthearted – a ‘Splat!’ egg. Hotel CHocolat would like us to believe that there’s been an ‘eggsplosion’ in their factory, and as you can see this means that an otherwise plain Caramel Milk Chocolate Egg has been hit with a large blob of pale yellow Vanilla white chocolate. What’s surprising here is that the White Chocolate has 3% more cacao than the Caramel Milk chocolate!

Now I’m not sure a hollow egg is the best idea for a ‘main’ egg (I remember being quite disappointed by hollow eggs as a child, but I was always a bit of a greedy guts) but if you sit these alongside most companies’ hollow egg offerings the 2014 Hotel Chocolat range knocks spots (or should that be splats?) off the opposition. For a start, they’re very attractive. The choice of pastel colours has a ‘brand new retro’ feel, and the quality of the chocolate is still way above most of what you’ll find on supermarket shelves, so if you’re contemplating an Easter Egg hunt of your own this week, why not pop into one of Hotel Chocolat’s numerous High Street stores and have a look at these for yourself?

Alternatively, there’s still time to pick up a last minute gift online (link below), with last orders at 6pm on April 17th.

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