Candy Blog

Candy is a microcosm of society and existence. I know this because there are certain candies that indicate the presence of the divine in every scrumptious bite. Then there is evidence of evil on this planet. The Easter “marshmallow egg” is one of the latter candies.

This candy has promise on the outside, as all temptresses do. It’s big, so of course it’s appealing to any foolish child who hasn’t learned that “bigger is not always better.” What’s more, it is an evil that has no name. Really, what are these things called? If I say marshmallow egg, you might thing of the satisfying marshmallow half-hemispheres that are drenched in chocolate this time of year. Or even something that resembles an Easter-themed Circus Peanut. Brachs has chosen to call their version of these Bunny Basket Eggs. I will hereafter refer to them as BBBE, which when pronounced as an acronym (as all good acronyms should be) it will sound like a stuttered bee-bee or a very cold person trying to say ‘bean.’

Part of their temptation lies in their beguiling size, which is made up entirely of sugar with a dash of artificial color and carnauba wax. That’s a Starburst Jelly bean there; it’s no match for the Mastodon known as a Brachs Bunny Basket Egg.

I hope you understand that Brachs probably makes the finest BBBEs there are. They’re generous with the color and they’re even flavored. The green ones are lime and orange ones are orange. I can’t tell you what the rest are. Please don’t make me eat more of them.

If you haven’t already guessed, these are horrid candies. It’s not like I’m against eating pure sugar, I have in fact indulged in full spoonfuls of honey or brown sugar as a treat quite often. The shell of a BBBE is similar to a jelly bean. It’s a rather grainy sugar coating that’s smooth on the outside and lightly flavored. The center of a BBBE is a fluffy, grainy sugar that really isn’t like marshmallow, but I call it that because the ingredients mention gelatin and corn starch.

I don’t think BBBEs can be made and delivered fresh, not to mention the fact that few people eat them right out of a pristine bag. They’re intended to sit in amongst the pastel cello grass of an Easter basket until all the other choice candies are consumed and a desperate sugar-toothed child is force to eat it. Then the last thing this child remembers of his Easter experience is this deplorable egg. The smell of these inside the bag is like a mess of flavored lipsticks or a bad candle shop. A combination of fake fruit flavors and of course airborne microfine sugar which is intent on giving you that satisfying sweet feeling on your tongue before you even eat one.

I realize that this candy has its champions, and that by no means makes you minions of evil. I can only surmise that the experience of eating these foul little fingers of pure sucrose is inextricably tied to a pleasant experience and these help you relive a little of it. If that’s the reason, then I completely support their continued, but limited, production as a therapy device. If you would like to read someone who might share your unending love of these, you might want to pick up Hilary Lifton’s memoir called Candy and Me: A Love Story (you can preview the chapter online). 

I honestly did try to like these. I never cared for them as a child, but I did buy them, make them look pretty in the photos (they are actually very pretty) and of course ate TWO! That’s why they get a rating of two instead of one. (You may now commence in the comments section telling me how wrong I am.)

Related Candies

1. Hiding Eggs
2. Circus Peanuts
3. Cadbury Canadian Creme Eggs
4. Brach’s Fiesta Eggs
5. Russell Stover Eggs (2007 edition)
6. Melster Marshmallow Eggs
7. Cadbury Eggs: Creme & Caramel

For a while Hershey’s made a candy-shelled chocolate candy called Hershey-ets. They’re still produced at Christmas and sold in inside little ornaments or plastic cane-shaped tubes, but they’re not a regular product. Then came Hershey’s Kissables. While they’re a wonderful addition to the Hershey’s line, they’re still not the same as Hershey’s Eggs. Like Cadbury Mini Eggs, these are an Easter Only Item.

There are a lot of egg shaped candies this time of year, and just calling something Hershey’s Eggs seems like a poorly differentiated name. But candy lovers know what we’re talking about. Forget that the packaging probably hasn’t change much in twenty years ... these are just a jolt of chocolate wrapped in hard sugar.

Hershey’s Eggs have it all going on. It’s a large egg of chocolate, bigger than the size of an M&M Peanut. They come in lovely pastel shades of blue, yellow, pink and green. The shells are thick and hard, and give each candy a rather substantial feel. They’re solid milk chocolate and each Egg weighs the same as a single Hershey’s Kiss (really! I checked). The shells are super-thick and crunch but often I find that my shells have cracks in them. As I don’t think you can get salmonella from chocolate eggs, I don’t reject the broken-shelled ones as I would with a carton of chicken eggs. I do find that I’m not able to cleave off the shell with my teeth like I can with an M&M, but the different type of crunch is wholly satisfying. If someone is eating these near you, unless they’re suckers, you’re gonna know it.

Where the bag of Cadbury Mini Eggs smells like sugar and milk, the Hershey’s Eggs smell like chocolate. That tangy milk chocolate from Pennsylvania that you either love or hate. Fortunately there’s enough room in my heart to give both Hershey’s Eggs and Cabury Mini Eggs a ten. And of course I’ll proceed to stock up on these when Easter is over.

Related Candies

1. Brach’s Robin Eggs (Solid Milk Chocolate)
2. Hershey’s Miniatures
3. Kissables (Reformulated)
4. Nestle Creme Eggs
5. Russell Stover Eggs
6. M&M and Reese’s Pieces Peanut Butter Eggs
7. Cadbury Royal Dark Mini Eggs

Many other holiday candies are just different packaging for regular candies. Really, what’s so Christmassy about red and green M&Ms or Peppermint Patties in red and green foil? Cadbury Mini Eggs stand as one of those candies that aren’t sold any other time of year and as much as I’d like them to be, I treasure them when I see them in a way that I might not if they were as ubiquitous as M&Ms (whatever color they might be).

Cadbury Mini Eggs are unique. While there are plenty of other candy covered chocolates ala M&Ms, the Hershey’s Eggs, Kissables, Jots and other imitators. There’s nothing else like the Mini Eggs, Cadbury doesn’t make a candy covered chocolate bean. They’re even oddly shaped, irregular, more like little rounded cones than eggs, they’re just such satisfying shapes.

What sets them apart from other chocolate candies at this time of years, first and foremost, is that they contain Cadbury chocolate. Cadbury is rather milky tasting, and certainly very sweet. Then it’s all cloaked in this amazingly odd slightly sanded, matte shell. The shell is crunchy and has slightly cool feel in the mouth. You can dissolve it away to get to the chocolate centers, or you can crunch the whole thing together for a sweeter burst.

The colors are even a little less common. Because of the matte finish the yellow, pink, blue and white morsels look like chunks of colored chalk and even have a slightly chalky feel when you first put them in your mouth.

Here’s the big surprise, when I turned them over to see where they were made it said “manufactured by Hershey Foods Corp under license from Cadbury, Ltd.” How long has that been going on? Um, since 1988 ... jeeze, shows you how much I pay attention!

UPDATE: New for 2007! Cadbury Royal Dark Mini Eggs ... hmm.

Related Candies

1. Brach’s Robin Eggs (Solid Milk Chocolate)
2. Lindt Lindor Truffle Eggs
3. Cadbury Canadian Creme Eggs
4. Cadbury Royal Dark Mini Eggs
5. Peeps
6. Cadbury Eggs: Creme & Caramel
7. Hershey Eggs

As many of you noticed, on Tuesday I awarded my 2006 Independent Food Award (hosted by tasteEverything) to Scharffen Berer’s Chocolate Covered Cacao Nibs.

If you have time, you should take a look at all five days of awards, but if you’re just interested in sweets, here’s the lowdown:

The Food Section awards The Sweetest Way to Travel Back in Time to Jahn’s Old Fashioned Ice Cream Parlour and Restaurant in Richmond Hill, Queens, NY.

Gluten-free Girl awards The Best Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Sugar-Free Food You Will Ever Eat to the Chocolate Cake at Babycakes, New York, New York

Tasting Menu awards The Best Peanut Brittle I’ve Ever Tasted to Olde World Fudge at the Granville Public Market, in Vancouver, British Columbia. I bet they have good fudge, too.

Sydney Food Dairy awards The World’s Most Luxurious Ice Cream to White truffle ice cream with white bean and fig from Tetsuya’s in Sydney, Australia.

Portland Food and Drink awards Chocolate Better Than Morphine to Sahagún Chocolates, Portland, Oregon. Check out the interview post from the day before, too.

The Domestic Goddess awards Ice Cream I Wouldn’t Hesitate to Beg My Husband to Drive 2 1/2 Hours out of the City For to Kawartha Dairy in Bobcaygeon, Ontario, Canada

World on a Plate awards the Best Wicked Indulgence for $4 to Peanut Butter Sandwich Cookie from Della Fattoria, Ferry Plaza Market, San Francisco, California.

My favorite award has to be this one though:

My Madeline awards The Best Possible Nourishment for a Girl with Largely Impaired Olfactory Neurons: A Perfect Combination of Taste, Texture, and to Vosges Haut Chocolate’s ‘Barcelona Bar’.

April 16th is Easter Sunday. It’s over a month away, but next week I’ve decided to make a theme week devoted entirely to Easter candies.

I’m planning to cover the following items, but if there’s something else you think I’m missing that’s iconically Easter, I’ll see what I can do to get a hold of it:

Peeps
Cadbury Creme Eggs (and Caramel Egg)
Jelly Beans (Jelly Belly and Starburst Jelly Beans)
Cadbury Mini Eggs
Reese’s Peanut Butter Eggs (regular size and the new little foil eggs)
Robin’s Eggs (Pastel Malted Milk Balls)
Hershey’s Eggs (why don’t they make these year round?)
Russell Stover Eggs (white chocolate/peanut butter & coconut cream)
Lake Champlain Hazelnut Eggs

What’s your Easter basket favorite? You can check out what I’ve got so far here in my Flickr Easter photoset.