Hotel Chocolat sent me one of their thick-shelled eggs to sample – you can win one in the GD/Hotel Chocolat Easter competition. This year’s egg was called You crack me up, and the Hotel Chocolat people appear to have realised since last year that I am, under the wrinkled surface, about twelve, and so respond much better to their slightly less adult offerings. This egg was brilliant – rather than trying for grown-up flavours like last year’s liqueur chocolates, it was filled with smiley-faced pralines and solid chocolate chicks and bunnies. Enough to bring a smile to even the most leathery food-blogger’s face.
Once again, the shell is almost comically thick. (This is great – it’s my favourite bit.) Half is made from Hotel Chocolat’s 40% cocoa solid milk chocolate, which is creamy, malty and not too sweet. The other is milk chocolate with a swirl of white, and both are so thick and chunky that you’ll need a good bit of molar action to deal with them.
Two bags full of bunnies and chicks for the slaughter (I can’t be the only person who eats things like this head first – and I found myself picking the eyes off the little Humpty guys and eating those before going for the praline inside) are also inside the packaging. Hotel Chocolat’s packaging is always really good fun, and strangely classy – I was given a box of their bits and bobs by some friends at Christmas with a lovely magnetised lid which I found myself keeping to put things in when I’d polished off the chocolates. The origami-complicated box with this egg was beautiful, and did a great job of protecting the chocolate shell inside. Hotel Chocolat have a great range on offer this year – enter the competition, and have a look at their eggly offerings for 2008 online.
Ah, chocolate schmocolate.
Liz, can you help me recreate salt and chili beancurd at home? (Sorry if this is an Anglicised bastard Chinese-takeaway favourite!) I’ve tried deep-frying firm tofu dusted with cornflour, salt and chilli powder, but it didn’t compare. It tasted more Mexican than Chinese.
Thanks xx
Mmmmmmmm ….. those look sooooo good. That’s one of the things I miss, living here in this part of the US. Back home in NZ, we could buy chocolate easter eggs full of all sorts of yummy eats.
Homer – give me a couple of weeks and I’ll have a shot at it. And Karen – it was great, but now I have *no egg* and a feeling of terrible guilt about my thighs, so you’re probably best off where you are!