The long weekend dedicated to chocolate

One of the times we often notice big differences between the UK and Canada is during holidays. This weekend is Easter but definitely not as we know it. For starters, Easter Monday is not a statutory holiday and we both have to go to work! This ruins the first thing I love about Easter – 4 days off! Secondly the shops are not full of giant Easter eggs. Don’t get me wrong, Easter eggs do exist, but definitely not on the same scale. Whereas in the UK there will be be a whole aisle dedicated to boxes and boxes of Easter eggs of no end of varieties, our local grocery store has a tiny section. And I mean tiny, it’s just an end of aisle display mostly taken up with Creme Eggs and disgusting looking Hershey’s products.

The one similarity though is that Creme Eggs and Mini Eggs started to appear just after Christmas so of course we had to try them. First off you’ll see they come in weird plastic packaging. This is a new thing for this year apparently and I imagine is a response to huge amounts of wastage as people understandably weren’t buying the ones where the foil is damaged. It also avoids the issue of the barcodes not scanning when you come to pay and they are a lot easier to get into, avoiding you ending up eating bits of foil or getting into a huge sticky mess. So despite the use of plastic I do think the new packaging is an improvement. Anyway on to the important thing, the taste.

Creme Egg – tastes like a Creme Egg but the chocolate isn’t as good. Although I understand from the social media outcry at the beginning of the year that the chocolate has changed in the UK too.

Fudgeo – filled with a thick chocolately fudge mixture, bit weird.

Caramilk – the Canadian version of the Caramel egg but obviously the chocolate isn’t as good.

The best thing though are the Mini Eggs. Yes, the chocolate isn’t as good as the UK Mini Eggs and they’re a different colour, but they still have that tasty sugar shell which makes up for it. You can also buy these in huge 900g bags, something which I definitely hope is introduced into the UK market by the time we get back….

There are of course other good things about Easter in Canada. Lindt bunnies exist and still taste the same and everyone knows the Lindt bunny is the best of the Easter products. But there is one thing you can get here that you can’t back home, and that is the Rocky Mountain Easter toffee apples and it’s worth staying here just for those!

Emma