The Dangers of Cheap Confectionary - Why only Cadbury Mini Eggs will do

It was my own fault really. Usually, I never buy food based on how cheap it is or if it’s on promotion. I’ve always been a strong advocate that it is worth paying that bit more for something you will actually enjoy. And I don’t mean that in a food snob sort of way because I sadly don’t have the money to be able to be one. People may think I’m a foodie, in reality I’m just greedy.

In an ideal world I would buy literally all my food from Waitrose and M&S but this isn’t an ideal world so I have to mix my Waitrose Pumpkin Falafels and M&S Cherry & Almond Frangipanes with stuff from Morrison’s, Sainsbury’s and Asda (but never Tesco. I could go into the reasons why but frankly that would take at least a whole post to itself).

As part of my leisurely weekend bakeathon, I decided to make some Easter Chocolate Fudge Cupcakes (and I will be posting about these later in the week). Of course, no Easter cake would be complete without being adorned with the speckled beauties that are mini eggs.

Now usually I would buy Cadbury Mini Eggs. If I’m honest, I’m not really a fan of Cadbury chocolate. There’s nothing wrong with it, but, at the same time it never delivers that smooth, silky bliss that only really good chocolate can deliver. However, I do like their mini eggs - bright, colourful sugary shells protecting a dark, sweet core of chocolate joy.

Like I said I would usually have bought these and at 100g for £1, buying the 200g I needed for the recipe would hardly have broke the bank but for some reason I ended be drawn against my will into buying some ‘Sweet Heaven’ chocolate eggs at £1 for 200g.

So for the sake of a pound (though the price of the Cadbury ones was 200% of the Sweet Heaven ones) I went for the bargain basement eggs. What could go wrong I thought? Chocolate = good. Sugar shells = good. It’s a pretty simple formula.

How wrong I was. These were the definition of cheap, nasty, potent confectionary. The shells were brittle and shredded my mouth and the chocolate didn’t even taste of chocolate, just a cocoa-ey sugary chemical formula. I didn’t want these sugar bullets ruining my Easter cupcakes so I didn’t even end up using them (though admittedly, despite hating them, I did shovel a fair few in my mouth - they had that addictive quality that E number riddled candy has).

It just goes to show, it’s just not worth scrimping on food. Food is to be savoured and enjoyed and to do that you need to be prepared to splash out. Scrimping and being miserly only ends in mini eggs that are more like chocolate bricks than chocolate bliss so be warned!