If there’s any one Easter egg to buy to impress your wife, girlfriend or lover (I’m talking to men here, but ladies might light to buy them too) then it just has to be this Champagne Truffle Easter egg from Hotel Chocolat. I’ve held off reviewing this Easter egg as long as I could. I saw it as a reward for getting through all the naff chocolate I’ve had to endure this year. The reason I’m excited about it as I just adore the pink Champagne Easter eggs that come with the egg.

I love the attention to detail Hotel Chocolat give to their products. As  you untie the bow at the top you’re met with an Easter egg that isn’t just sat bolt-upright. The egg, instead, is laid in a more relaxing fashion – slightly at an angle. As you lift the egg out of it’s holder you’ll see another layer below with two ribbon handles to help you lift out the truffles which are contained within their own separate box.

Inside that box are ten of their classic and ten pink Champagne truffles, which I would say are the best chocolate truffles you can get outside of a boutique in London (and Scotland). They’re incredibly soft and delicate and just as boozy. Some truffles can be a touch ‘claggy’ but these are almost like caramels as they’re slightly fluid. What’s more the chocolate shell is nice and thick. As you bite in you’ll get a wisp of the light the dusting and then an audible break of the chocolate coating. I really could eat these all day. Even the classic ones are fantastic, but there’s something a touch ‘tart’ about the pink ones that I love.

If that wasn’t enough, you’ll also get one of their sweet milk chocolate eggs which I’ve always found to have a distinctive flavour. The Hotel Chocolat house milk chocolate is one I could easily pick out at a blind tasting as it’s got a slight honey edge but with a touch of hazelnut part-way through the melt. In terms of the big name chocolate makers / chocolatiers I’d definitely say that Hotel Chocolat make/sell my favourite milk chocolate. Others just seem to be sugar and vegetable oil,  or just sugar and some cocoa solids, but the Hotel Chocolat milk chocolate has a great deal more depth to it.

The point to consider, however, is the cost. For your £38 you’ll get 20 gorgeous truffles plus slightly larger than average Easter egg which I work out at being 240g in weight. Eight of their truffles would normally cost £10 so you’re getting £25 worth of truffles and £13 for very good quality Easter egg. If you look at it that way then I’m inclined to say its good value for money.

Seeing as I love the truffles, appreciate the chocolate egg and think its overall good value for money, then I can only give it a rating of ‘egsellent’.

For those of you who love Cadbury’s simplest of chocolate bars at this time of year then you’ve got a few options. You can buy just the large 353g egg which I’ve got here, or also on their site you can get the egg with a mug or with a drumming monkey toy. The egg itself is £6.40 which I find excessive, but you can get a much better deal buying it as part of one of their Easter hampers where it could work out about half that price.

When I got my egg out of the box it looked like the two halves of the eggs weren’t aligned so well so I thought it might be a good idea to squeeze one of them to move it along so I could take a nice picture. It broken in my hand became a type of rattle within the foil wrapper. This is likely to be due to the fact that it’s got vegetable fat and only 20% cocoa solids. Most of Cadbury lovers won’t really care about that though.

We all know that the chocolate is sweet beyond belief, but it’s actually 56.6% sugars and 18.6% saturated fats. You’re still not bothered, and you just love your Cadbury chocolate. So would you like to know that the egg itself is a fairly decent size and you get three 49g Fairtrade Dairy Milk bars which has a very similar recipe to the egg itself. For me it’s far too sugary and less interesting than their other Easter eggs.

Overall I wouldn’t buy this egg for my family at the standard price and also because it’s too sweet. But I might buy it for others as part of the hamper deals. But taking all things into consideration I’d give it a ‘below average’ on its own, but a ‘good’ as it came as part of the Essential Easter collection.

The only way I can ever enjoy white chocolate is if it’s combined with zesty flavours such as lemon. Thankfully the lovely people at Thornton’s have sent me the third and final of their Great British Puds Easter eggs. I must admit that I totally adored the Banoffee Pie egg and very much liked the Eton Mess one – and this egg is very much in that sort of fruity mould.

For your £14.99 you’ll get a very decent amount of chocolate and other bits, in fact you’ll get 430g in total. One part I couldn’t work out, without breaking the egg into nothing was the actual main ingredients. What I’ve gathered is that the egg is made with white chocolate which has been flavoured with lemon, it has little meringue pieces (3.5%) which have been further coated with white chocolate and then there are some pieces of candied lemon peel incorporated into the front.

The main part of the egg has a thickness of about 4mm which is fairly decent, whilst the front part, with all those extra bits, has a thickness of about 8mm. And it’s this front part I love the most. It is actually like eating a lemon meringue pie. The crunch is obtained by those little pieces of the chocolate-coated meringue whilst there is some ‘hit’ from the bits of the candied orange peel that somehow manage to mimic the lemon curd type flavour of a true pie.

The textures also works very well together to portray the biscuity base, but part of me really does wish there was some biscuit in it, but I do realise that would have over-completed the egg both in terms of the production, but also the flavour. As it is the flavour is clean, crisp and simple and fantastic.

As I usually look at the nutritional information of the eggs, I best mention that obviously there are no cocoa solids used in this egg as white chocolate doesn’t have the solids. Other Easter eggs do use the much cheaper vegetable oil to give the egg the oils it needs to be ‘milk’ chocolate. Thornton’s doesn’t cut costs here; they do things properly and use the much more expensive cocoa butter – which is another element of the cocoa bean.

Even though I typically don’t like white chocolate, I can certainly appreciate this egg. Overall it gets a rating of ‘very good’, which is just one down from the Banoffee egg.

And still amazing freebies and offers come flooding in from Thornton’s. I feel, however, that this could be the last one you’ll see until it’s too late and they do their post-Easter sale – then that’ll be it for 2012. Basically if you spend just £20 (I’m sure most people do), you can get a free Classics Easter egg if you just use the voucher code: RECE when you shop. I’ve bought from Thornton’s several times and you can never use multiple discount codes, and I think this is the only promotional code around for Thornton’s at the moment.

This Easter egg normally sells for £9.99 but you’ll obviously get it for nothing if you spend £20 or more, if you can work it out right you could save just under 50% on your chocolate purchases.

Whether you’d opt to use this egg or the offer to the right of this page is up to you, but I suppose that depends on how many Easter eggs you want or need!

I must admit that I prefer their dark chocolate Easter eggs, but if you’re buying for your wife or mother you could always spend more on the kids and get this one free. Or buy your children their Easter eggs and treat this one for yourself.

Some Easter eggs just leave me scratching my head. But seeing as I’m always a glutton for anything novel or interesting in the world of Easter eggs I just had to buy this Easter egg from John Lewis that came with a trowel, a plant pot and a packet of sunflower seeds. Yes, you read that right: gardening equipment.

One of the things that parents struggle to do over the long Easter Bank Holiday weekend is to find things for children to do. Of course putting some soil in a plant pot, adding the seeds and watering isn’t going to occupy them for those four days, but at least you’ll be doing something you’ve probably not done before – well involving an Easter egg.

For £10 the chocolate was never going to be great. And quite frankly, it isn’t. But what’s worth considering is that this is the sort of chocolate that young children like. It’s sweet, rich and creamy. It’s also quite a thick egg and you have no reason to feel short-changed at all.

After a few more mouthfuls I’m starting to get into this chocolate. May be I couldn’t eat all 150g of it in one go, but I’m sure most kids would give it a good go.

Overall I’ll give it a rating of  very good as the price, considering what you get, is good value for money and that the chocolate is actually pretty decent.

So these mini eggs from praline mini eggs from Frahi are my third and final of the day. Whilst the previous have ever been aimed at everyone or people who like luxury, these are quite plainly aimed at young girls.  The one thing I find remarkable is that they’re only £4 at John Lewis. When reviewing I couldn’t remember how much they cost, but when I found out they were only £4 I thought they should be at least £2 more expensive – especially as you get a painted wooden bunny on with a hook too.

And that’s the thing I just couldn’t work out – at first. So you add this little wooden bunny and then it has a hook on it. Well it looks that bit is there to hold it straight on the shelves. Another thing that I’ve just realised is that the photo on the John Lewis website has a yell rabbit with a daffodil. Whilst the one I have here comes with a rabbit in a ballerina outfit – go figure.

In the bag I had 26 mini eggs in different colours of foil wrapping. I had green, yell, red and blue – all with contrasting pictures of rabbits in human clothes.

Each of the pralines have a very strong praline flavour, almost too much, but I’m not a huge praline fan. The chocolate coating around the praline is very sweet and very much of a milk chocolate aimed at kids. The praline filling most certainly isn’t coarse or biter, it’s just more of the same – incredibly sweet.

I do think they’re far too strong and tangy. I doubt anyone would consume more than three or four at a go. And as such I’ll only give them a rating of ‘average’.

We’ve had the mass-produced mini eggs, and now time for some gourmet ones from Michel Cluizel. These ones are called Les Oeufs Vichy and are essentially three pastel-coloured mini eggs with gianduja coated in coloured white chocolate. For those that don’t know, gianduja is chocolate mixed with ground hazelnuts. It’s a more sophisticated alternative to praline – which I often find too sweet.

Michel Cluizel is one of the world’s most respected chocolate makers. But as with many in the artisan chocolate industry, they’ve made a small selection of chocolate novelties such as chocolate fish (big in France at Easter) and these lovely and bright chocolate eggs. For £7.95 you get a box of 3 eggs measuring about 4.5cm tall and 3.5cm across.

Not only are the colours of the eggs bright, but they’re also fragrant with a spring-like air. They’re much lighter than I expected too – not only in terms of the colour of the filling, but also the texture and density. That flavour isn’t intensely nutty at all, more sweet and fruity. The white chocolate shell certainly helps to lend to that feeling.

After about 3/4 of one then I found it to get a bit much – but I have reviewed over fifty Easter eggs over the past couple of months and it’s probably taking its toll.

Overall, I feel that if you’re looking for a light, sweet mini egg from a renowned French chocolate maker then this is probably for you.

As part of the Essential Easter Collection I got a treatsize bag of mini eggs. Last year I was an Academy of Chocolate judge and I adore the world’s finest chocolate. But I go weak at the knees when I see Cadbury’s Mini Eggs. I know there’s very little chocolaty about them – well I take that back, there’s actually more cocoa solids as a % in these than there are in their Chocolate Buttons Easter eggs.

So when looking at their different Easter hampers what do you actually get if you got one that included one of these treatsize bags? Well in total you get eight small bags of the eggs which combined weigh 251g. The bag I counted (I ate half the other one before checking) had ten of the mini eggs in. By the looks of it, they don’t actually sell this bag in the supermarkets, but only the new lighter 195g resealable bag – which I expect would be consumed far quicker than this one with the ten smaller bags in.

You can get that one, for 2 for £3 in Asda and Ocado, or a larger 360g bag for £3 in Asda and Ocado for £3, or £3.50 in Tesco and £3.59 in both Sainsbury’s and Waitrose. But they don’t come with all the other goodies you can get from Cadbury Gifts Direct.

We all know what they taste like: very sweet and sugary and we know they’re incredibly crispy and incredibly addictive. Basically I’m only reviewing them as I want an excuse to review a bag or two. So excuse me whilst I open up another and quickly score them as ‘egsellent”.

And we come to the end of the daft exclusive online offers that Thornton’s have been running over the past week. And this one gives you a touch more choice. Thornton’s are giving a third off their Continental, Viennese & Classics eggs until 9am on Monday 2nd April.

There’s no ‘mix and match’ or ’3 for 2′ here, you can buy as many or as few as you like. But here’s my quick guide to the three eggs:

The Continental is, perhaps they won’t like me saying, isn’t really for teenagers and possibly young adults. I see it as more for ladies aged from their mid-thirties and upwards. It has a variety of chocolates from a selection that has been modernised over the last couple of years. Also this egg is the largest of the three (by 1g over the Classics and 35g over the Viennese). Also this egg can have a message or name iced on to it.

The Viennese is very much a similar egg to the Continental but instead of have 12 different chocolates, you ‘just’ get 12 of their Viennese mousses which have a sprinkling of sugar on the top. This egg can be personalised for free too!

And lastly, the Classics egg. This one is only 1g lighter than the Continental but comes with some of their chocolates that have been popular for generations. This makes it suitable for grandmothers and wives that prefer not to have funky flavoured chocolate – there are no risks in terms of older people liking this egg.

If you’re interested, delivery costs only £3.95 for a weekday delivery, £5.95 for next day delivery and £5.95 for a Saturday delivery.

Sometimes you get an Easter egg and think that it’d be ok, and when you actually get your chops around it you realise what’s been missing from your live. I bought the Eton Mess Easter egg,  because I my uncle makes a wonderful version of the pudding, but this is one of the other two in the Thornton’s Great British Puds range. I wish I bought this one earlier, but thanks to the guys there they sent over this one and the Lemon Meringue egg to see what I thought.

We all know that banoffee pie is a pudding made with bananas, biscuits, cream and caramel; but obviously at wouldn’t work so well in an egg form so Thorntons‘ version combines toffee pieces, sweetened dried banana slices and white chocolate – alongside copious amounts of their sweet milk chocolate. What’s more, this is a large Easter egg as it weighs a very decent 430g, which is about 2.5 times the weight of a typical medium-sized Easter egg. And before I get on to how great this egg tastes, I should really have a glancing look at the nutritional stuff … oh I can’t be bothered. It’s Easter, this is great, enjoy it.

I don’t typically go for sweet milk chocolate, but the combination of the banana and toffee is just too good. Not only are there large visible pieces of banana and toffee on the front of the egg, but hidden inside the shell itself there are flakes of the stuff which give an extra sweet layer to the egg – as well as a nice bit of crunch.

It’s when you bite of some of the chocolate with one of the big slithers of dried banana which gives the most joy. Those different layers of sweetness with the banana flavour superbly finishing off the rich milk chocolate is just fantastic. I know I’ve only managed to eat about 15% of the egg before It got too sweet for me. But I don’t care.

It’s an egg that should last Easter Sunday and well into the following, dull, week. You can save some for when you get home from work, which should help end the day on a positive  note. This egg isn’t my typical type of egg, but it pushes so many buttons that I’ve just got to say that I love it and it gets a score of ‘eggsellent”