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Cracking Fun: six of the best independent Easter egg makers
Planning to send clients or journalists an Easter egg this spring? Then why not support a small business at the same time? Our pick of the artisan chocolatiers offers stylish gifts with real taste.
London
Cutter & Squidge
Cutter & Squidge is London’s go-to bakery for handcrafted, all-natural treats. Founded by sisters Annabel and Emily Lui, the brand is built on a passion for real ingredients, bold flavours, and a touch of playfulness. (Sustainability, too, as evinced by their UK-sourced packaging and solar-powered tins).
Their award-winning Easter range (‘Best Joint Easter Egg’, Good Housekeeping, 2023) includes masterpieces such as the truly extravagant Billionaire Filled Easter Egg (salted caramel, soft shortbread crumb and whipped chocolate honeycomb ganache, plus chunks of fudge and mini chocolate eggs, stuffed with rich caramel chocolate ganache); and a Vegan Easter Egg, including crunchy cookie crumb and whipped vegan chocolate honeycomb ganache, with gold dark chocolate mini eggs. Heavenly.
Find out more about Cutter & Squidge
East Sussex
Art Chocolat
When does an Easter egg become a modernist masterpiece? When it’s dotted, marbled or splattered like a Jackson Pollack painting.
For this East Sussex maker, these handcrafted chocolate artworks are a way to ‘put the fun back into fine chocolate’ – but they also make a seriously sophisticated statement in sugar.
With mirror finish and bright colours, they look more like tumbled gems than moulded cocoa and it’s hard to summon the will to break the gorgeous shells – once inside, though, you’re rewarded with salted caramel, pistachio or hazelnut praline and caramel oozing out of the shards.
Enjoy – then explore a wider menu of individual chocolate jewels with flavour thrills that include lime and coconut, yuzu, coffee and sesame and Black Forest.
Find out more about Art Chocolat
Dorset
Chococo
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‘Choc full of soul’, is how Chococo bills itself and with impeccable sustainability credentials it’s no vain boast. This multi-award-winning artisan chocolatier crafts a range of chocolate Easter eggs and bunnies with direct trade, sustainable chocolate in stylish plastic-free packaging.
And doing good also tastes good too; the company has won 132 awards including Great Taste Awards, International Chocolate Awards and Academy of Chocolate Awards since 2002.
An imaginative range of eggs includes honeycomb-studded ones made with Dorset honey, a Dinosaur Easter egg studded with chocolate fossils to celebrate the company’s home on Dorset’s Unesco World Heritage Jurassic Coast – and this year, a new Nest Egg full of golden eggs handcrafted with 47 per cent Colombia milk chocolate.
Nottingham
HAPPI
For non-dairy and lactose intolerant Easter bunnies, oat milk chocolate brand HAPPi delivers the kind of rich, creamy plant-based treats that will hit the sweet spot – including two new Easter eggs this year – Salted Honeycomb and Cherry & Almond – to add to its Plain M!lk, Salted Caramel and Orange flavours.
These paper-packaged eggs are crafted from sustainably-sourced oat milk chocolate and 100 per cent natural ingredients and festooned with bright – and fully recyclable - packaging.
The brand is also committed to the sustainable farming of its chocolate, with cacao ethically sourced from family-owned Lukar’s Chocolate in Colombia. Another bonus? Happi’s delicious Easter eggs have 35% less sugar than other mass market brands too – so win-win all round.
Newcastle Upon Tyne
The Chocolate Smiths
This small-batch chocolatier has been handmaking its signature decadent Bizarre bars since 2014 and this chocolate is not for the fainthearted.
That includes its Easter eggs, teeth-jangling sensory experiences for only the sweetest of tooths.
Choose from the giant Toffee Mallow Egg filled with gooey marshmallow fluff and toffee sauce, a Golden Easter egg loaded with caramel and Biscoff in caramelised white chocolate or the birthday cake-inspired egg filled with ‘funfetti’ – white chocolate birthday cake spread and chocolate fudge sauce.
Perhaps understandably, competition is high to buy these hand-crafted sugar rushes – preorders for 2025 are closed, but the company restocks every Tuesday at 12pm and Friday at 8pm so set your alarm…
Find out more about The Chocolate Smiths
Ireland
Skelligs Chocolate
Tucked between mountains and overlooking the eponymous Rocks in County Kerry, Skelligs is open from Easter to October for sweet treats made using locally sourced ingredients and flavours that reflect the Atlantic coastline.
The company kicks off the season with a menu of solid eggs in milk, dark and white chocolate – flavoured with whiskey, Irish sea salted caramel and milk chocolate marshmallow.
Shell eggs blend outrageously good confections of white chocolate and mint, fruit and nut and honeycomb clusters, while an eggbox of six individually wrapped mini eggs offers a playful chance to nibble through the Skelligs menu, with nods to Milk Marshmallow, White & Raspberry and dark Orange & Almond inside.
Anna Melville James is an award-winning freelance journalist who has written for the Sunday Times Travel Magazine, the Independent, the Mail on Sunday, National Geographic Traveller, the Guardian, Country Living and everywoman.