April 4th: L'Artisan du Chocolat Creme de la Creme Eggs

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With Mothers Day now safely negotiated today ChocolateMission turns its focus on to the next major holiday in our calendar - Easter of course! Over the next few weeks I will be aiming to bring you reviews of some of the best (and maybe some of the worst :D ) chocolate products that are on offer to us all this year 2011. I could think of no better way to get things really kicked off this year, other than by starting with a brand who hasn't featured on ChocolateMission for a fair while. Indeed, L'Artisan du Chocolat make a long over due return to the spotlight today as I take a look at their Creme de la Creme Eggs.

The ever so kind people at L'Artisan were lovely enough to send me across five of their 25.0g Passion Milk Eggs which I managed to eat over the last two days with the ever willing help of my family. The eggs came firstly packaged together in a clear cellophane packet that was neatly sealed with a L'Artisan fabric sticker. Each egg was then contained within a single layer of gold coloured plastic. It wasn't the classiest exterior presentation I have seen from L'Artisan but it did the job, and the spectacular colours displayed by the eggs when cross-sectioned quickly made this a complete after thought anyway.

On the L'Artisan website these Passion Mik Creme de la Creme Eggs come described as 'small eggs containing a white chocolate ganache 'egg white', with a passion fruit 'yolk'. Not being a common consumer of passion fruit I was feeling a little unbeknown what to expect, though my sister was very keen at the prospect. Starting with the outer shell of milk chocolate, I was delight to see that the thickness of the exterior was just about correct. For my liking, the shell was thick enough to create a substantial chocolatey taste for every bite, though it wasn't overly thick or dominant over the lighter textured filling. The milk chocolate tasted abosulutely fantastic and had a very clean, crisp milky cocoa taste that gave the impression of being ever so fresh. Time for marvelling in the gloriousness of the milk chocolate was limited however, as it was soon the turn of the inner filling to take centre stage and boy was it delicious! The white chocolate creme straight away enahnced the creamyness of the milk chocolate and delivered a lingering vanilla note that was even detectable upon revelation of the 'yolk'. Sat right at the centre of each egg, the passion fruit flavoured yellow creme proved itself to be absolutely divine. As I said, I'm no passion fruit expert, but the fruity taste delivered here was simply incredible. It was real tasting, correct in terms of strength, and most importantly balanced perfectly between juicy acidic zingyness and sweet sugar.

Overall these L'Artisan du Chocolat Passiont Fruit Milk Creme de la Creme Eggs have really set the standards for the rest of the Easter products to come this year. At their price of £1.50 each they aren't exactly a snip, but in my opinion (and the rest of my famalie's) the taste is just about special enough for them to justify this price point. The advantage these eggs have over many of the other market offerings like the Cadbury Creme Egg are that they come with fresh ganache fillings, rather than the sugar based fondant used by those other more common place products. Put quite simply, everything about these eggs was fantastic. The milk chocolate was of a high quality, whilst the centre passion fruit egg creme was nothing other than out of this world. Unlike many of the other Easter products which have been around since Boxing Day 2010 :D these eggs have a limited shelf life due to the fresh cream ganache fillings - I suggest you get going to the L'Artisan website if you fancy them. They come highly recommended by me.

8.8 out of 10