This Chocolate Isn’t Your Average Easter Basket Candy
Generally speaking, Easter chocolate is predictable: solid bunnies that hurt your teeth, Reese’s peanut butter cups reshaped as eggs, Cadbury cremes. They’re not bad, they’re just not memorable. Which is why this year, we’re all about Fruition, whose Easter eggs and chocolate berries are standout treats that capture spring in a way that day-old, clearance rack milk chocolate never will.
Hat tip to senior food editor Chris Morocco for recommending the Catskills, New York-based chocolatier; he loves their dark milk chocolate, even though he doesn’t even like milk chocolate. Fruition’s Easter eggs ($12) elevate traditional peanut butter- or ganache-filled chocolate eggs to a whole new level. The packaging resembles four quail eggs in a nest—the two blue ones have a creamy center with peanut butter and crunchy toffee, while the pink strawberry basil ones have a slightly savory white chocolate filling. The eggs aren’t big—you can eat one in two bites—and (spoiler alert) each egg has a flat chocolate surface, so really, you’re getting four halved eggs. A trompe l’œil, if you will.
In terms of chocolate pairings, the eggs taste well alongside the chocolate tumbled raspberries ($15). They don’t scream Easter as much as the eggs, but that’s what makes them a good gift all season long (hi, Mother’s Day). Each jar contains a shareable amount of chocolate gum drops-meet-powdered truffles filled with freeze-dried raspberries. They have a pure cocoa aroma and though the outer surface is powdery, you’ll taste the smooth white chocolate inner coating before you get to the raspberry filling. They simultaneously melt and crumble in your mouth and aren’t at all gooey. Like the Easter eggs, the chocolate raspberries combine rich dark chocolate with sweet and fruity touches in a parade of flavor.
All of Fruition’s “bean to bar” chocolates are handcrafted from fair trade and organically grown cacao beans. There’s a solid selection of 60-gram bars like the 68% dark milk chocolate one that Morocco loves, and the insanely rich 100% dark chocolate. And if you can’t resist a chocolate bunny, fear not—Fruition makes a classic hollow one for all those Easter baskets.
