We’re completely in love with our Bird of Paradise Eggs, and it’s lovely to see that other people are just as bowled-over. These pretty little things featured the Easter egg edition of The Wish List at The Observer Magazine, and they’ve also appeared on Harper’s Bazaar’s website as one of This Week’s Food Trends. These beautiful Easter Eggs will be available from our website shortly, but are always in short supply!
The gorgeous wrapper was designed by Chantal Coady, our Founder and Creative Director, who works in layers of images painted by hand then overlaid to create intricate designs. Jenny at Chocolatier.co.uk says that it “resembles a piece of rich brocade, adorned with a purple pattern and three sinuous, long-necked colourful birds of paradise”. The birds on the wrapper include the classic Blue Bird-of-paradise, one of the world’s most beautiful birds, and Wilson’s Bird-of-paradise with its distinctive cap of bald blue skin, scarlet back and curled tail feathers. At first glance the crate the wrapper seems to shimmer and tempt you in, hinting at the glamorous insides.
Under the wrapper is a clear crate filled with 12 gleaming eggs that each split in half, all made and decorated by hand by the team in our South London kitchen.
“But perhaps one of the best things about this little box is that each egg is actually two distinct chocolates. That means that this little box actually contains 24 top quality chocolates – it’s not just a quality alternative to a traditional Easter Egg, but it’s one of those rare Easter chocolates where you actually get more than you might think inside the box.”
Each chocolate contains one of three exotically-flavoured soft caramel fillings: zingy Kalamansi Lime in a green-flecked shell, a speckled silver-green egg containing intense Passion Fruit and Rosemary, and soft Tonka Bean and Mandarin hidden inside shimmering copper.
The Kalamansi Lime and Passion Fruit and Rosemary caramels both won gold medals at the Academy of Chocolate Awards and International Chocolate Awards recently, while the Tonka Bean and Mandarin is a new caramel designed to complement the existing flavours and bring gently-spiced, rounded notes to the collection.
Not only are these eggs beautiful to look at, they are a real pleasure to eat. Cleverly, the three caramel flavours – Passion Fruit and Rosemary, Kalamansi Lime and Mandarin and Tonka Bean – while each distinctive from each other, work very well together, with the trio of flavours each offering a similarly sophisticated taste sensation in the tangy citrus spectrum. Eating the eggs, with the contrast between the glossy, firm-textured chocolate and the smooth-textured caramel filling, which glides over the tongue, melting on it, is a sensuous experience to relish and enjoy. Really and truly, a taste of paradise.
