I Will Gladly Spend My Entire Paycheck on Cadbury Mini Eggs

Easter season is upon us. And you can bet your ass I’ll be buying all the Cadbury Mini Eggs I can get my hands on.

For the uninformed, Cadbury Mini Eggs are a candy only available during Easter season. They are bite-sized spherical chocolates covered in a speckled white, yellow, purple, and pink candy shell that is meant to resemble a tiny egg. They sound like M&Ms, right? They are not. They are bigger. And they are much, much better. M&Ms should be thankful that the Mini Eggs only appear once a year because otherwise we’d have anthropomorphized Mini Eggs welcoming us all to the movies and the M&Ms would be out of a pretty nice gig.

So, what makes Cadbury Mini Eggs so vastly superior to every other Easter candy? Well, now. Let’s begin with the chocolate. The Mini Eggs, produced by the Canadian wing of the American-owned British Cadbury, are made with West African cocoa that, per the company, spends some time getting fermented in banana leaves. The resulting chocolate that comes from that cocoa is rich and oh-so-creamy.

Then there’s the candy shell. It is crispy. It is crunchy. It does not have — or need — any sort of glossy sheen. It is the ideal exterior to welcome you to the creamy chocolate waiting inside. As Shelby Yuan pointed out over at Spoon University, there is also something to the shape of the Cadbury Mini Eggs that provides a sort of golden-ratio of chocolate. She writes:

Each mini egg is approximately 3.33 grams…Thanks to some gastronomically-driven geometry, we know that surface area increases with the radius squared, whereas volume increases with the radius cubed. So not only does each egg give you more chocolate, but it also has a lower candy shell-to-chocolate ratio. If you were to eat about 3.5 M&Ms, you’d get almost as much chocolate as one mini egg, but way more sugary coating.

This is candy logic I can appreciate.

What’s that? No, I don’t want to hear about any other Easter candy. Whopper’s Easter Robin Eggs are just pastel-colored malted milk balls. The Reese’s Egg is just an elongated peanut butter cup. Shut up about Peeps, which are nothing more than, sugar coated marshmallows with beady, soul-less eyes that look like they were drawn on by a toddler. Don’t even get me started on jelly beans. They are fragile and disappointing and nowhere near as exclusive as everyone makes them out to be. Most flavors are terrible except for the red ones. Even the red ones are just fine.

And then, of course, there is the biggest affront to the Mini Egg name: the original Cadbury Creme Egg. Is there a more unsatisfying candy than a chocolate egg that features a runny, sugary, snot-like yolk substitute? They’re so sweet. They’re very messy. And did I mention how sweet they are? I’ve eaten a Cadbury Egg once or twice in my life and have regretted it every time. The only great thing about the Cadbury Egg are those old Cadbury bunny audition commercials because they are adorable.

Mini Egg season is fleeting. I will gladly spend an entire paycheck snatching up sacks of the candy while they’re on shelves. Yes, I know, I can probably order a gross of Mini Eggs on Amazon. I don’t need that. I eat them far too quickly as it is and don’t need a monthly order popping up in my mailbox. Plus, so much my Mini Egg appeal comes from the fact that they are special. I will not have Jeff Bezos ruin that.

Now, I do have one of the small gripe with my beloved Mini Eggs: the packaging. They come in very simple, dark purple bags. They’re very recognizable. But on the bag is an image of the chocolates sitting beside grass. I know, I know, it’s because they’re Easter eggs. But who, I ask you, would ever place these magical creations in a field? They deserve better than that. They are magical. Do yourself a favor and find some.