Reimagining the Cadbury Egg

My eyes fly open and I leap out of bed. It’s Easter!
Oh. Um. Right. First:
“Dear God, thanks for Jesus. That’s pretty incredible… you’re awesome.”

Ok, now I only have an hour before we leave for church. Sixty minutes to find the glorious treasure trove of chocolate, eat as much as I can stomach, and still get my fancy new Easter dress on before we leave.

I look around my room. There. On the dresser: my first clue. The older I get the harder the clues are. Let’s do this.

After you wake and before you eat,
This is the place that keeps you neat.

Easy enough. We all know as a 13 year old girl I’m spending way too much time in front of the bathroom mirror in the mornings! There I find another clue.

This clue is on some shelves
So go and take a look
It's hidden among words and pictures
Inside your favorite...

Book! I rush over to The Bread Sister of Sinking Creek—a signed version, thank you very much—to find the next clue.

What has many rings but no fingers?

Oh. This is gonna slow me down. It’s too early for this much thinking. I go get dressed and ready for church. Seriously mom, isn’t my life hard enough? You have to make candy difficult? Ugh.

As I finish my overly applied black 90s eyeliner, it comes to me. The phone! I pass my brother on the way. He’s getting a clue out of the freezer. At least I know he hasn’t won yet!

What gets warm and turns around,
but never leaves its place?

The dryer.

I hurry to the basement and throw the door to the dryer open. There it is. It’s a giant pink plastic basket, and it’s all for me.

I take it upstairs, passive aggressively offering my brother a piece of candy since he hasn’t found his yet. He declines. And not very nicely. Oh well.

It’s beautiful. Nestled in the neon green Easter grass are Skittles, M&Ms, Butterfingers, Pixie Stix, Fun Dip, and a couple Ring Pops. I am definitely wearing the pink one to church today.

And there, in the middle, sits my giant peanut butter egg. It’s from the local chocolate shop in town. It’s a milk chocolate egg the size of my head, filled with a sweet, salty, creamy peanut butter. This is what I dream of all year long. I’m obviously far too civilized to just bite into it, so I get a knife to slice it.

As I pass the kitchen table, I see that my brother has found his basket. It’s filled to the brim with Cadbury eggs—his favorite candy. I love the way the basket looks with all those bright blue, foil covered eggs, but I shudder thinking about biting into one. It makes my teeth hurt just thinking about it. I don’t know how anyone can eat those!

We head to church, slightly sick from the amount of sugar I’ve already had, and it’s not even 9am. Nevertheless, I suck on my Ring Pop, my friends jealously darting glances at it. We chat about our Easter baskets while we wait for service to start. Everyone snuck in some kind of candy this morning and the back row softly crinkled wrappers all through service. Somehow, every single teenager there is obsessed with those Cadbury eggs. So weird.

Looking back on it now, I can see the preparation that went into those mornings, the work that made it seem effortless. At thirteen I was more concerned with eating chocolate without smudging my lipliner.

My Easters were perfect. A little chaos, far too much sugar, and overflowing with people who loved me deeply. My parents knew me well enough to get it exactly right. My basket always had what I actually wanted.

And still, every year, I found myself looking at those Cadbury eggs. They magically showed up in the spring, stacked high in every grocery store. All around me, people waited for them, like Cadbury eggs were what actually brought the warm Spring air with them.

I didn’t like the candy, but I always wished I could be part of the moment.

I’ve continued the traditions that my mom had for our family: the clues, the baskets specially curated for each child, even the Easter lunch we have now is an exact replica of the one I had growing up.

Some things never change. I also still have an aversion to those cream filled chocolate eggs, but the rest of my family loves them. Somehow, I’m still the only one who judges the coming of spring by the crocuses popping their heads up, by how long it takes the car to get warm in the morning, by the sound of birdsong in the morning, rather than by when the eggs show up in the grocery store.

I don’t need to be part of the Cadbury Cream Egg Club. My mom never tried to convince me that I should love those candies the way everyone else did, she always encouraged me to be exactly who I was, not the person anyone else wanted me to be. She saw me, my likes and dislikes, and filled my basket with exactly what I wanted.

That mattered. Being noticed, known, and accepted at a time I was constantly worrying about what everyone else thought, meant I didn’t have to change.

That kind of freedom is hard to unlearn.

I never had to conform to someone else’s ideal, and that has allowed me to experiment, to adjust things when they didn’t quite fit. To trust my own instincts, even when they didn’t match what everyone else was doing. To let things be a little off, a little unfinished, until I figured out what worked for me.

And eventually, to take something that didn’t work for me at all and turn it into something that does.

I’m old enough now to know who I am, but sometimes I still feel a little left out when the Easter candy fills the shelves. This year, I decided to change that. I may have zero interest in eating that syrupy ooze in the center of a Cadbury egg, but I’m convinced that I could transform those flavors into something to get excited about.

Much like those Easter clues of my childhood, I had to let this thought sit and marinate for a bit. Then, last week, it hit me. My son was making some sparkling lemonade while I scrolled past an espresso martini recipe. What if I made it into a fizzy cocktail? That is how grown up Shannon would enjoy Cadbury egg flavors. With some vodka.

So I experimented. I melted down Cadbury eggs and used them as a sweetener. Nope. Cloying. This is the part I never liked about them. I want the idea of the sweet yolk, but with a light fluffy texture. So, why not just use an actual egg yolk? My daughter went through a Vietnamese coffee phase a couple years ago, so I’ve made my share of egg coffees. This finally brought the whole idea together.

A velvety smooth shot of espresso, shaken up with some ice-cold vodka and a pinch of salt. That’s what keeps it interesting. Then a layer of subtly sweet, glossy whipped egg cream. It’s frothy and light, but retains that sweet yolky goodness. Top that with some fizzy milk and then some freshly grated dark chocolate. It’s a grown up version of a Cadbury egg in a glass.

It’s nostalgic, a reminder of childhood, but in a way that finally fits. It turns out I didn’t need to learn to like Cadbury eggs. I just had to make them my own. Now I can join in the springtime excitement for milk chocolate and rich custardy goodness—my way.

🐣 Cadbury Cream Fizz

Ingredients

• 1–2 oz carbonated milk (see note)
• 0.5 oz Baileys (mixed into the milk)
• 1.5 oz espresso, cooled
• 1 oz vodka
• Pinch of salt
• 1 egg yolk (use pasteurized if preferred)
• 1 tsp sugar + 1 tsp hot water
• 1 drop vanilla extract
• Dark chocolate (70%+), for microplaning

Instructions

1. Prepare the milk
   Mix Baileys into very cold carbonated milk.
2. Make the coffee
   Shake espresso, vodka, and a pinch of salt with ice. Strain into a chilled glass.
3. Make the quick syrup
   Stir sugar + hot water until fully dissolved.
4. Make the egg cream
   Whisk the syrup very slowly into the egg yolk then add vanilla, and a pinch of salt and beat until pale, glossy, and slightly thick (ribbon stage).
5. Layer the yolk
   Gently spoon the egg cream into the center so it sits on top.
6. Finish
   Microplane dark chocolate lightly over the top.

Note: How to carbonate milk
Use a soda maker with very cold milk and carbonate gently in short bursts.
No soda maker? Shake cold milk in a jar to create foam, then top with a splash of seltzer for a similar light texture.