You must be yolking! Cadbury scrambles its egg

As a young — and rather gullible — child, I initially turned my nose up at Cadbury’s Creme Eggs under the mistaken belief that they were in fact normal hard-boiled eggs, merely covered in milk chocolate. Such ill feeling didn’t last long.

But it is with the same revulsion felt by that wide-eyed youth that I now greet news of a recipe change so egg-regious that it has caused the great British public to revolt … or at least grumble politely about.

As a spokesman for the confectionary giant explained to the British press: “It’s no longer Dairy Milk. It is similar, but not exactly Dairy Milk.” Instead, the silky — if admittedly prone to melting, covering — will be replaced with some monstrosity called “standard cocoa mix chocolate.”

The [egg-spletive deleted]! The milk chocolate covering perfectly offset the syrupy mix inside, resulting in a precious object placed higher than anything Fabergé could offer — to a Brit at least.

And who is behind this travesty? The Americans! (Or so screams the British media.) “US owners” litter newspaper reports on the recipe change. You see, Cadbury — established in 1824 — was bought out by Kraft Foods in 2010. (Cadbury is now marketed under the food giant's Mondelez division.)

Eggs in the U.S. already conform to an inferior palate, one more used to the sort of chalky chocolate that wouldn’t melt at the end scene of E.T.

Some reports have “consumers” claiming satisfaction with the new, reportedly pastier chocolate shell, but when a Mondelez statement said “a range of economic factors” justifies the change, it begs the question: Just what else were those consumers consuming?

And it isn’t like egg enthusiasts (or egg-thusiasts, if you will) in the U.K. haven’t suffered enough. Seemingly shrinking egg sizes have been a perennial complaint, and this year’s cartons contain five foil-wrapped ovoids, down from six.

Now we have to endure this.

A long-running ad campaign for the egg playfully asked: “How do you eat yours?” to a generation of slurpers, biters and suckers. 

“With less enthusiasm,” is the only sane response to that question now. That is until the inevitable announcement that the original recipe has been saved due to overwhelming demand … and the carefully thought through plan from the PR exec potentially behind this week’s developments.