‘A joyful bit of whimsy’

“There’s no such thing as a superfood, but if there were eggs would be a good candidate,” a nutritionist once told me. Granted, he was talking about hen’s eggs rather than the Creme variety but, in my mind, the point still stands. I know there’s nothing sophisticated about a Creme Egg. In a world where wannabe gastronomes witter on about provenance, terroir and curated artisanal flavour experiences, the Creme Egg has nothing much to offer. It’s lowquality chocolate stuffed with cheap sugary pulp. On the other hand, isn’t it fun? Creme Eggs are a joyful bit of whimsy. Look no further than the tiny dab of paprika extract used to simulate the yellow egg yolk. Most chocolatiers would have made the filling pure white. What’s the point of that bit of fake yolk? It doesn’t add to the taste. It is purely there to delight, and remind you of its absurdity – and of the strange research that must have been done to produce this object.

They’re fun to eat, too. That famous “How do you eat yours?” ad campaign was successful because it tapped into our individuality better than a mass-produced product has any right to. Realistically there are, at most, two or three ways to eat a Creme Egg (I’m a scooper) but we were offered a glimpse of a brighter world where food could be consumed in any way we could imagine, and it was beautiful. Heston Blumenthal would build a career from this very concept, but the Creme Egg laid the foundations. There’s nothing wrong with eating food that’s fun. The foodie establishment would love for us all to wax lyrical about the wonders of kale, acai berries and ancient grains. But will any of those worthy things put a smile on your face like a little, occasional, helping of low-quality chocolate and sugar? I think not.