Fans of the traditional Easter bunny treat Cadbury Creme Egg are hopping mad that Cadbury has changed the recipe for the iconic foiled-wrapped chocolate.
The soft egg ‘yolks’ are still made of a sugary white and yellow fondant. But the egg shells, made for years from Cadbury’s much-touted Dairy Milk chocolate, are now being made with “a standard, traditional Cadbury milk chocolate,” according to a statement from Mondelēz International, the former Kraft Foods Inc. division that now owns Cadbury.
There’s also been a reduction in package size: while the price is the same, customers now get five eggs in a package, not six.
With the move, Cadbury risks angering the egg's loyal fan base. Available only once a year, candy blogger Cybele May calls the confection “the harbinger of spring" and says it is "so well loved that people trade sightings of the eggs online as if they were endangered migrating birds."
Mondelēz officials insist that “the fundamentals of the Cadbury Creme Egg remain exactly the same” – a milk chocolate egg with a sweet gooey center – and that the company “never flagged [the eggs] as a Cadbury Dairy Milk product as such.”
But in the United Kingdom, where the new-recipe eggs are already on the shelves for the Easter season, devotees of the old-recipe eggs are taking to a Facebook Save the Creme Egg page and to Twitter to squawk:
For now, creme egg aficionados in the United States don’t have to worry. The Pennsylvania-based Hershey Company has a license to make Cadbury products in the U.S. and says while “there has always been a slight formula variation in the product between countries” to account for different palates, company spokeswoman Anna Lingeris said we'll still get the same treat.
“There are no changes planned. It is the same product everyone knows and loves," she said.
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