13 Sweet Treats That Should Be In Every Easter Basket

Easter is celebrated in numerous places worldwide, and for many families, one of their favorite holiday traditions is creating and gifting Easter baskets. These sweet baskets have a long history reaching back to Catholics of the medieval era. As a celebration of the end of the Lenten season, Catholics would offer one another baskets filled with tasty goods.

Over time, those baskets have changed and become even more elaborate. Today, both children and adults alike look forward to the delicious treats frequently found in Easter baskets. Common items found in Easter baskets range from small trinkets to perennial favorites like Peeps and the irresistible jelly beans.

Of course, when preparing the perfect Easter basket, there are plenty of different sweet treats from which to choose. Everything from the most classic Easter goodies to more recent favorites, and even some new ideas to add a bit of life to your basket helps create the perfect gift. Thankfully, there are many options to help create a sweet, thoughtful, memorable, nostalgic experience for your gift basket recipient.

The chocolate bunny is a popular sweet treat that is often associated with Easter. The popularity of the chocolate bunny can be traced back to Robert L. Strohecker, who had a giant Easter bunny created to adorn his storefront for the Easter season. This stroke of creative genius would earn him the moniker of "Father of the Easter Bunny Business."

Over time, the tradition of making chocolate bunnies for Easter spread to other countries, and its popularity has only continued to grow within the United States. Today, chocolate bunnies are a staple in Easter baskets and are enjoyed by both children and adults.

Many different types of chocolate bunnies are available, ranging from small, bite-sized treats to large, ornately decorated pieces. Some are solid chocolate, while others are filled with various flavors, such as caramel or peanut butter. Some chocolate bunnies are even made with premium chocolate, such as dark chocolate or milk chocolate, with a high percentage of cocoa solids. Dove, Lindt, and Ghirardelli all make delicious chocolate bunnies.

The earliest mention of the term "jelly beans" came in 1886, and at the time, these juicy little snacks were actually enjoyed around Christmas time. Around the same time in the late 19th century, people were also beginning to decorate eggs for Easter. It wouldn't be long before the eyes, shape, and flavor of the Jelly Bean found their way into Easter baskets.

Today, several popular jelly bean brands exist, including Jelly Belly, Brach's, and even Starburst. Other popular brands like Nerds have started creating their own jelly beans. While many of these newer types of jelly beans focus on engaging new flavors, some of the original jelly bean flavors included options like licorice, cherry, strawberry, and lemon. Jelly Belly and its competitors often offer interesting diversions from these original flavors, like buttered popcorn and even toasted marshmallow.

With the popularity of the Harry Potter series of novels, movies, and memorabilia, you can also find specialty flavors of beans in less appetizing flavors. If you are unlucky enough to taste some of these beans, you'll meet flavors like vomit, ear wax, or grass. While we can't imagine adding exclusively disgusting flavored jelly beans to an Easter basket, it may create a fun pastime while snacking on other sweet treats.

Many classic Easter basket treats are mostly chocolate. The Cadbury Creme Egg has the benefit of being chocolate with a little something extra. Cadbury Easter Eggs started their glorious journey to Easter basket stardom in 1875. However, it wasn't until 1923 that the first Creme Egg was hatched.

With a creamy fondant filling meant to emulate the gooey center of a regular egg, Cadbury Creme Eggs are a funny and sweet addition to any Easter basket. Typically, you will find them wrapped in purple, red, yellow, or blue foil.

Though similar, Cadbury Creme Eggs from the U.K. are different than the ones you will find in the United States. Look closely at the ingredients, and you will notice that a Creme Egg from the U.K. lists milk as its first ingredient, while an American Cadbury Egg will have sugar as its first. While sugar undoubtedly makes the eggs sweeter, milk does a better job of creating a great texture for the filling of the egg. Your preference will probably line up with whichever egg you grew up with.

Cadbury Creme Eggs are ideal for building the perfect Easter basket because they are sold for a very limited time. In fact, you can only find them from the beginning of December through Easter Sunday. After that, you won't encounter them again for many months. They are literally sold to be Easter candies.

While many Easter candies come and go exclusively for the festive spring season, you can find Ghirardelli chocolate squares throughout the year. We think these tasty squares make a great addition to any Easter basket because they are so delicious. Not to mention, the Ghirardelli company has a deep history in the American chocolate marketplace.

When it comes to choosing the perfect chocolates for your Easter basket, you may be a little overwhelmed by the Ghirardelli Square options. You can choose from milk, dark, or white chocolate offerings, and then each of those chocolate types has its unique filling options. If you are a fan of a bit of crunch with your chocolate, check out the nut flavors. But if that's not your style, consider checking out the fruit-filled flavors. We are especially intrigued by the dark chocolate with cherry and almond for a delicious, elevated chocolate experience. If you're looking for a can't-miss, stand-by favorite, look no further than the caramel-filled chocolate squares. These are sure to please adults and children alike.

Chocolate and peanut butter are absolutely delicious all on their own. However, when paired together, they become something else entirely, and the delicious factor goes up tenfold (in our opinion). That's probably why we love a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup so much. So we are always on board when it comes to the festive Reese's shapes.

Reese's has its own version of an Easter egg, and as you might expect from a brand like Reese's, it is a chocolate candy with a peanut butter-filled center. There are both eggs similar to typical Reece's cups, and there are also little eggs wrapped in bright foil that are very snackable. In addition to the little and typical-sized eggs, you can also get a much larger Easter egg decorated with little engravings on the outside. If you find yourself in the mood for some white chocolate, you can also get your Reese's eggs in a lovely cream color. Of course, this will mimic the appearance of eggs just a little bit better, and although peanut butter isn't really yolk yellow in color, it is passable.

Cadbury doesn't just stop at the creme-filled eggs; it also offers mini eggs during the Easter season. When you bite into these small eggs, they are full of chocolate and come in a crisp sugar shell with a delightful crunch. We love these because they are adorably speckled on the outside and come in different pastel colors. You can also find dark chocolate mini eggs and even ones colored for the rainbow.

These are a perfect addition to any great Easter basket because they are a seasonal special that only crops up during this spring holiday season. For some, it's a true marker that the Easter season is upon us when the Cadbury Mini Eggs start showing up in stores. Even though we always get these for our Easter baskets, we also end up with a bag on our desk for snacking.

Since the mini eggs are pretty small, they make great additions to holiday baking. We are a big fan of the bird's nest cookie, and this one couldn't be simpler. Mix and melt chocolate and peanut butter chips together, and then coat some crunchy chow mein noodles in your mixture. Next, place the little Cadbury eggs on top to create something that looks like a nest. This little treat is sure to get all kinds of attention and is perfect for your Easter gathering.

Perhaps no Easter candy is more iconic and controversial than the marshmallow and sugary-coated peeps. These cute little birdies can trace their sweet origins back hundreds of years when artisans were designing sculptures for use in court festivities.

However, the Peeps as we know them today originally came from the Rodda Candy Company. Initially, this sweet treat took 27 hours to produce, but when the sweets company was sold to Just Born, the amount of time needed to create this Easter time tradition jumped down to only six minutes.

Thanks to the work of Bob Born, dubbed "The Father of Peeps," we can stuff our Easter baskets full of this sweet treat. There are so many reasons to love Peeps, but we are huge fans of the newer Peeps flavors like cotton candy and fruit punch. Plus, if you happen to have extra Peeps on hand after Easter, you can make plenty of delicious recipes with them.

Creating an Easter basket with traditional candy is relatively easy. In fact, you can find grocery aisles lined with such pre-made baskets ready for you to scoop up. However, we think the best Easter baskets are uniquely made for the occasion. That's why we love adding something a little different to make the basket extra special. Enter: Bunny Farts Cotton Candy.

These bags of cotton candy come from a company called Little Stinker Candy. Although the name is a little odd, the intent behind it is nothing but joy. In addition to creating a rather sweet and giggle-worthy product, Little Stinker donates to charities that support animals and children. It helps create opportunities for anti-bullying education, offers toys to children around the holidays, and supports no-kill shelters.

Plus, you can choose from many different types of cotton candy. For example, little it offers cotton candy for several holidays, including Easter. The Bunny Farts cotton candy has a fruit punch flavor and is a pastel pink color that fits the spring season perfectly.

It's no secret that light and fluffy treats make some of the best options for sweetness in your Easter basket. Perhaps that's why we are so in love with chocolate-covered marshmallows. Several brands make them, but some of our favorites are the Hershey's variety. On the inside, you'll get a nice marshmallow; on the outside, you get a delicious milk chocolate coating.

This perfectly balances the marshmallowy goodness you get from something like a Peep and the chocolatey coating you might find on a Cadbury Creme Egg. It's a really great combination of some of those classic Easter favorites, and we love seeing them in Easter baskets, especially since they come in the festive shape of an egg, like many other Easter candies.

Unfortunately, the coating on the outside does not come in other chocolate types, but if you are set on having a different type of chocolate coating, you could always make your own chocolate-covered marshmallows. You'll gather together the chocolate you want to use, melt it carefully, and then dip each marshmallow in that chocolate. You could also decorate the chocolate coating with sprinkles to make them extra fun.

We often find that Easter baskets can become a little overwhelmed with the marshmallowy and chocolate treats we stuff in them. That is why offering a little balance to your basket is a good idea. One way to do this is to include some gummy Twizzlers bunnies.

These little chewy snacks come in a bag, and they are bright red. The bunnies are cherry flavored, and just like the Twizzlers we love, these also have a delightful gumminess to them. Plus, when your Easter basket recipient pulls out the bag of Twizzlers bunnies, you can teach them that a group of rabbits is called a "fluffle," which may very well be the cutest animal group name we've ever heard. Aside from being delicious treats, these also do a great job of breaking up the similarity from treat to treat since they offer no chocolate or marshmallow filling, just as we aimed to do. In fact, these are so tasty you may find yourself looking forward to them each Easter season.

During the holidays, it can be difficult to remember to stop and treasure the special moments. Amongst all the hustle and bustle of preparing gifts and meals and making sure every moment is as perfect as it can be, we often find ourselves forgetting to just pause. This is why we love adding Dove chocolates to Easter baskets.

We enjoy these candies throughout the year, but when it comes to the Easter season, they make a great addition because the wrapping turns into a delightful collection of colors that perfectly complement the season. Plus, just like every other Dove chocolate, the wrapper offers some nuggets of wisdom. This is what makes these treats so sweet and another reason why we think they're the perfect addition to Easter baskets. Not to mention, you can find them in many different chocolate flavors with even more chocolate mix-ins, like almond, caramel, peanut butter, and sea salt.

One of the best things about lollipops is that they can come in a variety of different sizes and flavors. Plus, when it comes to theming, perhaps no treat is as diverse as the lollipop. We've seen them in bunnies, eggs, and even Easter basket shapes.

Lollipops make a fabulous addition to any Easter basket because they can also act as a little decor. Most snacks you place in an Easter basket tend to be sold in containers, but lollipops can often stand their own outside of a box. We like arranging them in the basket as though they were accent pieces, similar to flowers. You can even get some flower foam typically used for arranging flower bouquets, put a layer of that on the bottom of the Easter basket, and you'll have a lovely, sturdy place to stick lollipops for decoration. In addition to looking at some of the more prominent candy companies, websites like Etsy offer great lollipops made by small businesses.

Like many of our favorite chocolate candies, M&Ms really turn up the theming when it comes to the different holidays. Easter is no different. You can purchase M&Ms that come in an Easter-themed dispenser, personalized Easter gift jar, or just a bag of pastel-covered M&Ms. There are also some bags you can get that have clear bunny windows that give the illusion of M&Ms being in the shape of an Easter bunny.

This is a simple addition to any Easter basket; plus, if you're looking for a specific flavor of M&Ms, it adds a lovely personalized quality to the Easter basket, as well. You can even customize your own M&Ms. For this, you'll get to select the color of M&Ms you would like to feature, as well as anything you would like on your M&Ms. This could include writing, clipart, or even your own uploaded picture. In the end, you even get to decide what kind of container those M&Ms should arrive in.

Static Media owns and operates Tasting Table and Mashed.