Why Cadbury Creme Eggs Don't Taste Like They Used To

Whenever Easter rolls around, kids and adults alike look forward to finding a Cadbury creme egg or two nestled in a basket filled with jelly beans and a hollow chocolate bunny. But if you've noticed that when you bite into this sweet candy, it doesn't taste like it used to, it's because Cadbury changed its formula, and it doesn't. It happened in 2015 and proves the egg world is a tough place. They just can't catch a break. Point in case, due to the current shortage of eggs in the U.S., Waffle House is charging 50 cents more per egg. What is this world coming to?

But back to those sweet eggs. When you crack open a chocolate Cadbury creme egg with your teeth, your tongue is immediately met with a gooey filling made of excessively sweet yellow and white fondant that melts with the chocolate if you hold it in your mouth long enough. It's creamy, sweet, and milk chocolaty, or well, it used to be. These eggs are no longer made with Cadbury's signature dairy milk chocolate; instead, per a Mondelēz International spokesperson, you are getting "a standard, traditional Cadbury milk chocolate." How could this happen?

To understand the acts that led up to this moment, let's dial it back to 1988. Cadbury was still a British-owned company and it gave an exclusive manufacturing and distributing license to U.S.-based Hershey which allowed the candy company to manufacture and distribute Cadbury chocolate, including Cadbury creme eggs. Everything was great and then, years after Kraft scooped up the UK Cadbury brand in 2010, things changed.

History, or at least lovers of Cadbury creme eggs, will look back on that fateful day in January 2015 as the great chocolate betrayal. At the time, a spokesman for Kraft told The Sun, "It's no longer Dairy Milk. It is similar, but not exactly Dairy Milk." What does that even mean? Perhaps, this dairy milk denial is the true revenge Lin Manuel Miranda's King George sang about, reminding us of his "love" with each less-than-creamy bite for changing our relationship status.

Sadly, American chocolate tastes very different from European chocolate. American chocolate is more about the sugar and less about the cocoa content. To truly understand how wide that chocolate difference is across the pond, consider that, by law in the UK, milk chocolate must contain at least 25% cocoa solids to be sold as chocolate. In the U.S., milk chocolate only needs to contain a measly 10% cocoa solids. So, if the kiddos aren't screaming, "Thank you Easter Bunny! Bawk! Bawk!," this year, you know why.