A few years ago, after trying a petite box of Valentine’s chocolates from Elmer’s Candy Company I decided to track down their two most famous products: Heavenly Hash Egg and Gold Brick Egg. Oddly enough last week I was contacted by Elmer’s as they were promoting their new introduction, a dark chocolate version of both of the flagship products (can there be two flagships?).

I requested that they send along some of the original, as I’d tried very hard to find them in my area and they had no webstore. Sadly, they didn’t include them so this review today is in a bit of a vacuum.

The packaging is rather bold, a black background with a fluffy blue and white cloud for the logo & description. (It does look like it belongs with the Hot Tamales Licorice Jelly Beans from yesterday’s review.)

The Dark Chocolate Heavenly Hash Egg is rich dark chocolate, tender marshmallow and roasted almonds. This is a pretty big egg, clocking in at 1.33 ounces. I’m guessing these are sold individually like the Russell Stover eggs are, though mine arrived in a tray of six. For reference the Toasted Marshmallow Eggs I tried a couple of weeks ago were just .75 ounces each.

The eggs are pretty big, though each was a little different ranging from 3.5 to 3.75 inches long and about 2 inches at the widest.

From the description, I assumed that the almonds would be crushed bits mixed in with the marshmallow. I don’t know why that was what I was expecting, but when I saw the candy out of the package, I thought it was really lovely. A marshmallow plank with four or five little lumps (almonds) covered in rippled and shiny dark chocolate.

The chocolate has a nice snap to it and adheres to the marshmallow well, I didn’t have any issue with flaking. The almonds, when encountered, provide a crisp crunch. They’re well roasted, most I came across had a good toasted flavor. And it was pretty easy to plan my bites so as to get some almond in each one.

The marshmallow is sweet and moist, but it’s a bit soft and forms little peaks when I bite it. (Vastly different from the Pete’s Gourmet, as you can imagine.)

There’s very little flavor to the marshmallow, though every once in a while I got a bit of a honey note from it (though none is listed in the ingredients).

The dark chocolate isn’t complex but is definitely less sweet than the milk chocolate from the Toasted Marshmallow Eggs, which is definitely a plus. However, since I still had a Toasted egg left, I tried one and much preferred the cotton candy flavor of that center to the rather plain Heavenly Hash. In the end, the textures and overall execution is much better with the Heavenly Hash.

Rating: 7 out of 10

The original Elmer’s Gold Brick candy bar was introduced in 1936. It was priced at ten cents, twice the regular price for a bar at that time. Now they’re sold as an egg during Easter.

The Dark Chocolate Gold Brick Egg package describes it simply as dark chocolate covered pecan melt-a-way.

The wrapper is similarly bold & dark, a black background with a bright yellow egg holding the logo.

It clocks in a bit lighter than the Heavenly Hash, at only 1 ounce instead of 1.33 ounces (which was also far bigger because it had fluffy center).

This piece consists of a molded center, which is the melt-a-way which is then enrobed. Some of mine had big puddly feet, but the one I chose to photograph was more crisp looking.

There’s a slight rippling on the enrobing. They smell sweet, but a little more like fudge or hot cocoa than chocolate. It didn’t seem promising. Neither did the ingredients. It went like this: sugar, dark chocolate, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, pecans, chocolate, skim milk ... and so on to list the less than 2 percent ingredients.

I had to nibble away pretty far on the one in the picture to make sure I got a pecan in there. (I did eat some pecans along the way, just no cross sections.)

Instead of a soft and melty melt-a-way, what I had here was more of a waxy and fudgy center. The texture wasn’t quite crumbly, but it certainly didn’t have that mouthfeel of even some candies made with tropical oils (coconut oil is good for that).

The flavor is rather empty, a bit like cocoa but not at all like deep, rich chocolate. There were a few pecan pieces, but they only provided some scant texture and not much on the flavor front.

Rating: 4 out of 10

I’m interested to taste the original Heavenly Hash, but have no interest in the Gold Brick. But they do have something called a Gold Brick Malt Egg that seems to be tempting me against my better judgment.

The Girl Tastes did a roundup last year of the classic milk chocolate Elmer’s Eggs (with similar results): Heavenly Hash & Gold Brick plus Pecan Egg & Eggceptionals

Related Candies

1. Pete’s Gourmet Confections: Marshmallows
2. Hershey’s Bliss
3. Princess Marshmallow Eggs
4. Russell Stover Orange Marshmallow Pumpkin
5. Elmer’s Chocolate
6. Boyer’s Mallo Cup
7. Cup-O-Gold

Elmer’s Candy Corp is a very popular and inexpensive brand of boxed chocolates from Louisiana. More recently I’ve been seeing their Valentine’s heart assortments at drug stores and discount chains. For the price I’ve found their candies to be a decent value.

I also knew that they did Easter candies, though this was the first year I saw them at my stores here on the West Coast. The most famous products are their Gold Brick and Heavenly Hash Eggs, which are still devilishly out of reach.

What I did find at the Rite Aid was Chocolate Covered Toasted Marshmallow Eggs

The candies are sold in a tray of six individually wrapped chocolate marshmallow eggs.

The cartoon rabbits on the package are the product of Jim Benton, part of the It’s Happy Bunny (tm) series. (Official website here.)

Inside the tray the little packages come in either pink or powder blue mylar and have a different saying on them:

Each little marshmallow is about two and a half inches long.

They’re quite nice looking, especially for the price (I got my tray on sale for $1.50). The chocolate ripples on the top and for the most part they were in good shape. A few were cracked, but the marshmallow just seemed to seal any fissures. I was afraid they’d be like the Melster ones I got a couple of years ago, but the ingredients here looked decent. More importantly, these smelled sweet and toasty.

The marshmallow here is rather like what you’d get if you just toasted a real marshmallow, it’s very soft, almost runny. The chocolate shell is soft as well, but at least it doesn’t flake off. The marshmallow center has a strong single note vanilla flavor (like fake vanilla extract) but then there’s a second component that’s a little toasted sugar flavor.

The very soft texture of the marshmallow is a little different from other more foamy Easter concoctions, but it’s very smooth (no grain). I ate half of the candies in the package and was overall pleased with them but ultimately they’re too sweet for me to just eat without something to balance it. The little bunnies and their quips on the package was a nice change and would be a fun item to give to friends or pop in your kid’s lunch box. Each egg is about 80 calories.

Related Candies

1. Bubu Lubu
2. Hiding Eggs
3. Princess Marshmallow Eggs
4. Peeps Mash Ups
5. Cadbury Canadian Creme Eggs
6. See’s Scotchmallow Eggs
7. Cadbury Eggs: Creme & Caramel

I wasn’t particularly looking forward to this review. Sera, a longtime reader and sweet photographer, suggested when I mentioned the All Valentines Week that I should get a hold of these boxed chocolates from Elmer’s.

I’d never heard of Elmer’s before. But when I went into the store, I found it even more shocking that I didn’t know who they were, because the stores are just filled to the gills with their heart shaped boxes of chocolates.

Most are on the small side, as this four piece box was, which pleased me that I didn’t need to buy a huge box. The design on the boxes is also rather, um, traditional. Some have pictures of puppies or kittens but most have roses or flowers of some sort.

After bringing the box home I was curious what was inside but I didn’t want to dig right in. So I asked the internets. What I found out was rather interesting. Elmer’s Chocolate only makes five chocolates for their mixed boxes: creamy caramel, chocolate truffle, chocolate fudge, strawberry cream and orange cream.

Milk Chocolate Rectangle is Orange Creme which is a tangy cross between Aspergum and a chocolate covered creamsicle.

Round Milk Chocolate is Soft Caramel - kind of milky tasting, a little salty, a bit creamy and offsets the far too sweet and grainy chocolate very well.

Dark Chocolate Rectangle is Orange Creme - okay, maybe this was strawberry, because it was more pink than orange, but it didn’t taste that way.

Milk Chocolate Square is Chocolate Fudge - sweet, not terribly chocolatey but a pretty smooth and pleasing texture.

Overall, I wasn’t pleased enough with the intensity of the flavors or the quality of the chocolate to want to buy these on sale next week after the holiday is over. But I was pleased enough to now want to try the Heavenly Hash and Gold Brick eggs for Easter as those seem to be the items that made the company famous. I guess when you consider that the box of chocolates is less expensive than a greeting card, it’s probably not a bad way to go as a small token.

On a side note, while exploring the internet in search of info about Elmer’s Candy, I noticed that their website had a copyright notice of 2003, the most recent press release (well only one) posted was from 2002. Their motto on the website is “The Freshest Ideas in Seasonal Candy” ... uh, yeah. Of course they also say that they’re the oldest family run candy business in the US (since 1855).

Here’s an interesting article about the company’s history and present direction.

Other Notes: this box contains 1.5 grams of trans fat.

Related Candies

1. Palmer Hollow Chocolate Flavored Bunny
2. Hershey’s Heart’s Desire
3. Valentines Product Roundup
4. Palmer Bee Mine
5. Russell Stover Heart
6. Ferrero Rocher