Fortnum & Mason - Piccadilly since 1707

As Easter approaches, Fortnum’s has only one thing on its mind - to create a collection of Easter eggs so delicious and so beautiful that they are worth the year-long wait.

This year the Fortnum’s collection includes (to mention but a few) our ever-popular Decorated Eggs in milk, dark and white chocolate, adorned with handmade sugar flowers and filled with chocolate shapes; our impressively large Colossal Egg and Ultimate Egg, each a generous feast of chocolate for true connoisseurs; and our Marc de Champagne Truffle Egg, packaged for 2012 in a commemorative Jubilee box. We’ve also added some new ideas to our Easter collection, including milk chocolate eggs for boys and girls, filled with chocolate dinosaurs and fairies; and a trio of chocolate eggs in milk, dark and white, each embedded with either marshmallow, cinder toffee or sprinkles.

To ensure that a Fortnum’s egg is the best you can possibly buy, each one is made to our own specifications by a small team of experienced chocolatiers. As with all good food, they start with high quality ingredients; the large blocks of dark and milk chocolate from which each egg is fashioned are made to Fortnum’s own recipe, the same chocolate that goes into our Tercentenary chocolate bars. This chocolate is used in even the smallest children’s eggs, so everything is of the same high quality.

The chocolate is melted in small batches overnight in a proving oven, which keeps the temperature at a constant 40 degrees. It is then tempered, a process in which it is slowly cooled to achieve the ‘snap’ that is characteristic of good chocolate, and then warmed again to give it the flawless shine that distinguishes it from less superior chocolate.

The melted chocolate is poured into antique moulds and left to set. The traditional equipment is very much a Fortnum’s detail; the metal moulds have been used for many decades; the chocolates inside each egg are also made with historic moulds; and even the enrobing machine that coats each chocolate was bought from Fortnum’s itself - Fortnum’s made its chocolates behind the scenes at the Piccadilly store until the 1970s. Refurbished and tweaked, it does an excellent job of coating each chocolate evenly.

When the eggs are ready, the sugar decorations are coloured, cut and moulded by hand and applied carefully to the egg to create a unique design. The eggs are filled with handmade chocolates, which are made by the same team, then wrapped in foil, tied with a ribbon and placed in a presentation box. The designs for the boxes change every year; this year they will bear the stamp of the incomparable Vivienne Westwood, whose design features her signature orb on a background of coloured lace.

The result is a five-star collection of Easter eggs. This is how every Easter egg should be – handmade with the best ingredients, divine to look at and filled with the finest chocolates one could wish for. Thanks to the impeccable craftsmanship of the Fortnum’s team, any one of our eggs will ensure a very happy Easter indeed.