American Chocolate Sucks

For my very first blog post, I wrote about the American snacks I miss most and bring back with me to the UK.  Well, you might have noticed I left one thing off - chocolate.  If there's one thing Americans just can't get right, it's chocolate.  Don't even say the word "Hershey's" to me.  It's downright embarrassing.  George W. Bush and Hershey's are two things America should be ashamed of, or at least, not proud of.  Charlie Brooker recently described the texture of Hershey's chocolate in his Guardian column as "crumbly, dusty - silghtly old even, as though this was a chocolate bar that had been found in the pocket of a civil war soldier and preserved specifically for my disenchantment."  Usually Charlie Brooker's smartass observations annoy the hell out of me, but he was spot on in this case (sorry Charlie, but Americans rule in the snack department, just messed up on the chocolate bit, so no need to take it so far).  Hershey's just tastes bad.  That's why when I found out about the Kraft/Cadbury takeover, my chocolate instinct quaked with anger.  If there's one thing Britain is 100% right on, bang-up, smashingly, totally, completely good at, it's making Cadbury chocolate.  In case you haven't had the privilege of tasting this milky, highly superior chocolate sold everywhere including your local newstand, Cadbury chocolate is, in my opinion, the best chocolate in the world.  Better than Godiva, better than Lindt, better than any £100/$100 luxury-top-of-the-line-chocolate you can think of. 

And as Easter is soon approaching, a miraculous transformation takes place in British supermarkets everywhere.  If you happen to raise your head and look up on the shelves these days, you'll see they are suddenly lined with boxes and boxes of massive chocolate Easter eggs - most as big as my head (*cue lame joke*: without calling myself an egghead, that is).  American's aren't that into the whole Easter thing ... ok, we had the occasional egg hunt as a kid, dressed up, had the basket, blah blah, but there's none of this frantic dash-for-the-shelves chocolate rush that occurs in England. 

The one egg I covet and look forward to eating the most, is the sickeningly sweet Cadbury creme egg, which Wikipedia describes as "a thick milk chocolate shell, housing a white and yellow filling made from egg, cream, sugars and other additives."  Mmm ... other additives.  Love that part.  Around this time, Cadbury Creme Egg McFlurries also pop up at McDonald's (I've had one - it's utterly delicious and disgusting at the same time) and bags of Mini-Creme Eggs are also available for sale.  Half an egg is usually enough and a whole one could easily make you feel sick.  But there's something incredibly addictive about them ... must be those "other additives."  Yummy.

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