If you thought Easter eggs couldn’t get any bigger, Hotel Chocolat is here to prove you wrong. The brand has once again brought back its famous Ostrich Easter Egg, an enormous chocolate creation weighing in at over 1kg. We tried the Unbelievably Vegan Ostrich Easter Egg as part of our annual best Easter eggs taste test to see whether its eye-watering £90 price tag is actually worth it..
First things first: this thing is huge. The egg comes in two hefty halves and the shell is so thick (about 2cm thick) the team genuinely needed to use a knife to break into it (proceed with caution). Hotel Chocolat have even shared a scale reference of the egg to show the enormity of it against their other Easter eggs in the range.
As soon as it was cracked open, the room filled with a nostalgic dark chocolate aroma, rich with deep, earthy cocoa notes. The shell itself is made from a blend of dark and “nutmilk” chocolate, crafted with 45% cacao and finely milled hazelnuts. This gives the chocolate a beautifully toasted, creamy flavour. Our testers loved how clearly the hazelnut notes came through, balanced with deeper roasted cocoa. There’s also a clever addition of cornflakes in the shell, adding a subtle crunch and lightly toasted flavour that works brilliantly against the smooth chocolate.
Inside is where things get even more exciting. The hollow centre is filled with a small selection of vegan chocolates, making the whole thing feel more like a luxury chocolate hamper disguised as an Easter egg. Highlights included the dark chocolate ginger and hazelnut squares, bursting with generous chunks of candied ginger, and the nutmilk and raspberry praline. The latter was a particular favourite among testers, with its smooth dairy-free chocolate shell and sharp raspberry jelly centre that genuinely tasted like the filling of a classic jam doughnut.
And for how it fared in our taste test? Well, it scored 73/100, impressing the panel with both its creativity and flavour. And if vegan chocolate isn’t your thing, Hotel Chocolat also offers three other Ostrich Egg variations: Everything Thick (milk choc), Serious Dark and Patisserie (a mixture of white, milk and dark).
At over a kilo of chocolate, this egg is very much designed for sharing. If you’re hosting Easter lunch or want a true showstopper for the table, it’s definitely going to be a conversation starter (and nap starter too no doubt). Whether it’s worth £90 depends on how seriously you take your chocolate, but one thing’s for sure: this is next level indulgence.
Mel is the Senior Food & Drink Writer for Good Housekeeping UK, covering all the delicious new product launches that come her way, writing about food and drink topics, and curating gift guides for the best foodie products to buy. Alongside that, she can be found developing and creating cocktails for GH and holds her WSET Level 2 in Wine and Spirits. She was part of the Good Housekeeping Institute food testing team for over four years before moving over to the digital side, so knows a thing or two about great food products. You'll find her scouring the supermarket shelves in her spare time for new and exciting ingredients to experiment with in her kitchen.
