Just the other day I came across a cute, innocent and delicious looking milk chocolate candy for Easter. It looked a little something like this:
Then I flipped to the other side of the box and it wasn't cute, innocent or even delicious.
Ingredients: Sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate liquor, milk, soya lecithin, PGPR (emulsifiers), vanilla, salt
Okay, I'm not even going to pick on the sugar, milk, vanilla, soy or salt.. even though those ingredients probably came from bad sources and some of them are most likely to be GMO. These ingredients alone make me not want to eat this little treat.. but the ingredient that scares me the most: PGPR.
What the H-E double hockey sticks is a PGPR? The acronym is short for Polyglycerol polyricinoleate. Can you say that 5 times fast? I can't even say it one time slow. PGPR is a cheap chemical substitute for cocoa butter. Grosssss.
I first noticed PGPR a few years ago after purchasing my favorite chocolate bar (at the time).. the beloved Hershey's bar! After biting into it I noticed it tasted.. different. Maybe I bought a bar from a bad batch? I looked at the packaging (this was way before I became obsessed with reading labels) and noticed PGPR as one of the ingredients. The whole list looks like this: Milk chocolate (sugar; milk; chocolate; cocoa butter; lactose; milk fat; soy lecithin; PGPR, emulsifier; vanillin, artificial flavor). There's quite a few fake food ingredients in that chocolate bar.
So what is a mom to do during Easter? I've gone through lots of different organic chocolates, and unfortunately the ingredients aren't always much better. I don't trust a label because it's organic. Ingredients are more important to me than an organic label. I've only found one brand of chocolate without these weird fake food ingredients.
They have so many delicious flavors, but the one pictured above is my favorite. The ingredients look like this: *Organic Raw Cane Sugar, *Organic Cocoa Butter, Organic Whole Milk Powder, *Organic Chocolate Liquor, Organic Caramel (*Organic Raw Cane Sugar, Organic Whole Milk Powder), *Organic Unrefined Whole Cane Sugar, Sea Salt, *Organic Ground Vanilla Beans
Wow - a chocolate bar WITHOUT weird chemical ingredients. Imagine that!
Other varieties of their chocolate bars include: coconut, raspberry, almonds, hazelnut, mint, orange, lemon ginger (see a complete list here). I've checked ingredients on all their chocolate bars, and none of them include soy. Unfortunately, some of their other candies, like the peanut butter candy bar *do* contain soy. This is why I always, always, always read labels.. even if I think I can "trust" a certain brand.
So here's how you can take this chocolate and make it "Easter worthy."
1. You could buy their chocolate Easter eggs. They are out of stock on their website, though. :( I've been looking for them locally but have not found them. I'll definitely keep them in mind for next year and order early.
2. You can buy a chocolate bar and dress them up in these super cute candy bar wrappers from Today's Creative Blog.
3. You can buy some cute silicone molds like these, or these.. or these and either melt one of the flavored bars or some chocolate chips (I like these) and make your own Easter shaped chocolate candies.
You could alternatively use your own homemade chocolate to make these as well. There are two great recipes here and here.
Those are just a few solutions I've come up with on my own. If you have any Easter candy solutions please feel free to share them in the comments section below. :)
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