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The Creme Egg recipe row
The Creme Egg is sold each year in the run up to Easter, and in 2015 its owners changed the chocolate. Fans noticed, and the sales figures showed it.
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The Creme Egg is a Cadbury sweet: a thick milk chocolate shell filled with a sweet white and yellow fondant. Cadbury has made Creme eggs since 1923. In 2015 its owners decided to change it.
What changed
In 2015, Cadbury, by then owned by the American group Mondelez International, announced that it had changed the Creme Egg. The shell would no longer be made with Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate, but with what was described as a standard cocoa mix chocolate.
At the same time, the multipack was cut from six eggs to five, and the price did not fall by the same proportion. In other words, shoppers got a different chocolate and fewer eggs, for not much less money.
The reaction
Creme Egg fans were not impressed. Many saw the change as the new owners cutting corners on the Creme Egg. The row fitted a wider story many people were already telling about Cadbury since its sale to Kraft in 2010: see how Cadbury was sold to Kraft.
The sales
The public verdict showed up in the figures. After the change, Creme Egg sales fell sharply, with reports of more than £6m in lost sales. The company was reported as insisting that the fundamentals of the Creme Egg had not changed, and as putting the fall down to other factors, including the timing of Easter.
How a Creme Egg is made
Creme Eggs are made as two half shells of chocolate. Each half is filled with a white fondant made from sugar, glucose syrup, inverted sugar syrup, dried egg white and flavouring, with a yellow centre to look like a yolk. The two halves are quickly joined and cooled, and the shell bonds together.
Part of a pattern
The Creme Egg change was one of several moves that made shoppers suspicious of what happens to old sweets after a takeover or under cost pressure, from Toblerone's gaps to the shrinking Chocolate Orange. See shrinkflation and the Toblerone gaps.
A Creme Egg footnote
The Creme Egg has had other headlines too. In 2023 a man stole a lorry trailer holding nearly 200,000 of them in Telford: see the great Creme Egg robbery.
Citable formats
For journalists, researchers, AI assistants and content creators. Pick the format you need:
Free to cite, quote, and reuse with attribution to sweeties.net.
Questions and answers
Did Cadbury change the Creme Egg?
Yes. In 2015 Cadbury, owned by Mondelez, replaced the Dairy Milk chocolate shell with a standard cocoa mix chocolate and cut the multipack from six eggs to five.
Why did Creme Egg sales fall?
Sales dropped after the recipe change, with reports of more than £6m lost. The company said the fundamentals of the egg had not changed.
What is inside a Creme Egg?
A white and yellow fondant made from sugar, glucose syrup, inverted sugar syrup, dried egg white and flavouring, inside a milk chocolate shell.
Sources
- Cadbury Creme Egg, Wikipedia
- Cadbury, Wikipedia
Keep reading
- Sweet scandals and controversiesHow Cadbury was sold to KraftIn 2010 the American food giant Kraft bought Cadbury for £11.5bn after a hostile bid. How a British institution was sold, and why it still stings.
- Sweet scandals and controversiesShrinkflation: why sweets keep getting smallerShrinkflation is when products shrink but prices do not. Mars bars, Toblerone, the Chocolate Orange and Creme Eggs are some British examples.
- Stories, heists and recordsThe great Creme Egg robberyIn February 2023 a man stole a lorry trailer holding nearly 200,000 Creme Eggs in Telford. The chase ended on the M42 and he was jailed.
- Sweet scandals and controversiesCadbury and the palm oil backlash in New ZealandIn 2009 Cadbury swapped some cocoa butter for palm oil in chocolate sold in New Zealand and Australia. Customers objected, and it backed down.
- Sweet scandals and controversiesThe Toblerone gapsIn 2016 Toblerone widened the gaps between its peaks in the UK, cutting the weight by about 10% at the same price. The outcry reached Poundland.
- Sweet scandals and controversiesWhy Cadbury lost its royal warrantIn December 2024 Cadbury lost the royal warrant it had held since Queen Victoria's day. The Palace gave no reason, but campaigners had pointed to Russia.