Chocolate for discerning Easter Bunnies

By David McNair |
Published online 10:07am Tuesday Apr 19th, 2011
and in print issue #1016 dated Thursday Apr 21st, 2011

Gearharts Easter Egg Bar. Not your typical Easter Basket goodie.

When you think of packing Easter Baskets with chocolate eggs and bunnies, you don't necessarily think Gearharts Fine Chocolates. More like those goodies you find at CVS and Walmart.

But this year gourmet chocolatier Tim Gearhart has responded, creating the cherished bunny eggs, but then melting them down to pure chocolate. Four thousand egg bunnies RIP!

"You know how sculptors remove the excess marble to reveal the underlying art?" says Gearhart's partner Bill Hamilton. " We're just reversing the process."

It's all tongue-in-cheek, of course, but as Hamilton says, " it does create a lot of perplexion in the shops."

As the package explains, Gearharts has melted its finest "Easter eggs" into a "no-fuss" milk chocolate bar with Spanish almonds and fine wafer flakes.

"We get a lot of seasonal requests for molded Easter eggs and bunnies, but it is just not our thing," explains Hamilton. "With this Easter Egg Bar, customers get all of the Eastery goodness without the cliché."

Gearhart's also packages some organic peanut butter truffles in an Egg-shaped box, but that little specialty has already sold out this Easter season.