The Best 10 Fancy Easter Candies For 2016

Fill your basket with these 10 fancy Easter treats

Long before it's time for brunch and even before the annual Easter egg hunt, there's a special Easter meal nestled in a layer of green grass that you have to eat first. And it consists exclusively of chocolate and marshmallows.

This year, fill your Easter basket with something more special than shrink-wrapped chocolate bunnies and nearly stale marshmallow treats. That way, Sunday morning's power breakfast can consist of bacon caramel eggs and ultra-realistic chocolate asparagus stalks.

Skip the picked-over supermarket shelf and go with these 10 treats that would make even the Easter Bunny jealous. Hop to it, because Easter's coming up fast.

Wandering Rabbits

How often do you actually see a bunny standing at attention like the typical drugstore variety? It's more likely to be scurrying about, like these pistachio- and hazelnut-filled rabbits. If you're in New York or Chicago, stop by the shop to pick up in-store-only strawberry and lemon-caramel versions.

Vosges, $24

Bacon Caramel Eggs

Vosges also delivers with these gold-wrapped treats. Each one is like a bacon-egg breakfast sandwich but encased in chocolate instead of a kaiser roll, and given an extra flavor boost from Alderwood smoked salt.

Vosges, $13.50 for three

 

 

Chocolate Asparagus

For those who've been tricked into eating vegetables that "taste like candy," this time it's for real. These realistic hand-painted white chocolate stalks are hiding a dark chocolate core. If carrots or mushrooms are more your thing, you have the options for those as well.

Terrain, $30 for four

Peep-a-Boos

This is what happens when Dominique Ansel has his way with marshmallow Peeps. Crack through a real eggshell to find a chocolate egg, itself encasing a puffy marshmallow chick. You have to be in New York to pick these up (but even if you're not, you can ogle at the cuteness). And while you're at the shop, get a quirky (and adorable) egg-straterrestrial.

Dominique Ansel, $28 for six

Cracked Eggs

New this year, these white chocolate truffles from L.A. chocolatier Valerie Gordon have dehydrated raspberry and rose petals to give them a "cracked" appearance.

Valerie Confections, $18 for six

Fluffy Toffee Bar

This creamy milk chocolate bar has crunchy bits of toffee and pockets of marshmallow that melt in your mouth. Complete the set with the fresh mint and coconut-almond truffle bars—they all have adorbs illustrated packaging with spring buzzwords.

Seattle Chocolates, $3.50

Handmade Marshmallow Chicks

No ambiguous-tasting balls of sugar here. You'll have to be in New York to score these upscale versions of the light-as-air sweets, which are distinctly lemon flavored and have chocolate pearl eyes.

Épicerie Boulud, $9 for four

Signature Eggs

There's no need to put these eggs in an incubator—they already have baby animals inside. Yes, hidden inside each hand-decorated egg is a peanut butter praline-filled dark chocolate bunny. Biologically correct? No. Delicious? Of course.

Zoe's Chocolate Co., $16 each

Spring Sweets Bento Box

Trade your Easter basket for an Easter box, which comes with vibrant robin's-egg caramels, gummy bunnies and frogs, and pastel chocolate marshmallow eggs. Each treat is packaged in its own portable cube, so you can leave one at work, one in the car, one next to your bed . . .

Sugarfina, $34

Spring Crate

This all-in-one selection will have you set until Memorial Day. The panoply of treats includes crispy pear-cranberry and orange-pistachio eggs, blackberry and Cointreau truffles, and L.A. Burdick's adorable signature mice. Easter breakfast, solved.

L.A. Burdick, $74