Whole wheat chocolate chip cookies - and win yourself a massive Easter Egg

So, Hotel Chocolat (via the lovely Beth) offered to send me a free Easter egg. A 1.4kg Ostrich Easter Egg, which comes with a side order of a box of chocolates, a rocky road bar, a caramel road bar and a chocolate rabbit, to be precise. Worth a whopping £65 - which I believe is about £60 more than I spent on our two Easter eggs last year! 

This is what it looks like on the website

And this is what it looked like on my bedroom floor. Nice carpet, eh?

And, my goodness, is it a lot of chocolate. The two egg halves are incredibly thick, and studded with all kinds of nice chewy bits. Mr 'Splorer swiftly took to referring to it as the dinosaur egg. I took half of it to work - and there was still some left at the end of the day! Some of the other half got turned into cookies, but it has taken us about 10 days to get through the rest of it, plus the box of chocolates and the bars. (10 days doesn't sound that long, but remember that Mr 'Splorer has the sweetest of teeth and I myself am never one to say no to a nice bit of chocolate.) In fact, even as I type we are just biting off the head of the rabbit, the last remaining bit. Yum!

It seems that the 1.4kg refers to the total weight, but 997g is still a pretty hefty egg.

 

But I don't want to imply that we haven't been enjoying it. This is a jolly good egg. (Ho ho ho - sorry!) Mr 'Splorer's just described it as 'the best Easter egg he's ever had'. And it is so nice to get an egg made of decent chocolate, rather than melted down advent calendar chocolates, or whatever it usually is. And all the bits on the side are just as full of chocolatey yumminess (though I must say the box of chocolates suffered from the age-old problem of not enough hazelnut praliney ones and too many pointless strawberry and coffee ones, but what can you do?!). I'm not sure I could ever actually bring myself to pay £65 for an Easter egg, but if you were looking to impress or spoil a (potential) loved one over the Easter period, or wanted to splash out on an Easter egg that makes all other Easter eggs feel a bit inadequate, this is the one for you. 

And the good news is that Hotel Chocolat are offering another Ostrich Easter Egg to give away to one of my lucky readers. Go to the bottom of the post for the giveaway rules. 

In the meantime, I also wanted to mention the chocolate chip cookies that I made with this chocolate. I decided to take this opportunity to try a recipe from Good to the Grain, a recipe book that I probably never would have heard of if it wasn't for the lovely food blogs. But it is getting rave reviews all over the shop. And I found these Whole wheat chocolate chip cookies on the Blue Ridge Baker. They are made with whole wheat flour, so they feel a bit more virtuous. There was some talk on the blogs of them being a little salty, so I only used 1 tsp, instead of 1 and a half. And I wouldn't have wanted more than that. They had a pleasing saltiness, though I think they needed a bit more chocolate to counterbalance that. They seemed to come out a bit cakey, so I think next time I'd make them a bit smaller than specified.  But apart from that, these were pretty damn good. They went down very well with Mr 'Splorer and the workmates, anyway!

Now, onto that giveaway...

HOTEL CHOCOLAT OSTRICH EGG GIVEAWAY

Rules

This giveaway is open to all readers over 18 with a UK address.  

The winner will be chosen at random in a method of my choosing (which may or may not involve Mr 'Splorer, a bag and a whole load of bits of paper). 

Closing date: midnight GMT Friday 25th March 2011. 

There are two ways to enter. Either: 

Like Hotel Chocolat's Facebook page or follow Hotel Chocolat on Twitter, and leave a comment on this blog post to tell me you have done so.

or: 

Go onto Hotel Chocolat's website and find the product you would most like to receive for Easter and tell me what it is in a comment on this post. 

....Or both! (For two entries.) 

Oh, and there are A LOT of bloggers trying out and giving away Hotel Chocolat Easter goodies, so for more chances to win, check out the list here.

Good luck! And many thanks to Beth and Hotel Chocolat for sending me the delicious freebie.