Fed-up with her favourite chocolate treats changing...here's how to make your own 'Creme Egg'.

I'm about to have a rant, so brace yourselves. Why do the giants of the chocolate world keep mucking about with our favourite treats? Seriously why?

Not a year goes by without some white-coated matron of the industry destroying the very fabric of our youth (well mine anyway).

I'm sure I'm not the only one to have held a Mars Bar in my hand and seriously contemplated whether it's got smaller or it's just that I've got bigger. It's the latter by the way. The Kit Kat Chunky has met a similar fate. As has Terry's Chocolate Orange, which has shrivelled by an incredible 10%.

Who else laughed in the face of reports last year that the Toblerone was undergoing a makeover? I certainly did. 'That's fake news,' I told my friends. Nothing to worry about (although secretly I was drafting an email to the press department of said bar to check, just in case).

Turns out it was real. Quite unbelievably Mondelez made the decision to remove every other triangle from within the glorious silver wrapping of this bar. How very dare they!

I immediately told my mum, Violet Beauregard-style, that what I really wanted for Christmas was a stockpile of Toblerone – and she better go shopping sharpish before they start mucking about with it.

As I slid my first bar out of the packaging in December though, it was clear they'd pipped me to the post- darn it.

I was reminded, in that moment, of the abject disappointment I felt when I tried the rehashed Cadbury's Creme Egg in 2015 – a confection I genuinely didn't eat for the first 10 years of my life because I really thought it had a har- boiled egg underneath the chocolate shell.

Yes, in 2015 with said goodbye to the Creme Egg as we've known and loved it, and found ourselves stuck with a mere imitator – the Dairy Milk exterior having been replaced with bog standard milk chocolate. It's just not the same. And consumers protested by spending their hard-earned Easter cash elsewhere, causing a multi-million pound loss for Mondelez.

So I got to thinking. How can I bring back the beloved Creme Egg of my childhood? And the answer was simple. DIY. Here it is folks. It might not look as pretty as the original but it tastes helluva good.

Homemade 'Creme' Egg

(makes 1 10-15cm egg – for two to share)

Ingredients

200g Dairy Milk chocolate,

fondant icing sugar (not regular icing sugar),

orange food colouring,

1 10-15cm chocolate egg mould (silicon is best)

Method

The trickiest thing is tempering the chocolate. You'll need a chocolate thermometer. They're not too expensive online or in your local kitchen gadget shop.

Place your egg mould in the fridge.

Finely chop all the chocolate and melt three quarters of it in a bowl suspending over a saucepan of simmering water.

Don't let the pan boil!

Once melted and reaching 45C to 50C take off the heat and remove a third of the mix to another bowl.

Add the remaining chopped chocolate to the main bowl and stir and stir until it is 27C.

Now add in the rest of the melted chocolate and stir to bring the temperature up to 29-30C.

It's important to follow this method so your chocolate doesn't 'bloom'.

Now spoon the chocolate into each half of your egg mould. Because it's cold it should start to stick to the edges quite quickly.

Swirl it around to coat and place the whole thing in the freezer for 10 minutes.

Remove and allow to set further.

If you've tempered the chocolate properly it should release quite easily from the mould.

To fill, mix together about 150g of the icing sugar with just enough water to make a very thick fondant paste.

Spoon into one half of the egg, leaving a tablespoon or two in the bowl.

Colour the remaining filling and spoon into the centre of the egg.

I like to leave the other half of the egg empty and break it up to scoop up the filling.