Maltesers Medium Egg - 127g

In Britain the Easter egg is not optional. The shops fill up with them weeks ahead, every big chocolate name has one, and the Maltesers egg is the one plenty of people quietly hope has their name on it.

In Canada, people go looking for it for simple reasons. You want the egg you actually had as a kid, with the name you know, or you want your own children to have the one you keep telling them about. A generic egg does the job. This one does the memory.

It is a medium, 127g hollow egg, so it suits one person on Easter morning or a small family willing to negotiate. Keep it somewhere cool and dry, out of the sun and well away from the radiator, and it will sit happily in the cupboard until the day. Then it gets cracked, broken into pieces and passed round the sofa.

People often put one in the basket alongside a box of Maltesers for the grown-ups, or next to other British eggs so every child gets exactly the one they asked for, and nobody sulks.