Butter Krak

Every place in the world has its local food specialties; San Diego = fish tacos, Guadalajara = birria, San Francisco = sour dough bread, and Philadelphia is no exception. While I'm here, you'll probably see several food stories. Today's is about something that I've enjoyed since childhood.

As the leftover Valentine's Day candy starts to disappear from the counters of stores in the Philadelphia area, you begin to find chocolate-covered Easter eggs in its place. One of my favorites is called a Butter Krak egg and it's made by a company called Zitners. Here's a shot of a couple of their products on the counter at Wawa:


S. Zitner is a Philadelphia company that's been around since the 1930s and sells mostly chocolate-covered Easter eggs filled with stuff like marshmallow, peanut butter, coconut, and butter cream. They do the majority of their business at this time of the year and the product is still made mostly by hand with natural ingredients, in other words, like a mom-and-pop type of place. Even the packaging is "classically" styled...note the pinstripe-clad rabbit on the package:


As I mentioned, Butter Krak is really my favorite. It's got a butter cream and coconut center and is dipped in dark chocolate that contains toasted coconut. They're not the prettiest thing around and, actually, look like something you could throw in a swimming pool to clear it out (ala BabyRuth candy bar)...


I struggled to take the last two photos in this post as I wanted to finish the egg off quickly. Here's the last second of this one's life:


You can order them online if you want to try them. If you're going to place an order, I'd recommend getting a few different flavors especially the Butter Cream and Peanut Butter ones.