Grandma Pasqualina and the Chicken that Laid Chocolate Eggs

My grandmother’s name was Pasqualina, which literally means “Little Easter” in Italian, and she was born on Christmas Day. She was a formidable woman who could fill a room just by walking into it. She was loud and always right. She wasn’t one for hugs or sentimental speeches, but she had a hundred other ways of making us feel loved.

Every Christmas and Easter, when the family gathers together, we spend a few moments remembering her and sharing stories from the past to celebrate her birthday and name day. Last Easter, someone brought up the famous chicken.

My grandmother used to own a chicken that laid chocolate eggs. Yes, you heard that right!

According to my grandmother, she owned a very special chicken, and every Sunday morning, without fail, it laid eggs. Not ordinary eggs, obviously. Chocolate ones.

Sunday was family lunch day, when everyone squeezed around her table. Just before lunch, Grandma would quietly call each grandchild into another room, one at a time, as though we were being recruited into an international spy agency.

“There,” she’d whisper, pressing a chocolate egg and a few coins or notes into our hands. “The chicken laid this just for you this morning.”

Naturally, we believed every word.

The money wasn’t much, usually “Mille lire” which was worth less than a pound, but the chocolate egg was priceless. It was wrapped in silver foil and always had a surprise inside. Sometimes the surprise was the same as the one I’d got the week before, but that just meant I could swap it with one of my cousins. There was a thriving underground economy in tiny plastic toys!

On her name day, though, the chicken somehow managed to lay much bigger eggs. Looking back, it was clearly a remarkable bird…Seasonal bonuses and everything.

But Grandma had a rule, which was enough to make us clear our plates:

“Don’t eat the egg until after lunch. You have to finish all your food first, otherwise the chicken won’t lay any more eggs.”

Then came the warning:

“And whatever you do, don’t go upstairs. If the chicken sees you, she’ll fly away.”

Apparently, this wasn’t just any chicken. It laid chocolate eggs… and it could fly. We accepted both facts without asking too many questions. Children are wonderfully gullible.

As the years passed, there were fewer cousins around to trade surprises with. Then, after a stupid argument over one of those little toys, my older cousin decided it was time to ruin my childhood.

“The chicken isn’t real,” she said. “They’re just Kinder Eggs.”

Children can be absolutely ruthless.

The truth, of course, was much less magical and somehow even more magical at the same time. Grandma would unwrap the Kinder Eggs, throw away the red-and-white wrapper, and carefully rewrap each one in ordinary silver kitchen foil. With one simple trick, she’d created a flying, chocolate-laying chicken that kept us happy, well fed and completely enchanted every Sunday.

That was a very sad day for me. It felt a bit like the Christmas Eve years later when I accidentally caught my parents wrapping my first proper bicycle in the living room and realised that Santa was a lie. Some discoveries arrive before you’re ready for them!

Now and then, especially at Christmas, we retell this story and laugh about the famous chicken that laid chocolate eggs. It is one of the many memories that keeps my grandmother alive in our hearts. And perhaps that is why I still love Kinder chocolates, especially Kinder Eggs, because every one of them carries a little taste of my grandmother’s magic.