Some Heavenly Hash candy vanished for 2 years. The Louisiana treat is back for Easter.

Which came first, the egg or the egg?

That’s as in, which came first in the Elmer Candy Corp.’s lineup of chocolate Easter eggs — Heavenly Hash or Gold Brick?

Well, if you guessed Gold Brick, cue the buzzer. You’re wrong, because the company, popularly known as Elmer’s, won’t be celebrating the gold foil-covered chocolate egg’s centennial for another 16 years, but it’s celebrating a century of the Heavenly Hash Egg now.

That’s right. The Ponchatoula-based candy company’s Heavenly Hash Egg is 100 years old in 2023 — and it’s basically still made from the recipe purchased from a New Orleans Canal Street confectioner in 1923.

Making Heavenly Hash Eggs is a two-day process at Elmer Candy Corp. The marshmallow filling is made on the first day, then it’s topped by two almonds and covered in chocolate on the second.

“We’re still trying to find out the name of the confectioner,” said CEO Robert Nelson, the third generation of his family to head the company. “I don’t know if the confectionery was inside a department store or a separate shop, but we do know they operated on Canal Street.”

A few things have changed since Elmer’s bought that recipe. The company now produces and sells some 3 million pounds of the marshmallow-filled chocolate eggs during the Easter season, which is the only time it’s produced.

Meanwhile, the original confectioner made only enough Heavenly Hash to sell to daily customers.

The history of Heavenly Hash, made in Louisiana

“The candy back then was really made on a big slab,” Nelson said. “It was cut up and put into boxes. What happened when the Elmer’s bought the recipe and the trademark, their intent was to mass produce it and make it widely available for everybody, not just people that were down on Canal Street.”

Elmer’s Heavenly Hash originally was packaged in a box filled with candy cut in squares.

“We started doing it for Easter early on,” Nelson said. “But we don’t make it in the box anymore.”

Keep in mind that Elmer’s was still located in New Orleans, where it opened in 1855, when it started producing Heavenly Hash candy.

The company was founded on the corner of Jackson and Levee streets by Christopher Henry Miller, who turned his pastry chef experience into the Miller Candy Corp. His son-in-law, Augustus Elmer eventually joined the business.

In 1914, Elmer’s sons signed on to what is now known as Elmer Candy Corporation, which, by then, had moved to the corner of Magazine and Poydras streets

Chicago native Roy Nelson purchased the company from the Elmer family in 1963 and moved its operation to Ponchatoula in 1970. Nelson refocused the company’s offerings on seasonal chocolates rather than everyday candy and snacks.

Elmer’s expanded its 30,000-square-foot facility in 2016 by adding 70,000 square feet. It’s now the second-largest heart box manufacturer in the country.

But the spotlight is on the Heavenly Hash Egg, which is now offered in three versions: Original milk chocolate, dark chocolate and the strawberry-filled Heavenly Hash Egg honoring its hometown Ponchatoula’s status as the Strawberry Capitol of the World.

Making the eggs is a two-day process, beginning with its marshmallow center.

“As far as our recipe goes, it really hasn’t changed,” Nelson said. “We make the liquid marshmallow mixture, then we deposit it into powdered cornstarch.”

The cornstarch forms an egg-shaped mold, which draws the moisture out of the marshmallow mixture overnight. What’s left the next day is a marshmallow egg, which is topped by two almonds, then covered in chocolate.

“After that, it gets wrapped,” Nelson said.

But not in just any wrapping — the Heavenly Hash Egg is dressed in a blue foil that announces its name in blue letters trimmed in red.

Elmers begins making not only Heavenly Hash Eggs but its cousins, the Gold Brick and Pecan eggs, in January in preparation for Easter. Still, the wrappers won’t commemorate Heavenly Hash’s 100th.

“You know, we should have done that, but it’s tough in the volume that we’re making,” Nelson said. “Three million pounds sounds like a lot, but had we made commemorative wrappers, we would’ve been using them again next year, and that probably wouldn’t work. So it is not on the package. It’s just something we’ve been talking about and celebrating.”

Back on shelves for Easter

Nelson has spread the word through media mentions. Well, there’s also some commemorative door hangers and T-shirts sold by New Orleans-based clothing and gift shops Little Miss Muffin and Fleurty Girl.

But this year, there’s actually even more to celebrate when it comes to Heavenly Hash. Elmer’s was forced to halt production of the dark chocolate and strawberry-filled eggs for the last two years because of a nationwide cornstarch shortage, which began during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We really just use a truckload of cornstarch, which isn’t a lot,” Nelson said. “But it just wasn’t available. I even called around to owners of other candy companies to see if they had some cornstarch seeing if we could get a truckload, but they didn’t have any, either.”

Nelson says the confection industry is the kind that would have shared — had they had it.

“We ended up getting some, but it limited our production. So, we decided to focus on using what we had to focus on making our original milk chocolate Heavenly Hash Eggs,” he said.

Dark chocolate Heavenly Hash has reentered the market this year. Strawberry will return next year.

Now that you know which egg came first in the Elmer’s company, the only question that remains is which egg is most popular: Heavenly Hash or the combined chocolate and pecan Gold Brick?

“Oh, they run neck-in-neck in popularity,” Nelson said. “Easter really accounts for only a small percentage of our business, but it’s big locally. And you’ll find the popularity of our chocolate eggs is concentrated mostly in the Gulf South from Houston to Pensacola.”

Now, Nelson may be the CEO, but he isn’t a neutral judge in this competition.

“I love the dark chocolate Heavenly Hash Egg,” he said. “There’s nothing like it. That’s actually one of my most favorite things.”