Lent is over, and we’re still enjoying our Easter candy here in New Orleans, but this year just isn’t the same. Although the familiar Elmer’s Chocolates, second largest manufacturer of the heart box in the country and the maker of Heavenly Hash Gold Brick, and Pecan Eggs is still located in the area, it moved across the lake to Ponchatoula in the early ‘60s. Nonetheless, it’s a venerable local company, established in 1855 in New Orleans and today run by the third generation of the Nelson family. The company’s founder was Christopher Henry Miller, a German immigrant to New Orleans. His first shop was on the corner of Jackson Street and Levee Street in New Orleans. Later it became Elmer-Miller, the name of Augustus Elmer was added, when he married into the Miller family. In 1914 it became The Elmer Company . Roy Nelson bought the company in 1963 from the Elmer family, who first began making Heavenly Hash Eggs in 1923 and Gold Brick Eggs in 1938. Elmer’s didn’t invent the Heavenly Hash recipe, but bought it from a department store. Today the company makes 15 million candy eggs a year, and we eat a lot of them in New Orleans!
