COCOA CRAZY

Award-winning chocolatier Paul A Young shares his recipes for sweet success with Amy Bryant. Photography by Joakim Blockström

STANDING OVER A marble surface with a palette knife in one hand and a wallpaper scraper in the other, Paul A Young is choreographing a pool of molten chocolate. The master chocolatier spreads and swirls it with deft flicks as it cools to the optimum temperature to deliver, once set, the characteristic snap of tempered chocolate. It’s a process he has practised for more than 13 years, and he never tires of it.

‘I still love chocolate, and eat it every day,’ Young tells me. A former pastry chef, he opened his first boutique in 2006, in north London, a week before Easter. ‘I had no idea how busy it would be,’ he says. These days his Easter production, from the thousands of Billi Bunnies filled with caramel to this year’s collection of half-eggs peppered with sugar sprinkles, begins on Boxing Day. The classic chocolate bunny has been a staple since day one, ‘always brushed with gold and finished with a ribbon’.

Young’s award-winning products are playful and innovative, inspired by everything from a trip to Mumbai (masala spices in a truffle) to the cocktails on a night out: cue a mouth-watering combination of gin and cucumber with pinkgrapefruit zest and coriander-seed oil in 64-per-cent Madagascan chocolate.

‘I love to make things fun, and accessible,’ he says, hence his favourite chocolate tart layered with brownie, salted caramel and Mini Eggs. Hot cross buns, too, become the base of crunchy bars, which deliver subtle spice and fruit. ‘That’s the joy of making something that looks like a lot of work, but isn’t at all.’

This year his three London shops will sell a made-to-order 8kg, 45cm-tall chocolate egg with a kaleidoscopic hand-painted design. ‘You can’t change the Easter egg; everything has been done, so I just want to have fun with it. It’s the perfect time to be free-spirited.’ paulayoung.co.uk