Choc tactics

IT WAS worth the indignity of wearing a hairnet. I pulled on a white coat, hair protection and scrubbed my hands before entering – not an operating theatre, but the Chocolate Room at Bettys Craft Bakery production centre in Harrogate.

The aroma of chocolate hung tantalisingly in the air. Great bowls of chocolate swished around. Chocolatiers put the finishing touches to handmade chocolates.

Several possessors of very steady hands, delicately decorated each individual chocolate with a swirl. Another put a delicate miniature raspberry on the top of each one. In an adjoining room, boxes were packed with chocolates and chocolate novelties. One woman, with immense precision, tied ribbons and bows around the containers.

This is detailed work that cannot be rushed and at Bettys they take as much pride in their chocolate-making as they do in their bread and cake baking.

These days Bettys may be best known for their baking, but founder Frederick Belmont trained first in Switzerland and then Marseilles as a chocolatier and confectioner. His determination to make a better life for himself, after an early life as a penniless orphan and farmhand, led him across the Channel to England in 1907 to make his fortune.

After boarding the wrong train in London, he found himself in Yorkshire and, advertising himself as “Frederick Belmont, chocolate specialist”, first worked for a Swiss confectionery business in Bradford.

His reputation spread, leading to an invitation to Harrogate by Farrah’s (the toffee people) as their continental chocolate advisor. A few years later, in 1919, Belmont opened his first Bettys tea room, where his chocolates and confectionery were sold.

He opened a bakery just outside Harrogate with its own chocolate and confectionery room, a forerunner of today’s production centre.

There, a small team of highly-skilled chocolatiers trained by him made a range of the finest truffles, creams and liqueurs using continental skills and techniques.

Back in today’s Chocolate Room, resident chocolate specialist Claire Gallagher is the woman charged with boosting Bettys range of chocolates. A pastry chef for 17 years, her last kitchen was Raymond Blanc’s Michelinstarred Manoir Aux Quatre Saisons. She’s cooked for Mick Jagger, Kylie Minogue, George Michael and the Royal family.

Joining Bettys is a bit like coming home. Her dad was a miner in Yorkshire, who later worked on the Channel Tunnel. She trained in catering in Selby.

One of her first brushes with using chocolate came after mentioning to the chef that she’d love to know how to write in chocolate icing. “He told me to write the alphabet four times in chocolate and four times in icing, and to do the same with numbers. Then he told me to write Happy Birthday, Easter and Mother’s Day in French and in English,” she recalls.

“Now I can write better in chocolate than I can with a pen.

“As a patisserie chef, you learn all about chocolate and anything to do with ice cream, mousses, anything that’s sweet. And petit fours – I had a real natural interest for small, very fancy creations that took a lot of time to do, but were like fabulous works of art. I did a lot of competitions in petit fours and chocolate work.”

She remembers the first day she walked into Bettys Chocolate Room. “It was fabulous, all glass and a definite showpiece, but very much a working showpiece. We have to do lots and lots in that room to make sure we’re serving our customers,” she says.

Which brings us back to making chocolate, a temperamental ingredient that demands loving attention to ensure a glossy finish and characteristic chocolate “snap”.

The team of nine chocolatiers make the handmade chocolates in small batches using traditional methods. The chocolate itself is sourced from a Swiss family business that, like Bettys, is long-established and follows similar values. Some of the cocoa beans used are among the world’s rarest – the Cru Sauvage truffles are made from wild cocoa beans grown in the Bolivian Amazon which can only be reached by dugout canoe.

The first stage in chocolate-making is the “tempering” process, which sets the chocolate crystals by carefully melting and cooling the Swiss couverture to precise temperatures. Get it wrong and you end up with chocolates with that unappealing white coating that makes them look as though they’re stale.

Each chocolate is then made by hand. Moulds are hand-filled before being gently cooled, and then hand-piped with freshly-prepared praline, caramels, ganache and cream fillings. Once set, each chocolate is dipped or rolled and finished by hand with intricate decoration before being packed into boxes, many inspired by Bettys packaging from the Thirties.

Gallagher started on the project 18 months ago, working with the marketing team, designers and archivists to decide on the range of chocolates. “I went to some major cities in Europe – Milan, Paris, Vienna, Zurich – and researched chocolate. Somebody’s got to do it. So I’m pretty lucky that I get to travel and eat chocolate for a living,” she says.

She can tell you all about ganache, along with rose and violet creams. Not to mention champagne truffle (Moet and Chandon, ganache truffle, coating of icing sugar and raspberry dust) and blackcurrant ganache.

“Have a taste of this one,” she says pushing a smart box of them in my direction. They’re delicious and possibly my favourite of the ones I tried in the name of research.

Gallagher is a believer in tasting chocolate as you would wine. The Bettys selection aren’t the kind of chocolates you eat in a hurry, she says. You need to savour them to let the different flavours come out in your mouth.

“With chocolate, you look with your eyes first. That’s the first part of your taste. You have an anticipation they’re going to be nice and that starts your taste buds working.

“Textures are important. In a deep ganache, such as the cru sauvage, there’s a purity of chocolate where you get the natural fruitiness of the cocoa bean and an almost naturally present berry flavour coming through. The longer you have the chocolate in your mouth, the more flavours are released. Some of the chocolate bars you would snap off a piece, manipulate it on the roof of your mouth to release the flavours. Everybody’s palate is different, everybody’s interpretation is slightly different.”

As part of the Bettys chocolate campaign, the company has appointed Chocolate Champions in each of its six shops. Gallagher has trained these self-confessed chocoholics on the varieties of cocoa, cultivation and processing – and, of course, the taste. Armed with that knowledge, they’ll be able to help customers match their tastes to the chocolates on sale.

■ National Chocolate Week is from October 11-17. ■ Bettys chocolates are available from Bettys shops and online at bettys.co.uk