Nicola Fenwick gains an insight into the skills of the master chocolatier.

CHOCOLATE is a delight to the senses.

It’s fair to say that most people, men and women, love it. But for women in particular, myself included, there is a special relationship.

This seems paradoxical as it’s also fair to say that many women do not have a positive body image and chocolate isn’t exactly up there with celery when it comes to watching our figures.

It is the little devil on our shoulders, one of the biggest saboteurs of any attempt to get in shape, yet we find it irresistible because it offers us a feast of sensual pleasure.

The botanical name of chocolate is Theobroma cocoa – food of the gods.

For that reason, I was thrilled to be invited to a place not many are able to visit. Bettys’ chocolate room – A Willy Wonka-esque paradise for chocolate-lovers.

The chocolate room has pride of place at the company’s craft bakery in Harrogate.

It is the first room you see as you enter the building and its large glass windows offer an immediate insight into the inner sanctum.

This is because, while Bettys is famous for its tearooms, founder Frederick Belmont’s first love was chocolate and he wanted the room to be the first thing people saw when they entered the building.

In 1920, Belmont, a Swiss confectioner and master chocolatier, advertised his chocolates as a cure for weak hearts and nerves. Ninety years on, the room remains one of the few places in Britain where the time-honoured craft of the chocolatier is still practised.

Today, the seven chocolatiers boast 128 years of experience between them. Some are even sent to Switzerland for further training in their art.

They create products using traditional craft techniques, as well as modern methods, to achieve absolute perfection.

They are hand-finished and painstakingly decorated with amazing skill.

Bettys’ Oompa Loompas have much in common with those in Roald Dahl’s Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – they work hard, usually starting at the crack of dawn, and they love their jobs.

But, far from looking like them, these chirpy chocolatiers have a bizarrely youthful appearance which belies their birth certificates. Some say this is because the chocolate room is kept at an unwavering 19C, whatever the weather.

The temperature is crucial – chocolate is extremely temperamental and susceptible to heat and cold, draughts and damp. It starts to melt at 34C and, as body temperature is 37C, this explains why it melts in your mouth.

Chocolate contains serotonin, a chemical which is also produced naturally in the body and regulates our mood, so anything containing it is bound to give us a lift.

The process of making eggs and other chocolate creations begins with white, milk and dark chocolate being put into separate melting pots.

Each then goes into its own tempering machine which tempers, or melts, the chocolate to exactly the right temperature.

Liquid chocolate flows out of a tap on the machines.

As part of my visit, I was invited to make a milk chocolate egg, which I did with the help of Roger Crowther, who said: “I don’t think you are ever in charge of chocolate. It’s in charge of you. It is very unpredictable, but fascinating.”

He gave me a polished halfegg- shaped mould and told me to “stipple” the inside of it, which ensures the chocolate does not stick to the mould. It is done by holding a sponge under tempered dark chocolate and dabbing the inside of the mould.

Next, you fill a metal jug with liquid milk chocolate and pour it into the egg mould.

This is a truly pleasurable experience, but one that requires enormous will power and self-restraint – it is not the done thing to stick one’s head under the tap and drinking from the jug would be frowned upon.

Once the egg mould is full to the brim, the chocolate is tipped out and the mould rolled on metal bars. Excess chocolate is scraped from the edge of the mould, which is then placed face down on a metal surface and tapped all over. The vibrations make the liquid chocolate run along the line of the mould so that it does not drip directly down onto the surface.

It sets in a few minutes and is then ready for another coat.

All Bettys’ eggs have two coats of chocolate, except for the Imperial, which has three.

Following the second coat, the egg is placed in the fridge for about ten minutes. After that, it is tapped from the mould.

Bettys produces about 8,000 hand-made Easter eggs each year. The Imperial is part of this year’s theme of English woodland scenes. The flower decorations include lily of the valley, primrose and pussy willow. It weighs about 5kg, is 52cm high and has a girth of one metre. The eggs are accompanied by a selection of woodland creatures.

The most popular animal this year was the milk chocolate badger. Sadly, its popularity resulted in it being hunted to the point of extinction. With each one taking an hour to make and demand being extremely high, the chocolatiers have not been able to keep up. About 450 were made for Easter, along with 600 rabbits.

The company has strong social and ethical values. Cristina Talens, the company’s ethical trading manager, said: “We are a business that cares about the communities we trade with. We have strong social and environmental values.

Our goal is to work with the very best quality suppliers at home and overseas, and we believe that quality and trading fairly go hand in hand.”

All Bettys’ couverture, or raw chocolate, comes from independent Swiss family business Felchlin, which has more than 100 years of experience.

The cocoa beans used in Bettys chocolate are very different to the bulk beans or commodity cocoa grown in West Africa, Brazil and the Far East.

Only the very rare criollo bean is used for its milk and dark chocolate. Only three per cent of the world’s cocoa production uses this bean, which comes mainly from farms in Venezuela, with a few in Bolivia and Peru.

So what becomes of those enormous Imperial eggs?

Does anyone actually buy them? At £150-£200 each, they are not exactly a snip, but I’m assured that a small number have been specially ordered.

I’d like to think that, rather than being used as an impressive centrepiece for a dinner party or business lunch, the eggs are given to children, possibly resembling Augustus Gloop, who give it a good effort, but eventually admit defeat, covered in chocolate and feeling very, very sick.