The Art of Bettys Chocolate

With spring just around the corner, we’ve shaken our imagination awake from where it was curled up by the fireplace and set to work creating a host of new treats for Easter. From our gorgeous Milk Chocolate Art Deco Egg and Milk Chocolate Feuilletine Egg to our playful Milk Chocolate Buttons Egg (and its grown-up version, the Milk Chocolate Orange Flavoured Button Egg), our chocolatiers have crafted some real masterpieces this year.

But everything we make for Easter is just as delicious as it is eye-catching. The reason why? Our dedication to the finest chocolate – a story that reaches around the globe and back over 100 years. When the founder of Bettys styled himself ‘Frederick Belmont, Chocolate Specialist’, it was no idle boast. Before opening the first Bettys Café Tea Rooms

in Harrogate in 1919, this resourceful young orphan trained extensively in the art of chocolate making in his native Switzerland, in Marseille and in Paris. More than a century later, our craft chocolatiers maintain Frederick’s high standards by combining traditional skills with present-day artistry to create our very best range of Easter eggs, chocolates and treats.

We start with exceptional ingredients. Our chocolate originates from rare and prized Criollo cocoa beans, grown sustainably in Venezuela’s north-western Maracaibo region by farming communities who over generations have perfected the cocoa’s quality and complex flavour profile. After being sun-dried, the beans are sold to Felchlin, a Swiss company who have been crafting fine chocolate for more than 110 years. They roast the beans whole, then grind them and produce ‘raw’ chocolate couverture. Next comes conching – a careful process of mixing and aerating to distribute the cocoa butter and refine the texture and flavour.

Once each thick slab of couverture arrives at our Craft Bakery’s dedicated Chocolate Room, our chocolatiers temper it, painstakingly melting and cooling to yield the glossy finish and characteristic ‘snap’ of fine chocolate.

Each Bettys Easter egg begins with a mould filled with thick layers of melted chocolate. Next comes the decoration. Arranging individually crafted sugar flowers onto our Spring Bloom Eggs is a job for the steadiest of hands, as is piping swirls of white and dark chocolate onto our Milk Chocolate Art Deco Egg. And each Milk Chocolate Feuilletine Egg is carefully drizzled with an intricate spun chocolate design before being gently brushed with shimmering lustre to finish.

Finally, the Easter eggs are packed into elegant boxes, or foiled and hand-tied with a Bettys ribbon, ready for their journey’s destination – bringing delight to all who unwrap them.

Shop our entire Easter range here.