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...