I took a masterclass at Dublin's school of chocolate — here's how I made the perfect Easter Egg

If you think of Willy Wonka when you hear the words 'chocolate school', it's time to get real. Nicola Brady sets aside her visions of chocolate rivers and signs up for her first-ever chocolate masterclass 

Nicola Brady tries her hand at using a dipping fork to coat the filling with chocolate uniformly and marking the top .Photograph Moya Nolan.

When I was a kid, I always fantasised about working in a chocolate factory. I dreamed of rivers of molten chocolate, giant bowls of ganache and all the leftover treats you’d get to eat straight off the conveyor belt. 

All I ever wanted was to dip my hand in a chocolate river and fill my cheeks with truffles, before eating a toffee apple plucked from a tree.

But after half an hour in a chocolatier workshop, I realise that Willy Wonka was a liar.

For starters, the process of making chocolate involves far more maths than I would have expected (which was none). 

When I walk into the bright workshop, in a quiet corner of Dublin’s Citywest, there are equations scrawled on a whiteboard, depicting the exact temperatures required to temper chocolate. 

Later in the morning, those numbers are replaced with the precise proportions of the perfect ganache.

Nicola Brady with chocolates she worked on in the class at the Co-Lab kitchen. Picture: Moya Nolan.

I am a pretty decent cook, but I’m not a fan of baking. It’s the precision involved that stumps me. I’m more of a slapdash, see-what-happens kind of chef. My motto is, “eh, good enough”. 

You don’t get away with that in the chocolate world, which I quickly learned when presented with a list of recipes that include measurements such as “36g of dextrose” and “13g of inverted sugar”.

I’m here at Co-Lab’s level one Chocolate Masterclass, to learn how to make the kind of incredible chocolates that you’d see at the end of a Michelin-starred meal, or in a high-end chocolatier in Paris.

The two men leading Co-Lab at Odaios Foods are Erik Van der Veken and Cyril Borie, master chocolatiers/pastry chefs from Belgium and France, respectively. In short? They know their stuff.

And the people attending the workshop are just as impressive. As we stand in a circle in the morning, introducing ourselves to the group, I learn we have head pastry chefs in our midst, alongside executive chefs from leading Irish hotels. 

The man to my right reveals that he has worked in not one, but two restaurants with two Michelin stars apiece.

Then it’s my turn to speak: “Well, from one extreme to the other….”

HOW THE CHOCOLATE GETS MADE

I’m partnered with the endlessly sweet and patient Rahul Digpaul, chef de partie at the Killarney Park Hotel. Together (and I use that word loosely) we make Madagascan enrobed chocolates, and dozens of tiny dark chocolate eggs filled with a mojito ganache, the thick truffle flavoured with potent rum and fresh mint leaves.

It’s the eggs that give me bother. We learn the knack of tempering chocolate. By bringing the chocolate up to a certain temperature, then down again, you’re left with a smooth, glossy shell that snaps when you crack into it. 

Even better, we learn that one of the best ways to temper chocolate is by pouring it onto a cold marble slab and moving it around with a giant scraper, in a mesmerising swirl.

That’s all well and good, but the process of filling the tray of egg-shaped moulds with said chocolate is far trickier than it sounds.

Erik van der Veken, chef, tempering chocolate in the Chocolate Lab's classroom. Photograph Moya Nolan.

You have to pour in the chocolate, smoosh it around, scrape off the stragglers, tap out the bubbles and flip the tray over, all while moving quickly before the chocolate sets. 

The problem is, I find myself so mesmerised by Erik’s demonstration that I’m not really concentrating. When he tips over the tray to smooth out the edges, chocolate drips down into the bowl in glossy ribbons, and the smell … oh, the smell. It’s intoxicating.

So intoxicating that, when it’s my turn, I have no idea what I’m doing. I ruin two trays in total by making the eggs too thick (I try to claim that’s how I like them, but I learn the proportions are then all off). 

In fairness, there’s no waste. All the chocolate gets tipped back into the tempering machine, a contraption in the corner of the kitchen where shiny melted chocolate constantly churns and pours out of a tap into a bowl. 

You’re not allowed to stand underneath it with a giant spoon, though. Or your open mouth. Another chocolate factory dream dashed.

Cyril Borie, chef, watches as one of the class participants works with a mould in the Chocolate Lab's kitchen Photograph Moya Nolan.

In fact, there’s remarkably little eating done by the other chefs in the room. While I stand next to scrapings of semi-set chocolate, looking at it as though I’m a feral cat begging at a café table, I ask Erik what the etiquette is regarding eating scraps from the workstations.

“No one has ever asked me that before,” he says, looking slightly perplexed.

I’m heartened, though, to see Cyril digging into the huge sacks of Valrhona chocolate drops, and encouraging us to follow suit and taste them all. The variety is huge, from a biscuity blonde Dulcey chocolate to a fruity Manjari 64% variety. And they all taste incredible. But, like all chocolate, they taste even better when melted.

So it was a harsh moment when I realise that, in a professional setting, I can’t lick the melted chocolate off a spatula. It takes every ounce of strength I have not to do so. Standing in the kitchen and licking a spoon of melted chocolate is one of the greatest joys in life. But I need to pretend I have at least heard of food hygiene.

What I do quickly realise, though, is that if I ‘spill’ some of the chocolate on my hand, I can lick it off with only a few looks of judgement from the chefs in the room before I go to wash my hands in the sink.

Erik van der Veken, chef, puts gold leaf for the finishing touch to these Millionaire Eggs made with blonde chocolate, with praline, caramel chocolate and crunchy biscuit pieces on the inside. Photograph Moya Nolan.

PROFESSIONALS AT WORK

Watching these chefs work is impressive. One of them stands poker straight, hands behind his back like a soldier, and another stares at her work with ferocious intensity (which probably explains why her chocolate ends up in the trays, not on the counter).

In fairness, this workshop is geared more towards the professionals. 

Erik and Cyril started Co-Lab to create a more modern style of training for the Irish hospitality industry, not for novices like me who don’t know how to measure glucose without making a mess (or, in all honesty, know what glucose is). While passionate home cooks with some knowledge of patisserie and confectionery would likely get a lot of out of it, really it’s the chefs who shine.

It also means the chocolates that the other workshop participants make are incredible. Each pair makes two different kinds, which we all get to eat and take home at the end of the day. 

Nicola Brady with the finished "Millionaire Eggs" at the Co-Lab .Photograph Moya Nolan.

There are giant Easter eggs, made with the blonde Dulcey chocolate, blasted with a cocoa water mixture to add texture then topped with edible gold. There are long, semi-curved bars, filled with caramel salé and crunchy feuilletine, and marked with an edible Co-Lab logo leaf on the bottom. I finish up the day by filling a bag with them all, spending the next week digging into pistachio praline cubes and passion fruit ganache shells.

My own creations, thanks mostly to Rahul and his patience, are fairly cracking as well. The tiny eggs twinkle in the light, and the ganache inside is perfect, encased in a tempered shell with a smooth slice of solid chocolate in the middle, thanks to my handiwork with a tool that looks a little like a hairdryer.

Erik van der Veken, and Cyril Borie chefs with the fininshed chocolates made by participants of their chocolate making class at the Co-Lab Photograph Moya Nolan.

But I think, in the future, I’m going to leave it to the professionals, and stick to what I’m good at: eating.

• Chocolate Masterclass, Level 1, costs €250 for the one-day workshop, including lunch and chocolates. Other Masterclasses include Patisserie Foundations, Advanced Chocolaterie and many others. co-labschool.ie