It’s a Wonderful (Chocolatier’s) Life

Early mornings, truffle mathematics, and the reality of handmade chocolate.

“Oh, how lovely!” - the frequent response when I tell people what I do.

If you’ve ever watched those beautiful chocolatier reels on social media, you could be forgiven for thinking my life is a sequence of slow-motion cocoa drizzles and delicately painted moulds, all set to something soft and vaguely Parisian. Perfect shells. Mirror shine. An elegant human in pristine whites gently tapping a mould like a woodland fairy of confectionery. It looks calm. Artistic. Almost meditative.

There are many glamorous things about being a chocolatier. For instance………… Hang on………. I’ll think of something in a minute……..

My Christmas rush starts at the end of October. While most people are still buying pumpkins, I’m ordering ingredients in bulk, checking packaging stock, and preparing for events that I’ll be attending in the next few months. By November, it’s full throttle. Orders start drifting in long before December properly arrives. Some customers are beautifully organised and order very early for Christmas - which is a double-edged sword. Because truffles ordered in October won’t keep until late December. So I email to check: is this for Christmas? Would you like me to dispatch later? Are you gifting sooner?

Alongside all the Christmas preparations, the steady trickle of everyday orders still needs to be made and posted as well. Birthdays don’t stop just because December is coming.

It’s invisible work that doesn’t show up in a reel. Here are the bits no-one sees…………

“I Tumble Out Of Bed And I Stumble To The Kitchen….. “

From November onwards I’m in the kitchen by 4.30 am - 5.00 am if I’m having a lie in. The house is dark and not remotely supportive. The air is cold. I turn on an audio book or a postcast. The cat opens one eye, gives me a look of profound disdain. I am crushed. Satisfied, she closes the eye and goes straight back to sleep.

No grabbing a cup of ambition - just coffee strong enough to alter destiny. Well, actually it’s warm water and lemon juice but the coffee bit sounds more dramatic. My hair is securely imprisoned in a deeply unflattering net - nothing says festive glamour like food safety compliance. My apron is clean (always clean - busy I may be, unhygienic I am not). Hands washed. I sanitise the work surfaces for the first of many times today. I check my list and decide what needs to be done first. I assemble my ingredients and utensils. Working 9 to 5? In my dreams.

“I Like To Move It, Move It…..”

At some point, a delivery arrives. Fifteen-kilogram boxes of chocolate.

Fifteen kilos may not sound like much until you are lifting it from doorstep to kitchen, from kitchen to storage, from storage back to the workbench. Chocolate is heavy. Sugar is heavy. Boxes of boxes are heavy.

Then there are events.

Crates of stock hauled to and from the car. A folding table. Display stands. Decorations. Packaging. Card machine. ‘Emergency’ paraphernalia.

“Humping crates” is not very glamorous language.

But it is accurate.

“I’m Still Standing…..”

There are endless hours at the cooker and worktop.

Turkish Delight alone is an act of devotion. First the sugar syrup - carefully brought to temperature. Then the starch mixture. Then the long, patient stirring of what is, essentially, sugary lava for a full half hour until it reaches the perfect consistency. Then it needs to be left for a minimum of 6 hours to set - the longer the better. And one batch makes enough for one plain box and one dipped in chocolate. That’s it.

Fondants are similar. Sugar syrup again. Cooling. Flavouring. Whipping. Kneading. Resting. Rolling. Cutting into neat rounds. One batch makes two boxes. Two.

Then comes the dipping. Or, if we’re being fancy about it: enrobing.

“What are you doing today?”

“Oh, just a little enrobing, darling.”

It sounds like something performed in silk with a string quartet nearby. In reality, it is hours of standing, coating fondant creams and marzipan centres in tempered chocolate. Tapping the fork on edge of the bain marie to shake off excess. Sliding the piece onto the drying mat. And just as you’re about to place it perfectly…….… it slips. Back into the depths of the melted chocolate. You give it a hard stare - one you learned from the cat. If it’s the fifth or sixth time, you swear a bit. You retrieve it. Carry on. Tap. Tap. Tap. Over and over and over again. When the chocolate has set……. you dip it again.

Then, as Christmas gets closer, there are the truffles. First comes the arithmetic. How many assorted boxes have been ordered. How many “pick your own”. How many of each flavour truffle I’ll need to fill them. How much of each flavour ganache that will take. How much chocolate, how much cream. At some point I am surrounded by notes, scribbles and mental calculations that feel suspiciously like advanced mathematics. Next Christmas, perhaps I’ll make a spreadsheet.

Then comes the scooping. Hundreds of truffles. Scoop after scoop of ganache, lined up on trays across every available surface in the kitchen. For a brief period it looks as if I am running a very small, very chocolatey geology department.

And finally, the finishing. Rolling, dipping, coating, decorating. Tray after tray until the numbers finally match the orders and the boxes begin to fill.

It’s a curious sort of mathematics. One where the answer is always…. more truffles.

“Don’t Stop Me Now…..”

Most days, I don’t eat until mid-afternoon. Not because I’m virtuous but because there never seems to be an appropriate moment.

And if I’m honest, there’s another reason. If I sit down properly - really sit down - I may not want to get up again. The sofa looks seductively soft and welcoming and there’s probably a cheesey Christmas film on the TV…..

When your feet are going numb, when your arms have been lifting, twisting, tapping and stiring all morning, momentum is your friend. Stop, and everything stiffens. Stop, and the aches gets louder.

So I carry on.

Coffee (which will be reheated in the mircowave at least 3 times before I finish it). Water. The odd nibble of something that broke when I turned out the mould.

And suddenly it’s three o’clock and I realise I should probably eat something resembling a meal. It sounds dramatic written down. It doesn’t feel dramatic in the moment. It just feels like Tuesday.

Tempered chocolate waits for no witch. Boiling sugar certainly doesn’t. Once you’re in the middle of a batch - syrup climbing to temperature, fondant at that crucial cooling stage, Turkish Delight reaching its final glossy thickness - you can’t just wander off and make toast.

So you keep going.

There’s always one more tray to finish. One more ganache to make. One more mould to tap out.

“Baby, It’s Not Over ‘Til It’s Over”

When I finally stop work in the kitchen (usually around 3pm, after roughly ten hours on my feet), I’m still not done.

Making the chocolates is only half the story.

Everything has to be packed into boxes and bags. Ingredient labels - fully compliant, of course - need to be created, printed and affixed. Bows have to be tied.

If the stock is for an event, it needs to be packed carefully into crates: light enough that I can lift them into the car, sturdy enough that nothing inside gets damaged in transit.

Orders are wrapped in tissue. Gift messages written. Postal cartons assembled. Address labels printed. Packing material arranged so nothing shifts on the journey.

You think it will take an hour or two. It takes all evening.

Dinner is usually soup and a sandwich, eaten quickly before it’s back to packing and labelling again. It’s the quietest part of the job and somehow the most time-consuming.

“Let’s Get Physical…..”

Standing for hours damaged my left knee in early November. The exact damage is still a mystery, but it often involves painful muscle spasms from my foot all the way to my derrière.

The sensible thing would have been rest. The realistic thing was orders that needed making, events that were already booked, and stock that had to exist.

There were visits to the chiropractor. A trip to the urgent treatment unit at my local hospital. Careful steps - even more careful driving. There was wishing for a stairlift.

A knee that screamed “for pity’s sake, woman - enough already!”

Usually January and February are when things finally slow down and I get a chance to rest a little. This year had other ideas. Orders through Etsy were up by around 300%, which was wonderful — but it did mean that the quiet recovery period I had been rather optimistically expecting never really arrived.

At the beginning of February, while the knee was still causing trouble (and the day after I’d sent out a Valentine’s Day discount offer to my subscribers), I tore a disc in my back.

More chiropractor appointments. More expense. Instructions not to bend with a rounded spine. To rest as much as possible. To avoid slouching.

When you have to be careful bending, the thing you need, of course, is always in the bottom cupboard. Ingredients. Trays. Bowls. All slightly lower than is ideal when your back is in open rebellion.

There’s also the ongoing rotator cuff problem in my left shoulder and my “chocolatier’s elbow”, both of which flare up when I’m busy and working long hours. Tapping out moulds full of heavy chocolate, over and over again. The double enrobing (darling) - hundreds of times. And the aforementioned heavy lifting.

It is repetitive. It is physical.

By the time I finally close for Christmas, my hands need buckets of hand cream. I have burns from hot sugar; blisters from scooping truffles; broken nails. And fingertips worn so smooth from endless cleaning and washing up that my phone refuses to recognise me. Apparently I cease to exist in biometric form sometime around early December.

It turns out that floating about making “pretty little treats” is surprisingly hard on the body.

Put that in your reel.

“Price Tag…..”

A marketing professional once told me that my prices weren’t high enough to be aspirational - that if I charged more, I might attract customers with deeper pockets. That higher prices would better reflect the labour involved. And logically, I understood that.

I could spend extra hours spraying cocoa butter patterns with a spray gun, airbrushing dramatic finishes, adding intricate decorative layers - after all, I do it on my chocolate shoes - but the price would have to rise accordingly. When a single batch of something makes two boxes, there isn’t much room to hide labour inside volume. Handmade is physical, skilled and time-consuming. The artistry is there. It’s just not always airbrushed.

Here is the quiet truth:

One batch of Turkish Delight makes two boxes. One batch of fondant makes two boxes. A mould makes 24 chocolates. Or 3 chocolate bars. A morning of work might produce something that will be eaten in an evening.

There is no factory line. No conveyor belt. No industrial output. Just time. And hands. And repetition.

I look at glossy boutiques and immaculate displays with eye-watering price tags, and a small voice says, “They’re the real luxury. You’re just… not as good as them.”

Rationally, I know that voice is wrong. I know the hours and I know the care. I know that handmade doesn’t mean lesser - it means personal. Perhaps I need to keep reminding myself that luxury isn’t just about polish. My chocolates taste just as good, even if they don’t have a perfectly airbrushed finish - and you, my lovely customers, keep telling me so.

For now, I choose to focus on flavour, texture, and quality - offering something handmade, beautiful and (I hope) delicious at a price that still feels accessible.

“It’s A Kind Of Magic…..”

“Why do you keep doing it?” I hear you ask.

Because something I stirred before sunrise ends up on someone’s Christmas table. Something I enrobed at 7am is opened in a warm kitchen, passed around after a big meal, or tucked into a gift bag with a note that makes someone smile.

The reels show the pretty parts.

The reality is hotter, heavier, stickier — and occasionally orthopaedic.

And yet….

Despite early alarms and the cat’s disdain. Despite the 15 kilogram deliveries and

ribbons that refuse to behave. Despite the aches and pains. Despite the increased expenditure on handcream in January. Tomorrow there will be more chocolate to temper, more fondant to stir… and, inevitably, more truffle mathematics.

Because there is something profoundly satisfying about making something properly, with the best ingredients. Slowly, by hand and with care.

(Especially when you do it surrounded by heavenly smells.)

It’s the small moments - the glossy shine on a perfectly made ganache; the fondant that’s the perfect texture; the Turkish Delight trembling before it’s cut and dusted in powdered sugar; that small intake of breath when a box is opened; the customers who come back year after year; the review that says, “These are the best chocolates I’ve ever tasted.”

The work is hard. The hours are long. The yields are small.

The financial rewards are…… modest.

But it is real.

It is personal.

And it is entirely, utterly worth it.