This week sees the publication of a wonderful new chocolate book called The Joy of Chocolate by Paul A Young, £26. It’s gloriously retro, like something from the 1970s and this makes it deeply comforting. The photography and food styling, is not at all what I expected, no hard-edged slick here, which sends you into a pit of despair with its impossible attainment, but instead a heady mixture of messy kitsch and rumpled tablecloth.
Young writes with real ease, the way only someone who really knows his stuff can, so you learn about where chocolate comes from and how it’s made (although I shan’t be making my own in a pestle and mortar), how to taste it, what to look for. There are stories about how, if he and his brother were good, each Sunday his grandma would let them pick two chocolate bars from her pantry. He nails his colours to the mast where white chocolate is concerned and there are lots of beautiful recipes, too (Young was also a pastry chef), including some for ‘best ever’ chocolate crispy cakes – . But I got most excited by the recipes for variations of old favourites such as Creme Eggs (warning: sugar high alert), Bounty bars, Twix and Ferrero Rocher, which never taste the same as your childhood self remembers.
I read it, fittingly, considering his love of Caramilk, eating a delicious bar of Chococo’s Gold Chocolate, £4.50. And also Divine’s Smooth Dark Chocolate with Pretzel and Caramel, £2.39, a lovely bar of 60% choc and great for when you can’t decide if you want sweet comfort or dark chocolate, as it gives you a bit of both.
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