A Passion for Chocolate

There is chocolate, and then there is chocolate at the Merrion Hotel. Executive Pastry Chef and Cacao Barry ambassador, Paul Kelly whets our appetites this Easter!

Easter eggs, Easter bunnies, a chocolate train, chocolate castles, chocolate hot air balloons, even a life-sized chocolate chair… “One thing I have learned, is that anything you put on display has to be edible,” says Merrion Pastry Chef, Paul Kelly. Easter planning begins almost a year in advance, as Kelly and his team pull out the stops to make great chocolate moments.

Guests will find eggs in their rooms, as their children search for eggs in the Gardens during the traditional Easter Egg Hunt. There are also delicious displays in the hotel’s elegant Georgian foyer. Larger chocolate sculptures are shaped over a frame, but, Kelly says, there’s not much you can’t make with chocolate. His favourite was the hot air balloons. “I think we made one large, and two small, hanging from the ceiling. Underneath was a chocolate ladder with a rabbit, and the rabbit was looking up with an expression like he’d just missed his flight.” Kelly smiles at the memory.

Passionate about chocolate, Kelly hadn’t dreamed he would one day have a job making chocolate rabbits fly. “I was never allowed into the kitchen at home,” he says. We are sipping coffee in the Merrion Drawing Rooms, and eating meltingly delicious financiers, which Kelly and his team make fresh every morning. “My mother loves to cook, and my sisters love to cook, so I stayed out of the kitchen growing up,” he explains. But then a training programme took him to hotels where, to his delight, he discovered cooking was something he too was good at.

Chocolate, where creativity meets science

“I had a lot to learn,” he remembers. “But I loved the creativity. And I was blessed, I worked in good places. These included Kenmare’s famed Park Hotel, where Kelly first discovered the world of the pastry chef. “It was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” he says. While all forms of great cooking call for creativity, there’s a science to baking that means mistakes are richly punished – with cakes that don’t rise, leaden pastry, flat soufflés, and rock hard scones. Rising to the challenge himself, Kelly got the baking bug; so much so that he would spend free time travelling to learn from the best across Europe.

With The Merrion since the Hotel first opened twenty five years ago, Kelly’s creativity has had a chance to truly shine. The Art Afternoon Teas offer the perfect opportunity to show off his team’s skills, as does Easter. “I love coming to work,” he says simply. “And chocolate? I love chocolate. You can do so much with it, and on a special occasion you can really let your imagination go.” He describes spraying handmade eggs, making nests, hand-piping lettering. “We have chocolate shapes that look like little chicks, and we’ll have a melting Easter Egg on the menu in the Garden Room, where you pour over a warm sauce. We’ll do chocolate eggs filled with ice cream, and maybe some salted caramel…” We go off into a reverie of imagining.

A bespoke blend

While some commercial brands of chocolate have been in the news for lessening their cocoa count, The Merrion Hotel’s chocolate remains the same bespoke blend of Cacao Barry beans, made to order by the legendary Paris chocolate atelier. “We have developed our own flavours, discovering what our guests love,” says Kelly. “We took a lot of the sugar out, and now our milk chocolate has a little caramel in it, and our dark chocolate has a hint of raspberry. We use it in our mousses, petit fours, chocolate bars, hot chocolates, and desserts,” says Kelly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In many ways, savoury courses have caught up with the world of the chocolatiers in that now presentation is everything, from starters to snacks; and chefs the world over swap ideas through travel, and Instagram. “Everything can give you inspiration,” says Kelly. “And with all this experience, now I can look at something, or dream up something and know – yes, we can do that.”

 

A year in chocolate

Kelly and his team can chart their year in chocolate. While he notes that Christmas calls for more gingerbread, you start the year preparing for Valentine’s Day. Then it’s Mother’s Day, and Easter. Summer brings chocolate ice creams, which this year will include a new lemony dessert that actually looks like a lemon – including edible leaves, made with a light white chocolate coating. Then, Halloween is an opportunity for spooky chocolate treats. “I tell you,” he says, smiling. “You can be so creative with chocolate.” He’s right. Not only can it be shaped, carved and moulded, baked into desserts or frozen into ice creams, there are now new technologies enabling even more masterpieces.

“You can print edible pictures on chocolate, and we can do 3D printing in chocolate,” says Kelly, marvelling at the potential. “There are chocolate laser cutters, so you can shape with even more precision.” He goes on to describe the Netflix series, School of Chocolate, where Pastry Chef, Amaury Guichon re-sets the (chocolate) bar of what’s possible. “He’s making workable locks in chocolate, with moving parts. It’s just remarkable.”

If that is the future of chocolate, Kelly is still a fan of beloved flavours of the past. He describes the rice crispy cakes made by his mother, and the bread and butter pudding at The Merrion, with brioche bread, white chocolate and cranberries. “It’s absolutely gorgeous,” he says.

Happy Easter everyone!