The recipe for sweet success

But this pairing has proven to be quite the recipe for success, earning their self-founded chocolatier business Lick The Spoon with more than 60 fine food awards since 2006 for their beautifully crafted chocolates, which are as much a work of art as they are a sweet treat to be savoured.

After marking 10 years since the launch of the business at the end of last year they already have a busy Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day underneath their belts, and the couple with their small team are working flat-out to meet Easter orders, which are coming close to putting the Easter Bunny out of business.

“Diana is the creative force, I just joined her on this crazy chocolate journey,” laughed former telecoms engineer Matthew, who jacked in his job in Swindon to draw on his chocolate heritage to help his wife out in the kitchen. He has fond childhood memories of his father returning home from work in the Fry’s factory, with large bars of chocolates and sweets which were stowed away out of reach on top of the wardrobe for special occasions. Since launching Lick The Spoon he has also discovered also that his great uncle was involved in the early Bristol chocolate industry.

“I suppose you could say it runs in the blood,” he said.

Diana, on the other hand, also grew up with a taste for sweet treats, with her grandfather working among the glitz and the glamour of the 1950s as a chef at London’s Hyde Park Hotel. Her own journey in the kitchen began on the Continent after her own trusty-but-rusty moped was stolen in Nice while travelling, leading her to spend the next six years working her way up to the position of Chef de Cuisine before returning home to the UK.

A TV documentary on how to pay your mortgage off in two years that cited chocolate as being the key may have initially played a small part in their decision to venture into bespoke-made chocolates. And while that may not yet have proven itself to be the case, they have certainly had a lot of fun along the way and have embarked upon an incredible journey across the seas.

In the first year of trading alone Lick the Spoon’s chocolates were named best in category at the Taste Of The West awards, which has only spurred them on ever since.

The couple started off working from home, but as demand grew, and young children Harrison and Thomas grew taller and were able to reach for their mother’s creations on the worktops, it became clear they would have to find alternative premises, which sees them today with their very own ‘chocolate factory’ in Corsham. Although ‘factory’ is perhaps not the best way of describing what goes on behind closed doors in their creative hub of a kitchen.

This year’s Easter Egg collection goes some way to showcasing Diana’s artistic talents. Marking 50 years since the Summer Of Love, her showstoppers this year feature their Raisetrade House blend Madagascan chocolate encased in a gossamer-thin pastel layer and adorned with intricately hand-piped sweeping Paisley designs. Each one is uniquely different, and hand-signed on the back by Diana. These are complemented with bitesize chocolates from their spring collection.

Alongside these eye-catching pastel pink and turquoise large eggs are the medium-sized Indigo and Henna eggs, which draw their designs from festivals and long summer days, and come in a beautifully presented box complete with a secret drawer containing six of the spring collection chocolates.

For the traditionalists there are also both milk and dark chocolate eggs, each with a more subtle form of decoration, while BBC Good Food favourite The Pixel Egg featuring hundreds and thousands of hundreds and thousands on its shell is sure to remain a firm favourite among youngsters of all ages.

But the couple’s speciality is dreaming up original recipes. And there was nothing quite so original as Diana’s creation The Bish, which she cooked up last year after a chance encounter with the Bishop of Gloucester Rachel Treweek on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. Created especially for the bishop upon her enthronement, the chocolates feature her favourite flavours, soft salted caramel and crunchy hazelnut praline in a milk chocolate shell made from Lick The Spoon’s house blend Madagascan milk chocolate. Not only did these rather special chocolates win the Champion Chocolate Taste Of The West Award, but also the Supreme Champion Of The West Awards 2016, leaving cheeses, charcuterie and all sorts of other culinary delights in their wake.

The couple are proud of being champions of local produce, and draw all their milk from Ivy House Farm, in Beckington, although their main ingredient — the humble cocoa bean — does come from distant shores.

Last May saw them embark upon a journey to Madagascar to visit the plantation where their own cocoa pods are grown, allowing them to trace the journey of their own chocolates from bean to bar. “Many people there trade in cocoa beans – they are a commodity,” said Matthew. “There was very little industry there, apart from this one chocolate factory which we visited.”

Their journey also took in the Akany Avoko Faravohitra Children’s Home Madagascar, which takes in youngsters from difficult social backgrounds, many of whom are there for their own safety, and offers them work and an education. Inspired by what they saw, Lick The Spoon has set up a sponsorship programme to help support some of these youngsters.

And while their chocolates have taken them across the world and won over the buyers at the likes of Selfridges, Harvey Nichols and Harrods, they can still be found in a number of farm shops, delicatessens and bakeries all around Wiltshire.

“When we started off we had this ambition of having lots of shops all over the place, but that has changed somewhat now,” said Matthew. “If we can make a living, and do things in the right way – buy cocoa that doesn’t exploit people but helps them – then that is something far more important.”