Paul Wayne Gregory ‘Season’ Easter Egg

The first ‘conventional’ Easter egg I’ve reviewed this year is something a little special.

Paul Wayne Gregory is one of the UK’s top chocolatiers, but he’s best known for his amazing chocolate sculptures. We interviewed Paul for World Chocolate Guide a couple of years ago at Chocolate Unwrapped, and you can see one of his amazing bespoke pieces in this video.

Obviously, creating bespoke artworks out of chocolate is incredibly time consuming, but Paul also makes his own delicious range of chocolates, not to mention some rather fantastic salted caramel lollipops with popping candy. This is the first Easter chocolate we’ve tried from him though.

I should say from the start that my photos don’t really do this egg justice.

Presented in a simple transparent box, it looks amazing. Very different from your average High Street Easter egg. The entire egg is hand painted (I assume with coloured cocoa butter, is that’s usually how colour is applied to chocolate). Everything but the bottom of the base is covered, so you might be forgiven for thinking this egg is still wrapped somehow.

Unfortunately, once again, I have to destroy a chocolate work of art in order to prove it to you…

Paul exclusively uses Cacao Barry chocolate in his creations. Cacao Barry was one of the two chocolate companies that came together to form Barry Callebaut, the largest chocolate company in the world, back in 1996. Being so large, Callebaut are better known for quantity rather than quality, but they do still make some pretty good chocolate if you know where to look.

The chocolate in this egg is a very pleasant, if uneventful, 38% milk chocolate to which I believe Paul has added natural vanilla. The press release that came with this egg also mentions added spices, but that’s not something I picked up. I did pick up the vanilla though. I’m not sure how I feel about that – while I enjoyed it, I do generally prefer less vanilla.

That said, I think most people will enjoy the flavour, and this egg is much more about making a statement anyway. Giving someone a handmade gift like this is so much nicer than giving them a mass produced egg. It comes in at just under £25, but that’s absolutely worth it for the work that has gone into it – and the brownie points you’ll get on Easter morning.

Paul’s Easter range is available to buy online from his website (link below), or from Harvey Nichols, Forman & Field, and his pop-up shop in Brixton.

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