What is a chocolatier?
The word gets used loosely — sometimes to mean anyone who sells chocolate, sometimes to mean someone who makes it. The distinction matters.
A chocolatier is someone who works with chocolate to create finished products: truffles, pralines, bars, filled shells, seasonal pieces. They start with couverture — professionally produced chocolate made from cocoa beans — and transform it through tempering, moulding, filling, and hand-finishing into the things you actually eat.
This is different from a chocolate maker, who starts further back in the process — roasting and grinding cocoa beans to produce the chocolate itself. Most chocolatiers, including Chez Emily, work with couverture from a specialist producer rather than making their own chocolate from bean to bar. What they bring is the craft of what happens next.
What Ferdinand and Helena do at Coolquay
Chez Emily was founded in July 1996 by Ferdinand, who is Belgian, and Helena, whose Belgian parents emigrated to Ireland in 1964. They've been making chocolate by hand at their workshop in Coolquay, Co. Dublin ever since.
The process starts with Belgian couverture — the same professional-grade chocolate they've used since the beginning. Ferdinand tempers it by hand: a precise process of heating, cooling, and working the chocolate to align its cocoa butter crystals, which gives the finished chocolate its characteristic gloss, snap, and clean melt.
From there, each chocolate is made individually. Shells are moulded, fillings are prepared from the original family recipes brought from Belgium, and each piece is hand-finished before being packed. There is no production line. The batch sizes are what you'd expect from a family workshop, not a factory.
That's what handmade means in practice — not a marketing phrase, but a description of how the work is actually done.
Why tempering matters
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Tempering is one of the most important and least understood steps in chocolate making. It's the process of carefully controlling the temperature of melted chocolate so that the cocoa butter crystallises in a stable form.
Chocolate that hasn't been properly tempered sets dull and soft, melts unevenly in the hand, and often develops a whitish bloom on the surface over time. Properly tempered chocolate sets with a high gloss, snaps cleanly when broken, and melts smoothly at body temperature rather than sitting waxy on the tongue.
For a chocolatier working by hand, tempering is a skill that takes time to develop. The temperature windows are narrow — a few degrees either way affects the result — and the correct end point is judged by touch, appearance, and experience as much as a thermometer. It's one of the things that separates a well-made handmade chocolate from a factory-produced one.
The recipes
The fillings Chez Emily uses — pralines, ganaches, caramels, fruit pastes — come from original family recipes developed in Belgium and brought to Ireland when Ferdinand and Helena made the move in 1996. They've changed very little in nearly thirty years.
This matters because recipes at this level are not things you can reverse-engineer quickly. The ratios, the techniques, the combinations of flavour — these reflect generations of knowledge about what works and what doesn't. Most chocolatiers, even excellent ones, are working from professional training or adapted recipes. Chez Emily is working from something older than the business itself.
What 'Irish-Belgian' actually means
The phrase 'Irish-Belgian chocolaterie' is not a branding decision. It describes what Chez Emily is: a business founded by a Belgian man and a Belgian-Irish woman, making chocolate from Belgian family recipes, using Belgian couverture, in Ireland.
The Belgian chocolate tradition — particularly around filled chocolates and pralines — is one of the most developed in the world. Belgium invented the praline in its modern form in 1912, and the country built an entire craft industry around filled chocolate making that has no real equivalent elsewhere. Ferdinand grew up inside that tradition. Helena grew up between Belgium and Ireland and understood both cultures.
When they started Chez Emily, they weren't adopting a Belgian aesthetic. They were continuing a practice.
What Chez Emily makes
The full range made at the Coolquay workshop includes:
- Handmade truffles and pralines — the core of the collection, made from the original Belgian family recipes
- Chocolate slabs — including the 19-flavour range, personalised slabs, and the Dubai chocolate collection
- Gift boxes — curated selections for occasions including birthdays, Father's Day, and Christmas
- Hot chocolate swirls — made from Belgian couverture, available as singles or in boxes of 24
- Chocolate letters, lollipops, and squares
The full range is made to gluten free recipes. The dark chocolate range — made with 70.4% cocoa Belgian couverture — is vegan friendly.
Where to find us
Chez Emily operates from two locations in the greater Dublin area:
- Coolquay, The Ward, Co. Dublin — the workshop where all chocolates are made, with a shop on site
- 7 Bridge Street, Ashbourne, Co. Meath — our retail store
We also ship across Ireland. Browse our gift box collection here.
Chez Emily has been making handmade Belgian chocolate in Ireland since July 1996. Almost thirty years later, the recipes, the couverture, and the process are the same.
