TasWeekend Indulge: Easter egg bonanza at Hobart chocolate shop

If Maurice Curtis had an avatar, it would probably be Willy Wonka. While most folk are winding down for Easter, the former senior public servant and wife Helen, a former maths and science teacher, are switching into overdrive to create thousands of hand-made chocolate eggs.

Beans of the trade at Federation Artisan Chocolate. Picture: EDDIE SAFARIK.

If Maurice Curtis had an avatar, it would probably be Willy Wonka. While most folk are winding down for Easter, the former senior public servant and wife Helen, a former maths and science teacher, are switching into overdrive to create thousands of hand-made chocolate eggs. The couple bought the Federation Artisan Chocolate business about four and a half years ago, recently expanding their reach into Hobart’s CBD.

Federation Artisan Chocolate is in Easter egg production mode. Picture: EDDIE SAFARIK.

They moved into Victoria St just before Christmas, opening a retail shop ahead of a full-blown chocolaterie — which will soon allow visitors to experience the production process from go to whoa.

The chocolate company started out on a much smaller scale in 1998, originally selling door-to-door. It expanded into a factory at Taranna, on the Tasman Peninsula, several years later, with its wares becoming a staple at Salamanca Market and, more recently, Hobart Airport.

Many will recognise the new Victoria St site as a former service station and auto repair shop, which ran from the 1920s through to the late 1990s. But Maurice says it’s actually much older than that. He says it was once the dining room for Macquarie House, a grand three-storey mansion built in the 1820s. Only the chimney breast remains as a sentinel to the past within the freshly repurposed space.

A custom-made chocolate cabinet is the main focus, filled with glossy moulded chocolates in a rainbow of flavours including Tassie gin, hazelnut liqueur, tequila sunrise, iced vovo and honey, fig and rosewater. They sit upon a smooth slab of marble, which helps to keep them cool.

Glossy chocolate at Federation Artisan Chocolate in Hobart. Picture: EDDIE SAFARIK.

Then, of course, there are Easter eggs small and large. The filled varieties include hot-cross with fruit mince and rum, raspberry nougat and salted caramel. Bars of chocolate adorn the shelves, along with chocolate-covered coffee beans, fudge and various vegan, sugar-free and gluten-free offerings. As a proudly Tasmanian producer, the Federation team likes to meld other island products into its chocolate creations — like McHenry’s Gin from the Peninsula, hazelnut liqueur from Hellyers Rd on the North-West Coast, Tasman Sea Salt from the East Coast, and Tas-Saff saffron from Glaziers Bay in the Huon.

Helen says the cacao beans, which arrive in their raw form, are sourced ethically and sustainably from places including Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Peru, with a small portion even grown in Australia at Mossman in far north Queensland.

With Federation chocolatier Sarah Black on the case, the boutique operation will produce up to 5000 eggs this Easter — 300 of which have already been snapped up for an egg hunt by the Spirit of Tasmania.

Easter treats. Picture: EDDIE SAFARIK.

Now based at Taranna, Sarah will relocate to the city to make moulded chocolates in the next few months. Chocolate bar production will remain at Taranna, which is also open for tours. For Maurice, running his own chocolate factory is the realisation of a boyhood dream.

“Growing up in Tasmania in the eighties, every school child took a tour through the Cadbury factory,” he says. He can still remember all the wonderful smells and watching the silken chocolate flowing — an experience he soon hopes to share when the Victoria St kitchen space is up and running. Chocolate-making masterclasses are also in the pipeline.

“Once we get the kitchen set up next door, it will be a totally chocolate-infused experience,” he says. In the longer term, the Curtises also plan to spruce up the forecourt area with greenery and eventually open a chocolate-centric cafe. Helen, meanwhile, says her new calling is vastly different from her days in the classroom. “It’s very hard not to make people happy when they come in the door,” she says, “which is a bit of a contrast from my other job”.