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The Magazine of Haute Patisserie - Pastry News

  • Eleven Easter Chocolate Creations with Nods to Paris, Fashion, and World PeaceThis link opens in a new windowApr 8, 2025

    This year, our Easter special is more diverse than ever. Great chefs, mostly French, have pushed their creative boundaries to offer collections inspired by themes as diverse as Notre-Dame Cathedral, peace, games, the culinary potential of black garlic, and even an iconic Louis Vuitton bag.

    All of these creations are chocolate figures, many of them inspired by the shape of the Easter egg. And all of them stand out not only for their spectacular design but also for their impeccable technique.

     

    Jordan Talbot Revisits One of the Great French Desserts

    Religieuse's eggs

    Photo: Julie Limon

    At the La Réserve Paris hotel, Jordan Talbot offers his interpretation of a classic French pastry, the Religieuse, which is also his favorite dessert.

    Made with a grand cru chocolate from the Dominican Republic, the egg rests on a mendiant-style slab, with notes of candied Corsican clementines, caramelized almonds, and candied ginger. Inside, it also hides a selection of Piedmont hazelnut truffles and buckwheat and caramel chocolate praline.

     

    École Ducasse Launches a Message of Peace

    École Ducasse's easter eggs

    For Easter 2025, École Ducasse pays tribute to the olive tree, a universal symbol of peace, hope, and resilience. From Paris to Bangkok, from Abu Dhabi to Yssingeaux, all of the school’s campuses have created pieces around this theme.

    On the Yssingeaux campus, they’ve meticulously sculpted a majestic olive tree that houses a refined egg, adorned with delicate leaves from the same tree.

     

    Pierre Hermé. Let’s play!

    Fou Culbuto

    Photo: Patrick Rougereau

    Pierre Hermé wants to play with us. In his new Easter collection, checkers, chess, dominoes, and mazes become a new field of expression, and chocolate becomes an ingredient to explore.

    “I had fun transposing the world of games into this Easter collection. And I got caught up in the game myself. I naturally drew parallels between the thinking required for each game and that of the chocolatier, the master craftsman behind the creations in this collection. Movement was invited into the exceptional pieces, bringing these ephemeral works to life,” explains the chef.

    In this piece (Fou Culbuto), the chocolate figure wobbles and regains its balance in a continuous movement, without ever falling.

     

    The Bells Ring at Lenôtre

    Le Bourdon

    Lenôtre pays homage to one of the world’s most famous bells, those of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, with its elegant creation, Le Bourdon.

    At the top, a textured chocolate ribbon recalls the link between tradition and modernity, between the artisan and his heritage. Beneath this bell, a gourmet nest of intertwined chocolate threads is revealed, containing eggs decorated with gold leaf.

    “This creation is not limited to its sculptural beauty: it tells a story. The story of a heritage that resonates through the centuries, of a transmission of precise gestures, and a delicacy that astonishes both the eye and the palate,” says Guy Krenzer.

     

    The Peninsula Paris Reclaims the Culinary Richness of Black Garlic

    Black garlic easter egg

    Photo: Laurent Fau

    Anne Coruble, pastry chef at Palace The Peninsula Paris, nods to black garlic, the result of a slow and meticulous process where time and heat transform a simple white garlic into a sweet, caramelized garlic.

    In this spectacular trompe l’oeil, coated in Madagascar milk chocolate with toasted notes of Piedmont hazelnuts, lie eight cloves of black garlic, made with a creamy ganache of candied black garlic and hazelnut praline.

     

    Albert Daví’s Most Beastly Athletes

    ZOOcolate collection

    Albert Daví, pastry chef at the Chocolate Academy in Barcelona and chocolatier for the Chocovic brand, continues to expand his ZOOcolate collection with three figures of sporty animals: a snowboarding penguin, a boxing kangaroo, and a basketball-playing monkey. “Each of these characters not only stands out for its spectacular design, but also embodies the energy and competitiveness of sports,” he adds.

    This year, ZOOcolate has taken a major leap forward in design. He explained, “We abandoned kits based on a simple hoop as a base for the face and transformed this piece into the character’s body. This has allowed us to create taller figures with a much more imposing and detailed presence. In addition, clothing, utensils, and customization elements have been incorporated to bring the characters to life in a much more complete and unique way.” 

     

    Lluc Crusellas. Pattern Making Without Molds

    Easter eggs Lluc Crusellas

    The idea for this collection, which began in 2024, came after teaching an Easter course at the Barcelona Pastry Guild School (EPGB), where he sought to impress with functional and productive figures that could be made with all the elements available in a workshop. Technically, “everything is based on pattern making. The goal is to achieve maximum volume without relying on any existing mold,” Lluc Crusellas says.

    In 2025, four animals join this family: a cow and an ox based on the silhouette of an egg; a panda bear as a nod to China based on a sphere; and an elegant fox that follows the same pattern as the cow and ox, although he adds a tail and a head on top of the body to give it more complexity.

     

    Alléno & Rivoire takes us to an imaginary equatorial forest

    The Little Egg in a Shell, The Rock Egg, The Pineapple Egg and The Bean Egg
    The Little Egg in a Shell, The Rock Egg, The Pineapple Egg and The Bean Egg. Photo: Geraldine Martens

    Chefs Yannick Alléno and Aurélien Rivoire invite us on a sensorial journey, a return to the roots of chocolate, to the heart of an equatorial forest through five eggs.

    Imaginary eggs with very distinctive textures. “Working with textures means having the opportunity to transform the raw product to make it evolve in many different ways,” says Rivoire.

    The Pineapple Egg, with a sculpted shell of plant-based milk chocolate, holds pineapple confit and caramelized pineapples inside. The Rock Egg, carved from dark or milk chocolate like a fragment of stone, contains crispy puffed rice crafted with birch bark extract. The Bean Egg, with a Caribbean dark chocolate shell sprinkled with cacao nibs, houses dark praline candies filled with hazelnuts and almonds covered in dark chocolate. The Little Egg in a Shell combines crunchy and melting textures. And the Flat Palm Egg, with decorations inspired by palm fronds, has a melted praline inside.

     

    Fabien Emery’s Tribute to Notre-Dame Cathedral

    Evok's eggs

    Fabien Emery, the executive pastry chef of the Evok hotel group pays tribute to the reopening of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris with three eggs showcasing the monument’s most iconic architectural details.

    Rose (Evok Collection), inspired by rose windows, is made with Gaya 64% dark chocolate and encases a hazelnut praline. Trésor (Hotel Brach), with a design that plays with shadows and reliefs, evokes engraved stones and combines Tanea 43% milk chocolate and golden highlights with an almond praline and caramelized almonds. Finally, Grâce (Nolinski Paris), reminiscent of monumental arches, is made with Gaya 64% dark chocolate and an original pumpkin seed praline with a hint of lime.

     

    One of Louis Vuitton’s iconic bags, in chocolate

    Chocolate Egg bag

    In collaboration with Maxime Frédéric, the fashion brand Louis Vuitton has launched an Easter collection with creations like this Chocolate Egg Bag, inspired by an iconic model created by Nicolas Ghesquière, artistic director of the women’s collections.

    The body of the bag is made with 70% dark chocolate, while the handles and zipper are made with 40% milk chocolate.

     

    Christophe Michalak Uses Trompe-l’oeil

    Michalak's eggs

    Christophe Michalak‘s Easter collection features a wide variety of eggs: rocky, signature, maxi gourmand, and more.

    His trompe-l’oeil eggs are impressive in the form of hazelnuts (40% milk chocolate filled with hazelnut praline), cocoa pods (66% dark chocolate filled with cocoa nib praline), and pecans (35% sweet chocolate filled with pecan praline). The pralines are made in his own workshop.

    The post Eleven Easter Chocolate Creations with Nods to Paris, Fashion, and World Peace appeared first on so good.. magazine.

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