ASIDE from Easter, Christmas is the time when commercial chocolate companies roll out their festive products in full force.

Supermarket aisles are stocked tight with boxes, tins and trays, profiting from the holiday indulgence which leaves the average Brit putting on some extra pounds and wearing tighter clothes.

But in a market so saturated with commercial chocolate from competing companies, what room is there for local, homemade and artisan chocolates?

Newport chocolatier Beverly Reed said she has no problem attracting customers to her small, home-run business which she says goes “mad” at Christmas.

Patissier Ms Reed, who worked as a pastry chef under John Burton Race and in restaurants across Europe, runs food business Creative Food which makes desserts, chocolates and cakes.

What makes her chocolates unique, she said, is down to her background working in top restaurants which have sharpened her tastebuds.

She said: “Where my strengths lie, it’s in making different flavours. As a result my tastebuds are quite honed.

“So for some people who just taste a strawberry flavour, I can taste different strawberry flavours, like strawberry jam for example.”

Unlike commercial brands, which she said are often in danger of tasting quite similar, Ms Reed makes sure she uses unusual ingredients such as bergamot, strawberry daiquiri and a range of liqueurs.

“The other one that is quite popular is the caramel cup, or any ones with liqueur. I use my own tasting to test, and whichever ones I like or prove popular I will make more of,” she added.

“I’ve just started using bergamot, which everyone associates with Earl Grey tea, but the flavour of the fruit is quite citrusy inside. When you cut into it the taste is similar to that of a grapefruit.

“All year round I start with maybe three or four varieties, but at Christmas I increase this number to about 12 varieties.”

It is a long process of trialling and testing new flavours, for example changing the framboise parfait chocolate to dark chocolate, to balance the flavours of the bitter dark chocolate and the sweet raspberry.

Ms Reed added: “Of course I do test other brands just to see what other people are making and doing.

“I also look at their chocolate to make sure that I’m pricing myself right. Some of the higher end high street brands are not as special for some people now.

“And often people say they all taste the same.

“What I try to offer is some different tastes.”

Ms Reed said when she gives talks to people, for example as part of her cookery classes at Brynglas House in Newport, they are often surprised to learn about the different varieties of chocolate available.

A certain percentage of dark chocolate, for example, does not share a uniform taste but varies depending on where it is from.

She said: “When someone says they like 70 per cent dark chocolate, I ask them which type, because there are so many.

“Dark chocolate from Mexico tastes a bit fruity, but Tanzanian or Venuzuelan chocolate will taste totally different.”

The former Claridges Hotel patissier said her background working at Michelin starred restaurants definitely helps her, and it was when she was working in Switzerland that she first saw the luxury gift boxes of chocolates – something which didn’t exist in the UK at the time.

Now she sources her single origin chocolate – the kind used for dark chocolate – online, from countries along the equator, which are delivered to her home in Bassaleg.

“One of the challenges is finding the balance and managing my time really. Because I work from home I never switch off,” she said.

“I don’t have an all singing, all dancing chocolate machine, I do it from my kitchen.”

Ms Reed sells through her website as well as on her stall at Usk Farmer’s Market, where her customers range from those buying small gifts to people commissioning large orders.

“People buy it for gifts. I have people who are maybe on diets who want to cut back on the sweet chocolate so they get a dark chocolate bar and make it last a few weeks,” she said.

Her biggest chocolate sellers this year are the mixed variety boxes as well as milk and dark chocolate bars.

“Milk and dark chocolate has always been more popular than white. I think people tend to think of white chocolate as quite sweet and sickly. Although I do use white fondant as the centre of some of my other chocolates,” she added.

Aside from chocolate, this year’s most popular treats have proved to be homemade nougat – including one containing cherries marinated in Kirsh – which “takes quite a lot of elbow grease but it’s gone down a storm”.

Also a hit this year is Turkish delight which she has had to make an extra supply of to meet orders coming in.

In summer she stops making chocolate for the time being, not only because she finds people don’t like it as much, but also because it then increases demand when she starts again in September.