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When a young chocolatier-to-be Evelyn Day came home from school one day to discover the driveway of her childhood home lined with suitcases, she could have been forgiven for thinking that her parents had organised an impromptu family holiday.
The truth, though, was somewhat less pleasant...
“My family was anti-apartheid,” explained Johannesburg-born Evelyn. “My brothers were political activists and, although none of this was really explained to me at that time, as children were largely protected from the adult world at that point, it became necessary for us to leave the country very quickly. I had no idea that anything was about to change until that afternoon when I came home from school to be told that we were moving to England.”
Admitting that moving from the warmth of South Africa to “a completely different culture” in London was quite a “shock to the system”, Evelyn was just beginning to adapt to her new surroundings when, two years later, she was uprooted again.
“It was exactly the same scenario,” she recalled. “I came home from school to be told that we were going back to South Africa the next day, this time because of my father’s health. Again, I didn’t have a chance to say goodbye to anybody. I was literally at school one day and on my way to another country the next.”
And these regular moves were to become of a feature of what Evelyn, who is now the owner and founder of Chocadyllic, describes as an “unsettling” childhood.
“With all the moves between Johannesburg and England, I went to 12 schools, which was very challenging,” she said.
Pictured: Evelyn Day showcasing her creations at her Chocadyllic studio
Against such a backdrop, it is perhaps unsurprising that, when she left school – in Johannesburg – she had no idea what she wanted to do next.
“My mum suggested architecture, as I was good at art and maths, but I found it too restrictive,” she reflected. “My approach was too free and creative for the precision that architecture requires.”
Deciding to indulge her creative personality, Evelyn returned to England, where she studied art, photography, print-making and graphic design, a combination of subjects which eventually led her to a career in web design.
“I moved from London to Brighton, where I lived for many years, but working in web design became very difficult, as the industry became so saturated, so I was made redundant a couple of times,” she explained.
Recognising that she needed more stability, Evelyn turned to finance but found this too stifling.
“I needed something where I could earn and learn but it was slowly killing me because there isn’t much scope for creativity in finance,’ she said with a wry smile.
Her salvation, somewhat ironically, came through a period of ill health, which forced her to stop working.
“It was during this time that I started baking, gradually becoming more and more creative with the recipes and experimenting with different techniques," she explained.
“While my husband’s favourite cake is a Victoria sponge – something that we teasingly tell him isn’t a proper cake because it doesn’t contain any chocolate – my friend, who shares my love of chocolate, was coming up to a milestone birthday. As I wasn’t working, I said that I would make a ‘proper’ chocolate cake for the occasion.”
Determined to create something which “tastes just as good, if not better, as it looks”, Evelyn started practising and experimenting with lots of different ideas, which culminated in her telling her friend that she was going to make a “chocolate explosion cake”.
“Having said that, I then had to learn how to make chocolate explode,” she laughed. “After watching lots of videos on YouTube and making a lot of mess in the kitchen, I completed the project which – although I now think looked like a mess – was very delicious and really lived up to the chocolate-explosion promise.”
While hindsight may have made Evelyn critical of that first effort, it was the catalyst for her future career.
“I’ve always been a chocoholic and, after experimenting with different decorative ideas for that cake, I wanted to learn more and more techniques, so I started learning how to make chocolate flowers, shards and twists,” she said. “Then I moved on to pouring, carving and grating it and I absolutely loved what I was doing.
“The more I learnt, the more I started posting pictures online, with comments along the lines of, ‘This is so much more fun than working!’”
And while Evelyn might just have been “having fun”, it wasn’t long before those posts caught people’s attention and she started receiving requests.
“In February 2013, someone asked whether she could commission me to make a cake for her twins’ birthday. She wanted a music theme, so I made a chocolate piano and a helter-skelter spiral in white chocolate, which I decorated with musical notes,” she said. “I was really pleased with the result although, as it took me three days to make and I only charged her £25, I didn’t make any money from the booking.”
After coming third in a baking competition, with a funfair-inspired cake featuring a merry-go-round with horses carved from chocolate, Evelyn’s confidence in her creations began to grow – and so did the number of commissions she was receiving.
“That competition really gave me a boost, as it confirmed that what I was doing was good,” she said.
But although admitting that “baking was more fun than working”, Evelyn was starting to feel frustrated with certain aspects of her new life.
“My cakes were always designed to taste good but that meant that they were often too soft and moist to support the chocolate structures,” she explained. “Therefore, being a chocoholic, I decided to move away from baking and focus solely on chocolate sculptures.”
There followed commissions for designs including the Taj Mahal, Eiffel Tower and Brighton Bandstand before Evelyn decided to complement her one-off pieces with a range of smaller, more accessible offers such as Easter eggs and lollipops in the shape of Brighton Pavilion.
It was not long, though, before she returned to the bigger-scale pieces, with a request in 2016 for her to depict the London skyline for the London Chocolate Festival.
“That piece was two metres long and included lots of famous landmarks including Big Ben and The Gherkin. It was a massive undertaking. I spent about three or four weeks on it, working night and day to complete it in time,” she smiled.
“That type of work is very time-consuming, as I start by making a cardboard maquette of the design so that I can see how it will all come together and what support I will need. Then you start creating the actual elements, melting and tempering the chocolate to get the right shape and texture. You have to get all the temperatures just so to make sure you get the right end taste, integrity and snap.”
Pictured: Evelyn is currently busy working on her Jersey map chocolate bars for Handpicked Hotels
As if creating these items in her studio wasn’t pressurised enough, in 2019, Evelyn ramped up the pressure even further, taking part in Channel 4’s Extreme Chocolate Makers, for which she produced three showpieces.
“We were on holiday in Spain when I got a phone call asking whether I would take part in the programme,” she recalled. “Although I’m not someone who seeks the limelight or who likes having my photo taken, it was too good an opportunity to refuse.
“Having said that, I was terribly nervous but I tried to turn the nerves into excitement and, in the end, I was pleased with the way the pieces – which consisted of a Café-de-Paris-themed four-tier chocolate imitation of a wedding cake, a Disney-inspired birthday cake for a little girl and an illuminated sculpture of London’s Albert Bridge – turned out.”
Having got used to working in front of the cameras, Evelyn went on to feature on Channel 5’s Wonderful World of Chocolate, where her Brighton Pavilion lollipops took centre stage.
It was not long after that that covid hit and, as Jersey reopened its borders to visitors in the summer of 2020, Evelyn and her husband came to the Island to celebrate their wedding anniversary.
“My husband is from Jersey so we had been fairly regular visitors over the years but I had never imagined living here,” she said. “That summer, though, was incredible. It was like Jersey was showing off. Everything was sparkling and I thought, ‘What a wonderful place, I could live here’.”
And, just a few months later, the couple packed their bags and made the move, which is when Evelyn decided to focus less on large-scale sculptures – although she couldn’t resist making a two-metre-high replica of Corbière Lighthouse – and concentrate on an exclusive range of truffles and bonbons.
Pictured: Evelyn Day with her 75cm-high chocolate sculpture of Corbière Lighthouse. (Rob Currie)
“That is where the real fun lies,” she smiled.
“I love developing new products and flavours and being able to share delicious chocolates with people. Over the past year, I have developed a lovely range of bonbons, including some featuring the CI Liquor Company’s spiced Indica rum, which is incredible.
“I had great fun trying lots of different chocolate and rum combinations before settling on a rum caramel and rum ganache, which make beautiful fillings inside a really thin chocolate shell, which is then painted and decorated with coloured cocoa butter.”
Another bonbon using local produce revolves around Jersey honey.
“The honey is absolutely beautiful. I pipe the raw honey into the shell before topping it with an incredible ganache so you get the taste and flavour without just getting a mouthful of honey,” she explained.
With all of her products, quality is of the utmost importance, so she complements the Jersey produce with Belgian Couverture chocolate, which is “designed specifically for people to develop other chocolates from”.
“A lot of the internationally renowned confectionery brands use Couverture as their base and, by mixing this with Jersey dairy products and other local ingredients such as sea salt, black butter and honey, you can create something really special,” she said.
While loving her existing range of bonbons and truffles, Evelyn is already experimenting with new flavours, as she aims to develop a new collection for winter.
Pictured: Evelyn is always experimenting and developing her range in her studio
“I want the range to evolve constantly so that people can always enjoy something new,” she said. “I’m beginning to think about some ideas for Christmas – although I’m so busy keeping up with demand for the current range and my new Jersey map bars for Handpicked Hotels that I haven’t had as much time to plan as I thought I would.”
And while her focus is currently on her truffles and bonbons – which she also personalises for unique wedding favours – it will not be too long before Evelyn returns to her sculptures, with ideas already forming in her mind.
“I’d love to do something Jersey-centric,” she said. “I was really pleased with the Corbière sculpture and I’ve also made some lovely representations of the White House at St. Ouen’s Bay, which I filled with chocolate seashells. It won’t be too long before I start on the next design.”
But with such creations being works of art, does she not experience a pang when the sculpture is dismantled and eaten?
“A lot of people say, ‘Isn’t it too beautiful to eat?’, but, for me, beautiful food tastes better,” she smiled. “I make it so that people can enjoy it. And, as a chocoholic, I want it to be enjoyed. It has to look and taste good and, yes, it’s nice if people respect and appreciate the artistry behind it but I also want them to enjoy it freely.”
This article first appeared in the August edition of Connect Magazine, which you can read in full below...
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