IT WASN'T the most auspicious start. Ray and Liz Cardy finally opened Monk Bar Choclatiers in February 2000, too late for Christmas and all the Millennium parties and palaver.

They'd given up their jobs as PE teachers in Hull and set about learning their trade, working first in New York, where Liz's brother had married into a chocolate family, and then travelling to Belgium to pick up the continental ways. They found their premises, a tiny shop under the arches, which used to be a hat shop and before that an art gallery.

After buying the essential equipment, notably the three tempering machines, one each for milk, plain and white chocolate, and then spending ages on the highly pleasurable bother of experimenting with chocolate, they prepared to open on December 1, 1999, in plenty of time for Christmas and all that Millennium nonsense.

And here they hit their first snag. "We'd forgotten about the packaging," said Liz. All that time on the chocolates and not a thought on what to put them in. Boxes to contain chocolates don't come easy and there was a three-month waiting list. So the shop opened in dreary February, when indulgence isn't on many minds.

An early omen lay in a greeting from a pragmatic local, who popped his head round the door and kindly said: "It'll never work here, lad."

Sorry to disappoint that particular York misery but Monk Bar Choclatiers prospered and still nestles almost under the Bar Walls, two and a half years later.

The interview for this Yorkshire On A Plate took place in the shop and over the counter. Ray and Liz stood or sat on the other side - the side with all the chocolates, the champagne truffles, the Bailey's and mocha creams, the Brazil nut pralines. And while we talked, the traffic ground past the window behind and pedestrians went by, some popping in, but not for chocolates as it was hot and chocolates don't sell well in the heat. They were buying ice cream instead.

Ray and Liz quit teaching because of the bureaucracy, and, being "both chocoholics", they decided to learn how to make what they craved. All the chocolates are made in the shop and are not sold elsewhere, although the couple do send chocolates abroad to just about anywhere you might care to mention, even including Belgium.

At the end of the counter in the tiny, Continental-style shop, the three tempering machines run, their wheels turning the chocolate. Tempering is the tricky bit of the art, turning the liquid chocolate solid. Ray mentions crystals in a teacherly way, and points out that this is the key to getting chocolate that is "hard, brittle and shiny".

Everything is affected by temperature, both that of the runny chocolate and the world at large. "When you cool it down too quickly, it won't temper, it blooms and goes white and grainy," says Ray, adding with a grin: "And when you cool it down too slowly it blooms and goes white and grainy."

The chocolate comes from Belgium, arriving on a lorry by the ton. It is delivered in the form of callets, which look like rough chocolate buttons. A glance round the tiny shop doesn't easily suggest where a ton of chocolate might be accommodated. So what does a ton of callets look like? Like a nightmare, according to Ray.

But a ton of top-notch chocolate buttons must fit in somewhere, for the end result fills the glass counters in the shop, all 48 varieties, as well as the chocolate figures, the special commissions and, at Easter, the hand-made eggs.

Christmas and Easter are, not surprisingly, busy. "We work 14 hours a day at Christmas for five weeks," says Ray. "And the same for about two weeks at Easter."

He particularly enjoys the eggs. "It's fun because we don't make ordinary Easter eggs, we make marbled ones, all different flavours, and we make latticed ones which you make by piping. They are good fun."

Fun seems to feature highly in the daily life of a teacher turned chocolate-maker. It did not, you sense, feature so highly in the old job. Liz and Ray both have the look of people who can't believe their luck. Making chocolates for a living - us? So their beaming faces say. Liz is 50 and Ray is 49 and, yes, they are now the hand-made chocolate people of York, the only chocolate-makers, they say, to make traditional chocolates in the chocolate city.

Our conversation did stray towards the irony of producing such chocolates in a city built on the mass-produced stuff, but Liz wasn't happy talking about that, so we switched back to the serious art of chocolate.

Like any other food craft, this is carried out with attention to detail and ingredients. "It sounds like we are blowing our own trumpets," says Ray. "But we are trying to produce the best quality chocolates we can. We only use cream, we only use pure butter, and glucose. We use proper butter and not a butter substitute."

There are no chemicals and preservatives to prolong shelf life: just good, naughty ingredients.

The tempered chocolate is used in three main ways, with the liquid chocolate being poured into moulds, then filled; the filling can be placed on a fork and dipped in the chocolate; or, occasionally, the chocolates are piped. New lines are introduced, others are dropped: kiwi fruit didn't survive, but a new chocolate is Welsh Gold, filled with Welsh whisky and honey.

And when made, the lovely chocolates fill the glass cabinets, waiting to be taken away. The boxes for packing are stacked up high along one wall, once forgotten but not any more.

Updated: 12:18 Saturday, June 29, 2002