Immaculate is not a word which springs immediately to mind when you are talking all things chocolate.

Spend a few moments in Yvonne Dutton's new emporium, though, and you will agree that it's exactly what her confectionery concoctions are.

Tray after tray of pristine hand-made chocolates, some with a dazzling showroom shine, fill her display shelves and counter.

And when it's not the many and various chocs taking up space, it's novel hand-made Easter eggs, boxes of chocolate fudge, nougat and bags of Dutton's Buttons.

Yvonne's shop, Chocolate One, opened its doors in Portishead a week ago, though people were dropping by to see if they could buy some of her wares a while before that.

As a shop location goes hers is an unusual one, for it's not in the main stream High Street area of the North Somerset town. Instead it's in the middle of the Village Square at Phoenix Way, on one of the many new housing developments in and around the marina there.

What sets the place apart from most sweet shops is that Yvonne makes everything on the premises – and you can see her doing it!

"Absolutely everything is handmade. I mould the chocolate and I also hand-dip it," she says.

"All the flavourings and fillings are handmade, too, and I make them to my own recipe."

She cites by way of a tasty example her chocolate champagne cup and, moments later, having savoured one, you can only agree that this is upper-class confectionery. Mind you, hand-made chocolates are a laborious business.

"It takes hours and the chocolate cups, for example, have to be at the right temperature before I fill it," says Yvonne. "In a week I probably do about 8,000 chocolates. Then I go home and cook a meal!"

Customers who frequent Portishead and Clevedon's popular farmers' markets will maybe already be familiar with some of Yvonne's confections where they are already something of a hit with chocoholics.

Yvonne left her job with a major clearing bank in Wales at the end of last year to pursue her passion for all things chocolate, having undergone training as an artisan chocolatier.

She actually first learned the skill when her employer introduced a scheme where you could take a training course in something which interested you.

She then acquired the shop premises on the Charles Church development and installed her chocolate-making machinery there.

Now, as Easter approaches, Yvonne has channelled more of her production into creating chocolate eggs, one of her lines being some exquisitely decorated boxes of hand-painted chocolate 'quail's eggs'.

Yvonne and husband, Sam, moved to Portishead last March from South Wales.

"I worked for Lloyds TSB in Wales for a good number of years," says Yvonne. "The children are all grown up and have made their homes elsewhere so we came over to Portishead a year ago, just loved it, and bought a house.

"I was originally doing the chocolate- making at home. As a result, I have now got a good local customer base from the farmers' markets and I am still going to continue with those."

You might imagine the temptation to simply munch away constantly at choccie after choccie would be too much, but Yvonne says she eats less than she used to.

"That's because it is high quality chocolate and you cannot eat too much of it," she explains. "Now I can't eat more than two of mine in one go because the cocoa content is quite high. Most of the chocolate is Callebaut chocolate from Africa which I get in big blocks and melt down. I get it in batches of about 150 kilos at a time, and at the moment it is about 70 per cent cocoa solids."

Although we are in the middle of a global credit crunch, Yvonne says sales of chocolates have gone up by 30 per cent in recent months. She puts that down to our desire for comfort food.

Yvonne says: "My hope is that opening Chocolate One will enable people to get hand-made chocolates for occasions such as Mother's Day, Easter or birthdays, or just because they fancy a treat.

"I just love creating new types of chocolate and plan to introduce unique ranges all the time to match the seasons.

"And, as a small business, we will be able to custom-design chocolate for people. For example, we have a coffee range that includes six different chocolates including espresso and latte, and we have a fruit range that has proved really popular."

Yvonne's talents don't stop at chocolate-making, either. She's a dab hand at creating special occasion cakes, too, and will also market these from her new shop.

The first day of opening actually produced a staggering response.

"It went down a storm," says Yvonne. "I came out of the shop at 10am to put the sign out and found we had a queue – and the shop was full all day.

"In fact, we were due to close at 6pm but people were still coming in and we couldn't actually shut until 6.15pm. It was fantastic."

One of the big sellers was something her customers have dubbed the "eco-box" because there's nothing wasted. It's a box made entirely out of chocolate and then filled with chocolates of the customer's choice.

"I have taken lots of orders for these boxes for Mother's Day and Easter."

Also for Easter she has experienced a demand for her half a dozen eggs in a box – white chocolate eggs complete with orange "yolks".

The cake side of the business wasn't overshadowed on opening day, either. The chocolate cup cakes did well, and Yvonne reveals, "I made four dozen and sold them all within an hour".

● Chocolate One, Village Square, Phoenix Way, Portishead, is open Tuesday to Saturday, between 10am and 6pm. You can contact the shop by calling 01275 817961