He first came into contact with chocolate when he started working at Café Strauch in Aachen in 1989. He was a fast learner and it soon became clear that the young bread- and cake-making apprentice had a special feeling for this dispersion of cocoa, sugar and milk powder. This was noticed by the owners of the café and the young man from Belgium’s German-speaking community was put in charge of making the chocolates and pralines. It wasn’t just a case of having to produce perfect hand-made products with a shiny surface and the right relationship between shell and filling. He was soon free-styling, doing what makes a good chocolatier stand out from the rest: subtly combining aromas such as coffee, vanilla, nuts, honey, liqueurs and spices into harmonious creations.

Axel Hanf had now become infected by the chocolate bug. He decided to go and look over the shoulders of the recognised mâitres, working with them and learning from them. At the Zurich Honold & Hürlimann Confiserie he worked solely on refining chocolate and producing pralines. There, he got to know Sprüngli employees, with whom he swapped recipes. But he was only able to get a temporary work permit for that lovely country Switzerland and, when his time was up, he took up an offer from friends in Munich to start up a café there with them.  He moved to the Bavarian capital with Christel, his then girlfriend and now wife, and it wasn’t long before his fame spread, with the Munich press soon calling him “the Belgian”.

After all those years of learning and after having officially become a maître, he took a year off with Christel to do a world trip. While visiting cocoa plantations in the Peruvian mountains, he made the irrevocable decision to start up his own chocolate production in East Belgium. Back in his home country and full of drive and optimism, he got started straight away, at first in a friend's cellar. After six months he moved to bigger premises. He carried on learning and soon became a specialist for creations made of sugar, that special sweet material which can be pulled and blown into wonderful sculptures. As the contracts started piling up, he needed more and more room and it was only a question of time before he built his own house in Schönberg with adjacent production and storage facilities and a shop.

Axel Hanf attained international recognition with his now legendary mustard pralines, which he created for Montjoie’s Historical Mustard Factory – or the Historische Senfmühle Monschau as it is called in German. There, the renowned mustard manufacturer Guido Breuer had practically given up his vision of producing mustard pralines before he met the mâitre chocolatier from Schönberg in East Belgium. Axel designed 6 different varieties of mustard pralines, creating a diversified and refined assortment ranging from exotically fruity to eye-watering hot flavours. Each ganache, made of butter, cream and chocolate, is flavoured with a small touch of “Moutarde de Montjoie”.

It was not long before further requests started coming in from other countries and Axel asked his brother Lothar if he would like to support him with his marketing experience. Lothar soon took over responsibility for marketing, having flyers printed, getting into contact with newspapers and magazines, and generally supporting his brother in marketing the chocolates and pralines. On the basis of both the amount of work involved and the chances for success that had grown so much, together with the enjoyment the two brothers had from working alongside each other, they decided in 2007 to set up their own company - Belgian Chocolate Design.

The company’s success is not just based on marketing their own collection internationally. Belgian Chocolate Design is also hitting the headlines within its extraordinary third-party creations – like the wine and champagne pralines for the Giwer-Greif vineyard, the jumbo coffee-beans covered with delicate organic dark chocolate for Mondo del Caffè, the beer praline range for the Brasserie de Bellevaux, or the spectacular goat cheese pralines for the Vulkanhof in Gillenfeld in Germany’s Eifel region.