UK places eighth at 2017 at Coupe du Monde de la Pâtisserie
Pastry Team UK has come in eighth place at the Coupe du Monde de la Patisserie in Lyon, France.
France took home the gold, while Japan and Switzerland came in second and third place.
The bi-yearly competition took place in Lyon across two days (22 and 23 January) and saw 22 countries compete for the title. The UK were the first to present their desserts, and were up against Mexico, Belgium, Argentina, Tunisia, Singapore, Indonesia, Malasia, Japan, Brazil and France on the first day.
The teams consist of three pastry chefs each specialising in chocolate, sugar and ice. They have ten hours to complete six challenges. These are: an artistic creation made of Valrhona chocolate; three chocolate entrements; one artistic creation made using hollow casting with a flower made of drawn sugar; one artistic creation made of sculpted ice; three frozen fruit entremets; and 15 desserts presented on a plate.
The UK was represented by ice candidate and captain of the team Andrew Blas, executive pastry chef at the hotel Café Royal; chocolate candidate Chris Zammit, pastry chef at Camilleri Kitchen, East Sussex; and sugar candidate Florian Poirot, chef-owner of York-based company FP Macaroons.
The team were guided by team president Martin Chiffers and chairman Benoit Blin, executive pastry chef at Belmond Le Manoir aux Quat'Saisons. They trained and practiced at the Taste Lab, in East Acton, London, in order to keep to the strict timings.
The theme for the UK team's sugar and chocolate sculptures was Marvel London.
The ice sculpture was carved to look like the superhero Thor, with the frozen dessert balancing on top, representing Thor's hammer.
The UK team also received a special award for best sugar creation. The sugar sculpture depicted a scene of London's Big Ben falling in to Captain America's shield. Around the clock tower, the Fantastic Four superhero squad were crafted from sugar. Beside the sugar piece was a chocolate SpiderMan fighting the villian Doctor Octopus on top of a London post box.
The chocolate dessert (which was based on an infinity orb) was made from Valrhona chocolate, orange and mandarin coulis, a Valrhona Caraibe chocolate cremeux with Earl Grey, a Guanaja chocolate sponge, a crunchy almond base and Illanka chocolate mousse. It was finished with a Guanaja glaze.
The frozen fruit dessert was composed of a streusel base, raspberry sponge, orange parfait, vanilla ice cream, raspberry coulis and a raspberry sorbet and revealed a London Underground logo when cut in half.
The plated dessert was inspired by Spiderman, and made from a crisp base layered with vanilla cream, butterscotch, hazelnut crumble, British apple compote, jelly and sponge. This was paired with and apple sorbet and decorated with drops of Apple Jelly.
On the day of the competition, the UK team were up against their share of challenges. In the morning they experienced a power outage for half an hour, and Zammit's chocolate SpiderMan broke. He said: "I did so many run-throughs and practices with my chocolate piece, but on the day it split in half. The bottom half of the stomach had broken so I had to cut the head off, mould it together, put the head back on and rebuild the leg.
"We trained in the same set up but on the day the temperature is different and so is the environment. We were having some problems with the blast chiller, too. It wasn't going down to -50'C like we wanted, and was stuck on -25'C which gave us some problems with the chocolate cake. It came out really nicely though and gave a really clean cut."
Speaking about the UK team's theme, MC of the contest and French television chef Vincent Ferniot added: "I was a superhero fan when I was younger, I had great collections of Marvel comics and seeing the display brought back memories.
Blin added: "I think the final showpiece is the best that the UK team has ever done, it's absolutely amazing. The great success for us is not only that they completed everything on time but also the large number of people that their piece has attracted. Even now as we speak and everything is being cleared up, people are still watching - it's a crowd pleaser and a great success."
France's winning theme was inspired by Rock 'n' Roll while Japan's theme was Jazz Frog and Switzerland's was based on Dracula.
La Coupe du Monde de la PÁ¢tisserie rules allow only the top five teams from this year's final a guaranteed place in the next final in 2019. This means that the UK Pastry Team will have to enter the European Pastry Cup competition next year, which will be held on June 10th, 2018 in Turin, Italy, in order to have a chance of making the final selection.
Gabriel Paillasson launched La Coupe du Monde de la PÁ¢tisserie in 1989, with the aim of raising the profile of pÁ¢tisserie chefs. He was inspired by the Bocuse d'Or competition, which starts in Lyon tomorrow (24 January).
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