Last week I attended the Annual Awards Of Excellence semi finals, every year previous winners are invited back to help out, we carry plates around, fetch any last minute ingredients, offer the competitors a bit of moral support and do a bit of marking. Every year I see techniques I haven’t seen before, interesting flavour combinations and I get to hang out with previous winners, including my friend Polly. I think the goal is for us to do some networking as well but I can’t say that’s really my style, I tend to be scared by the big important chefs so just hide in a corner with my mates, this is something I should probably get better at. Anyway, I thought it might be interesting to share a bit about the ins and outs of pastry competitions and my experiences with them. It feels necessary to start off by saying I am by no means a big boy in the world of competitions, I’ve only competed in three but they were all interesting experiences and huge learning curves, I had a lot of fun and simultaneously was so stressed I thought my head was going to fall off.
In the world of fine dining competitions are a big deal, they range from small friendly competitions to HUGE, the Pastry World Cup was recently held in Paris, France won (of course). These big competitions take true dedication, months of practice and sacrifice, they involve some of everything sugar sculptures, chocolate sculptures, bonbons, plated desserts, the list goes on, these competitions are serious business and take years of dedication, practice and sacrifice, they’re not for the fainthearted!
From the outside pastry competitions probably seem quite fun, running around, making some cakes, having fun, Great British Bake Off vibes, however every single competition I’ve been in has had me sobbing in a bathroom, vomiting from stress induced migraines and sometimes both simultaneously. That’s not to say they’re not worth it. The prizes can be great but really most people are doing them for personal development. Of course you learn SO much working in professional kitchens, from working tidily to perfecting tempering to mastering the perfect quenelle but it can be easy to get stuck in a rut, day to day you end up doing the same repetitive jobs so competing in competitions can be a great way of expanding your knowledge. In my experience employers usually encourage their staff to compete, if they win it looks great for the business and it means that staff will learn skills they otherwise wouldn’t have had, in return you get the opportunity to learn new skills and your employer will fund your practice, all of those ingredients don’t come cheap! I was really lucky and when I competed my employer covered every single expense including travel, hotels and specialised equipment.
The Tasks
I’m going to focus on The Annual Awards Of Excellence (AAE) which I won in 2018. This competition is for chefs, pastry chefs and waiters under the age of 26 with at least 2 years experience in the field. The word competition isn’t quite right to describe the AAE, it’s more like an exam, theoretically everyone could get the award, the winner is just the person with the highest overall score. This makes it a bit more friendly than other competitions, although everyone wants to win it doesn’t feel like you’re fighting against each other and there’s generally a really nice sense of camaraderie during the competition.
So what does the competition actually consists of? Once you’ve qualified you receive a brief for the semi finals, this varies year to year but they generally like to cover fundamental pastry techniques. My tasks were:
Brioche: some to be made into a nanterre loaf (a loaf made of evenly sized balls of dough) some to be made into a bee sting, a classic german pastry consisting of a large round brioche with a florentine topping and filled with pastry cream.
Cheese Soufflés: 6x cheese soufflés served with a cheese sauce, I haven’t eaten a soufflé since and don’t know if I ever will.
Choux Pastry: 6x coffee religeuse to be dipped in fondant and filled with a coffee pastry cream.
Les Miserable: 6 x cut les miserables (a classic french patisserie consisting of almond sponge layered with praline buttercream) and the rest presented uncut.
You have around two months to practice and then five hours on the day to complete the tasks, now five hours seems like a lot of time but there’s a lot to do and if you’re not rushed off your feet from the moment they say go, then your products probably aren’t complex enough. The whole thing is really an exercise in extreme organisation, you’re allowed to take ingredients pre-weighed but not prepared in any way this helps ease a bit of the time pressure but you still have to spend the full five hours running around like a nutter!
Once the semi finals are over the judges give feedback and then you have a week or so to chill before you find out if you’re through to the finals and start the process all over again but even more pressure this time 🙃.
The finals are pretty similar in terms of structure the main difference is the tasks always include a centrepiece, this is usually made of chocolate, sugar or nougatine, I had to do sugar, it’s definitely not something I would ever choose to do again, what can I say, working with molten sugar until my hands are blistered and raw isn’t my favourite activity.
For the final my tasks were:
Raspberry Moulded Chocolates: x12, I’ll be sharing this recipe later today!
Miniature Baked Passionfruit Tarts: x12 pic below!
Miniature Seasonal Financier: x12, I made peach & thyme.
Allumettes: x12, I’d never heard of these before, it’s puff pastry baked with royal icing on top.
Funfair Themed Sugar Showpiece: All of the petits fours had to be presented on the sugar stand.
Sadly I was in such an exhausted daze over this time that I have very few pictures of my finished showpiece but I’ve included a few pictures from some of my practices plus my friend Polly’s amazing spherical croquembouche that she made for her competition!
Overall I think competitions can be amazing opportunities for personal growth, I learnt so much! I can’t say that competing is really on my radar at the minute, it just requires so much time, effort and dedication, for now I think I’ll stick to observing and helping out. I’ll be back for this years AAE final in April so I’ll be sure to post some updates on my Instagram, I can’t wait to see what everyone makes!
If there’s any of my competition recipes that you’d like me to share let me know, I can’t decide wether to write up the choux, bee sting or passionfruit tarts next!
CONGRATULATIONS!! The peach and thyme financier sounds incredible
You are awesome!!! Three competitions whilst achieving UK Young Pastry Chef of the year 2018 is absolutely amazing 🤩
Thank you for shining light on the BTS hard truths, situations people rarely see! But also, really proud of your realisation and standing your ground on what works for you Sophie ❣️