The Pastry King

Just in case you need a recipe to make marshmallow to glue your Dutch Butter biscuits together, here is a simple recipe to make it at home :) Enjoy!!

• 8 sheets sheets leaf gelatine

• 500 g castor sugar

• 100 ml water

• 3 large egg whites

• icing sugar

• cornflour

- First you need to mix the sugar with the water and ensure it’s all moistened to the same level, and we need to bring it to a boil over a medium high heat.

*Warning: Hot sugar causes serious harm, so please be careful so not to hurt yourself or others when cooking it*

- In a jug of cold water, soften your gelatin. This recipe uses Bronze leaf gelatin.

- You need a sugar thermometer to do this properly, and the sugar needs to boil to a soft ball stage which is 235 deg F, or 112deg C

- As your sugar starts to get close to the soft ball stage, in a mixer start whisking the egg whites on a medium slow speed, this will allow for more uniform smaller bubbles to go into the egg whites :)

- Add the softened gelatin to the hot sugar when ready, and remove from the heat, and add into the whisking egg white.

- Whisk until cool, so this can be around 5-10 minutes in the miser, and add colouring if required. Some chefs add beetroot juice and even purees of fruit-the trick is to not add too much, dashes yes! As too much liquid going in may require a higher level of gelatin in the recipe

As one of the lucky few I was trained by members of the South African Culinary team back in South Africa, my belief is that the pastry section is highly regarded back in South Africa, more so than here in the UK.

My experience of newly trained Chefs and pastry chefs straight out of college is that they really haven't been shown the basics of cooking;  just the other week I had an apprentice say that he'd never cut a cabbage and didn't know how. 5 Minutes later I had shown him and he was on his way-surely the college should have taught him this? Industry leaders and organisations do try their best in getting new talent to flourish, through awards like the Annual Awards of Excellence, The chocolate dessert of the year, and the Pastry Chef dessert of the year.

My opinion is that we need more from the industry to bring talent out in young pastry chefs, where this can be best accomplished would have more skills shown and taught to them at college.

I have also had commi pastry chefs with their new NVQ's joining my brigade in the past, also with no clue as to the different mixing methods, or even the basic knowledge of reading a recipe.

It is sad that individuals are let loose in our industry not knowing the basics. For example, I regard food science in pastry to be incredibly important, with regards to cooking temperatures (coagulation, over-coagulation, syneresis) and when a sol becomes a gel, cereals also need great attention, and so on.

Meet our chocolates, the little award winners from the North west. All handmade with Valrhona chocolate and the closest Cheshire ingredients we can source.

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