A few weeks ago, I worked on something super cool. When my favourite pastry chef in London, Poppy (smitten by her work at first bite), emailed me about the project, I jumped at the chance of working on it with her.
Central St. Martins London organised an extravagant event to showcase the collections of their top fashion students. Poppy & I supplied the pastries. We were given a little brief about each of the designers’ collection and, coupled with a little bit of research into the visuals and aesthetics of their designs, we had to create pâtisseries that reflected the colours and sentiments of each of their collections.
After a week of poring over books and magazines, testing recipes, working with ingredients like black sesame seed paste, spice and floral waters, and employing techniques like a 4-hour grapefruit confit and deconstructed tarte tatin, we ended up with three distinct and beautiful creations:
Charlotte Tydeman
For Charlotte’s collection, we made a light floral rose chou with pink chocolate and a lychee mousse topping. For the larger show piece, we created a Mendl-worthy (à la Grand Budapest Hotel) display of pink courtesans.
Sang Yoon
To complement Sang’s designs, made a futuristic and urban dessert with a nod to Japanese pâtisserie for flavours and textures. A black and white chocolate dome on black sesame shortbread with rosemary infused citrus, chestnut cream and candied zest and yoghurt cream was the outcome.
Quoi Alexander
We made a tropical dessert reminiscent of an Indian Summer with salted caramel, mango, white chocolate and cardamom cream decorated with yellow chocolate and edible peppery violas.
All in all, a very fun, creatively fulfilling project with so much to learn. And I’m hoping more of these come along!
Some photos of the pastries during production:
