Being a pastry enthusiast myself, I absolutely love croissants and all types of danish pastries. In fact, I've tried many times to bake the pastries myself, but let me tell you, it really isn't easy to attain the right texture and flavour.
I was ecstatic when I was invited to the Anchor Food Professionals Pastry & Culinary Challenge 2018, where I had a chance to witness amazing chefs cooking up a storm!
There was a 4 day competition held from 13th March to 16th March with three categories; Pastry, Cakes and Culinary.
For the Pastry category, the contestants were required to create croissants and danish, while for the Cakes category, they were required to create two cakes based on the Mango & Strawberry theme. For the Culinary category, the theme was Land & Sea of Malaysia, whereby contestants have to incorporate Modern French cuisine to prepare a 3 course meal. According to Linda Tan, Anchor Food Professionals Director that these competitions are vital to allow sharing of expertise and to nurture young talents in the industry.
My favourite was the day where they had the Pastry category competition and precisely the chef had to come up with two wonderful creations, as listed below:
Croissant - A plain croissant without any filling, to be judged based on layering, texture, fragrant and taste of the end product.
Types of Danish - Using a single dough or variety of dough for all the danishes.
A total of 5 hours were provided for the chefs to come up with creations, which will impress the judges using Anchor products, such as Anchor Cream Cheese, Anchor Butter Sheet, Anchor Butter, Anchor UHT Milk, Anchor Whipping Cream, Anchor Extra Yield Cream Cheese.
The winner of this challenge was Chef Tan Chee Kit, from Penang who wow-ed the judges with his wonderful pastries!
Chef Tan has been baking for the past 17 years and is very experienced in making pastries. He enjoys baking croissants and experimenting with different types of pastries too. He emphasizes the importance of texture and layers in a good croissant. Good job, Chef Tan!
The winning creations!
Have a look at all those yummy pastries :) Well done!