A BERKSWELL pastry chef is hoping to make it second time lucky after his team made it through to the second round of heats of Britain’s ‘toughest’ baking competition.
Mustapha Rahimi and his commis pastry chef Tracy Cheung faced their first set of challenges in last week’s episode of Bake Off: The Professionals on channel four.
The pair went head-to-head against hotels, patisserie and pairings from across the country and despite tensions running high they made it through.
The pair got off to a rocky start when judges Cherish Finden and Benoit Blin pushed the teams’ skills to the test with a secret challenge.
The five team were tasked to create Prinsesstartas – a classic Scandinavian cake with layers of sponge cake, raspberry jam, vanilla custard, and whipped cream which is covered in green marzipan and decorated with a rose.
They were given mixed reviews with Cherish saying parts of the sponge were moist but the creme patissiere was slightly overcooked.
For the showpiece Mustapha and Tracy had to transform bread and butter pudding.
The pair made individual desserts with cinnamon broioche, caramelisded sultana gel, cinnamon custard and vanilla mouse which sat upon a sugar showpiece.
Cherish commented: “It is a OK dessert but what we want from this competition is explosion of firework, of flavour profile, the texture.
“Didn’t get it in this.”
Mustapha is a previous black belt in Taekwondo for the Moroccan national team he believes he has the discipline required and the much needed determination to go all the way.
Speaking ahead of his appearance Mustapha said: “My commis, Tracy inspired me to apply as I wanted to do it for her, she’s working very hard.,
“She has a great personality and an amazing attitude so I asked her if she would be able to do it with me and the answer was yes. So I did it for her to gain more experience from the environment.”
He added that previous series, which he was part of in 2018 and got knocked out in the first round: “Didn’t put me off, it was the opposite as I’m always trying to do my best.”
On tonight’s (August 1) show they will be tasked with creating 24 completely reimagined millefeuille and 24 pavlovas served in ways never before seen.
And for the second challenge they will take on two batches of 24 identical modern religieuse, with each batch designed to look like little armies of their favourite musical icons with a music-themed showpiece.
