A BERKSWELL pastry chef is hoping to make it second time lucky after his team made it through to final round of heats of Britain’s ‘toughest’ baking competition.
Mustapha Rahimi and his commis pastry chef Tracy Cheung narrowly made it through the second round of challenges in Tuesday’s (August 1) episode of Bake Off: The Professionals on channel four.
The pair went head-to-head against hotels, a patisserie and pairings from across the country and despite tensions running high they made it through.
It was a bake of two halves in the first challenge judges Cherish Finden and Benoit Blin pushed the teams’ skills to the test and asked them to re-imagine and bake 24 pavlovas and mille feuille.
The swan pavlova was the star of the duo’s first judging with saying he liked the flavour combination.
However the mille feuille was criticised for not having enough layers in the pastry and having too much yuzu.
For the showpiece Mustapha and Tracy created two batches of 24 identical modern religieuse, with each batch designed to look like musical icons with a music-themed showpiece.
The pair made desserts to look like Elton John – with a rocketman inspired piece filled with white peach puree and a lemon saffron gel and the other batch inspired by the green outfit Elton wore on the Hollwood walk of fame which was filled with salted caramel and pistachio mousseline.
They also had to create a showpiece out of nougatine which they created to look like a stage decorate with pianos.
Despite the pair not practising their modern religieuse showpiece the judges decided the pair would be able to fight once more in the next round.
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 next week’s episode (August 8) the pair will be competing for a spot in the final six.
