If entrees and mains are served up as mouth-watering dishes on television shows, there’s just something about desserts that gives TV producers to go all out.
Ripping a page from the book of Roald Dahl, they are invariably wrapped in magic, colour and wonderment.
“In the world of Dessert Masters, we only come out at night,” judge Melissa Leong agrees. “I think there’s something really dramatic and fun about it. It’s the hours of dreaming and this is what our contestants, our Dessert Masters, are able to do with the wee hours.
“I don’t know about you, but I grew up reading Roald Dahl books religiously and just the right combinationof magic and darkness and edginess is I think what is the commonality between his writing and a show like Dessert Masters.”
The 10 series, an Austalian-conceived spin-off from MasterChef Australia pits 10 professionals against one another. Returning to host and judge alongside food critic Leong is international pastry chef and social media sensation, Amaury Guichon.
An entire season of desserts is a sumptuous treat for the eye, and a delight for production desigers.
“Amaury always puts it so elegantly. Dessert is a choice. You need to eat nutritious food to live. Dessert is not something that you need to have, but you want it. When you want something that you don’t need, I think it really invites you to be more decadent, because it’s a sometimes food, it’s a luxury, it’s an ephemeral art,” she suggests.
“I think it’s a suspension of disbelief. I think where desserts are concerned, there is that extra capacity for capturing the imagination and creating magic. You can do things with the medium of dessert that you can’t necessarily do with savoury foods. You can sculpt, you can build, you can suspend. You can do so much. When you look at Amaury’s work in his day to day life he makes rocking horses., edible movable skateboards on edible ramps. It’s absolutely crazy. You can engineer with things like chocolate and sugar in a way that you can’t necessarily with savoury food.
“So it does give a more artistic palette to imagine and to bring dreams to life. There has always been a romance of sweet food and that idea of suspending disbelief – look at movies like Chocolat, or popular culture in general. There’s just something about sugar that lends itself so well to the novelty and the romance of food in that capacity.”
The winner this sesaon will take home the title and $100,000 to spend however they please. While they span a range of pastry chefs, dessert wizards and cake connoisseurs, there are also cooking specialists.
“It’s a lot like being a doctor in a lot of ways. You choose where you want to focus your energies. There are contestants within there that are that are all about cake and cake decorating in particular. There are more traditional restaurant-trained pastry chefs that specialise in plated desserts. Donato Toce from the Gelato Messina empire is responsible for a big chunk of Australia loving quality made gelato of all sorts of different combinations of flavours. You have someone like Jana Lai, for example, who participated in the highest profile pastry competition in the world and came runner-up, I believe,” Leong continues.
“So you have all of these different disciplines within the world of pastry. We’re asking them to take what they know and translate that into the world of the MasterChef kitchen. It is a great equaliser in many ways, but it is also just a phenomenal demonstration of all the different strings in the bow of pastry.”
“It is a real pleasure to be around true professionals who are the best in their craft, and they’re just so proud of what they do. What is one wonderful result of having them all in one room is that they all start to inspire each other. So you see them all start off in their own lane, but as with the main show, you also see an exchange of ideas and inspiration, and they each become better and evolve in their own way. I think that’s really just a pleasure to witness for me and for Amaury as well.”
Dessert Masters screens 7:30pm Mondays on 10.
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