Austrian chef Johannes Warmuth on the Viennese pastry mindset

"As a child I liked to bake cakes with my mum. We would make marmorgugelhupf, or marble bundt cake, and sachertorte, a dense chocolate cake with apricot jam. All Austrian women know how to make sachertorte. In the last few years, young people have become very interested in learning to make traditional cakes, and to decorate cakes, probably because they want to know what they are eating.

"At 15 years old, I [started] a three-year pastry apprenticeship, then worked at a coffee house and at Badrutt's Palace, in St Moritz, the famous ski hotel in Switzerland. It has a great pastry department. I loved working there. I went back home to do an executive pastry chef course, then to southern England to work at a five-star hotel. I started working at Café Central in Vienna three years ago."

"I love sugar and like to make cakes for my friends and myself. I eat a lot of them. I was named Vienna cake master of the year in 2013 and 2014, but came second this year. Each contestant had to make a showpiece and a cake. I love making showpieces, but [at the Mandarin Oriental, where Warmuth recently took part in a Viennese patisserie promotion] they are so much better. I can learn here and take it back to Vienna. Pastry is a passion for me. When I go to bed and have ideas, I write them down and try them out the next day. At Café Central, each year, we serve 480,000 guests with 300,000 pieces of cake and pastries, 50,000 of which are apfelstrudel. Fifty-five per cent of our total business comes from the coffee house, which seats 180 guests; the rest is banqueting. We supply pastries to coffee houses [that do not] have pastry teams."

"The more traditional ones, like apfelstrudel and sachertorte, are most in demand. We try to offer contemporary styles but they aren't easy to sell.