Did you like baking as a child? “I grew up in Balingen, a village 70km south of Stuttgart, Germany. There was a bakery opposite our house, and every morning I could smell the bread. My grandmother lived in a different village so every Wednesday my older brother and sister and I spent the afternoon with her. She was still baking bread in an old wood-fired oven. She did everything by hand. “I made savouries, sweets and bread with my grandmother and mum. When I was around 12 years old I did a pre-apprenticeship through school and chose a bakery. I liked it and knew this was what I wanted to do. I did another apprenticeship with a pastry chef at 16, in a bigger bakery in Balingen. Then I went back to school to study economics.” Tell us about your time in the army during your national service. “When I was 21 years old, I went into the army. I had to do three months of training. I had to cook for 50 or 60 officers and those one rank below them. It was just me cooking. I had no idea what to do. I made salads and steaks. But I was interested enough that after I got out of the army I did a chef apprenticeship for 2½ years.” Where did you go after that? “I went to Spain to work for a three-Michelin-starred restaurant called Tristán, in Mallorca. I stayed there for two years, then went back to Germany before working in several hotels around the world, in the United States, Jordan, Malaysia, China, Macau and Hong Kong.” Which hotel did you like working at the most? “The Datai Langkawi resort, in Malaysia. We had to order food and chocolate three months in advance because it came by ship from Singapore, and I ordered fruits from Australia. Kuala Lumpur was special because I met my wife there; we married in 2010 and had our son a year later.” What kind of competitions did you take part in? “In Malaysia we had charity chocolate cake competitions between hotels. I won the competition five years in a row. The cakes were judged for taste and looks, and then they were sold for charity. I was also team captain for Macau’s MGM Cotai at the Dilmah Real High Tea Global Challenge, in Sri Lanka. We won a gold medal for best table decoration. “I encourage competition. But you better know what you are getting into because you need to have the determination to excel, learn, grow and accept changes – you compete but you need to listen to advice as well.” How do you deal with nerves on contest day? “Everyone handles stress differently. You do as many repetitions as possible, you need to know what you are doing and train in all the steps. But on the actual day, the kitchen is maybe a different environment from the one you trained in. Sometimes the humidity is higher or the air conditioning is not working properly. But if you know what you are doing it doesn’t matter. “Your first competition you will screw up. In Malaysia, I got completely destroyed because I was not ready for it. In Europe we don’t do competitions so I didn’t know what to expect. You think you’re good and then the judges say, ‘This is not right, that is not right.’ But I took their advice and it motivated me to do better.” What did you learn by working around the world? “Every place you work has different tastes when it comes to dessert. In America, everything is colourful and sweet. In Europe, my chocolates are milk, dark and white. In the Middle East, Arabic sweets are so sweet you still smile when you sleep. In Asia, Western desserts are considered too sweet. I have to cut sugar levels here but I try to work with citrus, like yuzu, calamansi and lemon. I replace white sugar with brown sugar, but it doesn’t work with everything. Once I made champagne jelly with brown sugar and you couldn’t taste the champagne. It’s good to cut down all this sugar because it’s not healthy.” Have you had any interesting requests for cakes? “In Malaysia every year we had to deliver two cakes to the king – for his birthday and at the end of Ramadan. I went to the palace 10 times to shake hands with the king and explain the cakes to him. Every time you have to make a different cake, and compete with the other five-star hotels who make cakes for him, too. One year we did the catering for the king’s official birthday party. I had to make a cake that he cut live on TV, in 35 degree weather. I sweated blood and tears. It was a sponge cake; you cannot do a cream or butter cream cake because they will melt. The cake was cut then given to the entire family. My wife was jealous – she never went into the palace.” How did you get your own line of chocolate? “In Malaysia, we used five to six tonnes of chocolate a year. In 2011, Barry Callebaut [one of the world’s largest cocoa processors] said I used so much chocolate that they wanted to invite me to create my own. I went to their lab in Paris. “It’s like wine tasting. I tried 50 beans and chocolates; some I didn’t like right away, like beans that tasted like smoke. After I went through the entire palette, they typed what I had said into a computer program and revealed what flavour combination I would prefer. Then they made a blend based on the results. “I didn’t want a lot of sugar, but something aromatic and flavourful. I picked three single-origin chocolates and my chocolate, 71.8 per cent cocoa, contains two out of the three. I went back in 2018 to make a milk chocolate. It’s a similar process but you taste different kinds of notes of sugar, like caramelised, brown, white. I wanted something between a typical milk chocolate and a dark chocolate. That’s why the percentage is 46.2 per cent cocoa.”