Godiva Chocolate Challenge 2015: The Final

She began with a critique of Joseph Fallowfield’s dessert: ‘Your dish was absolutely stunning. It was picture perfect with a really great use of meringue. You used it twice in terms of having your Italian meringue and your French meringue and the flavours were fantastic. You got everything you wanted from it. Our only minor, minor problem was the density of the chocolate base – if you had made it lighter and gone for a chocolate mousse rather than a ganache, it would have been so much easier to eat and we could have devoured one and been left wanting more. But still, technically fantastic.’

Judge Jean Apostolou was up next and commented on Anoop Singh’s dessert: ‘I have told you already, that you have a long future in baking macarons, as the macaron base of your dessert was really fantastic. What we have here is a great construction as well, which looks good. You certainly know how to construct a dessert. Keep doing what you do and congratulations.’

William Sitwell was also full of praise for all of the finalists and said ‘It’s no easy task cooking with chocolate and tempering chocolate. Anyone who has seen all of the four dishes would not have believed that the brief was exactly the same.’ Turning to Rosana he said ‘I want to come to Brazil, as if this is what you are cooking over there, it’s absolutely wonderful. This is a lovely chocolate cake, although we wanted it to be a little bit lighter. I just wanted a little more cream and a little more meringue, but you are a great cook and you’ve done fantastically well to get this far and who knows you could still win this.’

Mark Hix, who was also on last year’s judging panel and would be having the winning dessert featured on his menu at HIX Soho restaurant, comment on the tough brief for this year’s challenge: ‘The use of meringue and chocolate together involves two different skills. The first skill is getting the maximum flavour from the chocolate and then it’s also making the perfect light meringue which in itself can be tricky. You can have crumbly meringue, you can have chewy meringue, and to get that spot on is a true skill in itself.’

When William Sitwell announced Heather Bennett’s dish as this year’s winner, it was clearly a firm favourite with cheers throughout the kitchen – a pretty astonishing feat as she also lifted the trophy at last year’s event, and the shortlist was judged blind this year. William said, ‘Heather’s dish was the most original in design. It was certainly the most arresting visually and the two different meringues she made were very good.’

Jean Apostolou acknowledged that ‘the fact that Heather was crowned winner of the Godiva Chocolate Challenge again reconfirms her superb skill at combining different flavours and textures. It is this that set her apart from the other finalists. Heather’s dessert was very accomplished indeed and I am looking forward to welcoming her to our Godiva kitchens [a part of her prize] later this year.’

Heather herself was over the moon: ‘I am super honoured to have been selected again as the Godiva Chocolate Challenge winner. This year was harder as there were more criteria to meet, but I had a fairly good idea of what I wanted to do. I would heartily recommend entering to anyone with a love of chocolate and cooking.’

Now Heather will win a luxury weekend in Brussels including a visit to Godiva’s Centre of Innovation. She will also see her dessert featured on the menu at HIX Soho – initially the dish will be on the menu for just a week but Mark was happy to consider a longer term place, ‘It’s a great dessert in the lead up to Christmas and if it proves popular with the customers it will stay on longer.’