Guilbaud’s pastry chef wins Valrhona pâtisserie prize

Aoife Noonan, pastry chef at Restaurant Patrick Guilbaud, created the winning dessert at the Valrhona Pâtisserie Championship in Dublin yesterday. Stress was the theme for this year's event and contestants were required to design a plated dessert and a street food version interpreting "stress that helps us create and break new ground".

“Coffee plays a significant role for me in dealing with my day-to-day work life. A double espresso every morning and between shifts tends to give me a caffeine fix to enable me to drive and push myself in a stressful environment. The coffee and chocolate combination was an obvious one,” said Noonan.

Her winning restaurant dessert, called Java Cake, consisted of a Coeur de Guanaja cremeux and espresso jelly on a chocolate pâte sablée base, completed with a Jivara tube filled with Tia Maria espuma and accompanied by a Guanaja and Tonka sorbet.

Her street food version was titled The Espresso Shot and was made up of a Tia Maria sphere coated in Ivoire chocolate and rolled in a Coeur de Guanaja sablée, crushed coffee beans and Jivara tuile.

Noonan wins an expenses-paid three-day training course in l’Ecole du Grand Chocolat, Valrhona in Tain l’Hermitage, France and a tasting menu in Maison Pic, a three-star Michelin restaurant in Valence.