I was amazed two of my students competed on Chopped Junior in the same month.   With pride I’m happy to announce that Bram made it to the dessert round.

Bram cooked and plated like a master chef every step of the way and I personally think he should have won the entire competition.   Being a fan of baking and making desserts myself I was especially impressed by his raspberry fool and plan to make a chocolate sauce for the dessert round.   It’s tough to make a dessert in less than 30 minutes yet Bram was brave enough to make two sauces.   We use small torches in our dessert classes at La Toque but watch Bram with the large one supplied on the set.   He toasted the marshmallows beautifully and it would have been so easy to over cook their exterior and torch those marshmallows to a crisp.

Probably one of the most important skills to learn while honing one’s cooking techniques is to learn how to “fix” the product you’re making if something goes awry. Bram was a master of this during his competition.   Not everything went as planned but he was quick on his feet and transformed some issues into a brilliant alternative. You can see this when his corn dog batter stuck to the fry basket, when a piece of beef hopped out of his skillet and then when his chocolate sauce didn’t have the ideal viscosity.   It’s great for everyone to learn how to do turnarounds in their home kitchen but takes nerves of steel to do this while been filmed for a tv show. As I always tell my students, a recipe is a guideline and not a set of hard and fast rules.

To see the full episode and see how Bran created all of the courses on a stick go here.