Quite a long time ago I was asked in school to explain why eating chocolate is harmful for health and I rather successfully convinced my teacher otherwise, thats how much I love chocolate. So when the best brand of handcrafted chocolates, Fabelle, invites the most amazing Masterchef Billie Mckay, their first global mentor, to do a masterclass on chocolate, it becomes a not to miss event for me.
In a very well organised event, which saw a host of bloggers, social media personalities and chocolate lovers converge, Fabelle launched the ‘Societe de Chocolat masterclass series’ with Billie Mckay, the winner of Masterchef Australia 2015. Billie was a big favourite amongst the followers of this iconic program in India and in my conversation with her she expressed how pleasantly surprised she was knowing how closely the series & her journey was followed in India.
The masterclass began with the customary address of the group by key ITC officials, Mr. Dipak Haksar, Chief Executive, ITC & Welcome hotels and Chef Manisha Bhasin, Executive Chef of ITC Maurya who stressed on the group’s commitment to Fabelle and towards bringing the finest chocolates to its patrons. Chef Billie Mckay and Master Chocolatier Sreyoshi Banerjee then took over and through a highly interactive session, educated all about chocolate, its tempering etc and made the iconic Australian dessert, The Pavlova.
The session was peppered with trivia quiz and kept the audience engaged by even involving audience members to come on stage to help the chefs. This was followed by an interesting “Chocolate Journey” from cocoa bean to various forms of edible chocolate, dark, white & milk, the country’s that produce chocolate and their peculiarities, where we also experienced how well the dark chocolate produced in Madagascar combines with our own locally produced Jasmine tea. And finally the usage of chocolate in desserts. Both Chef Billie & Chef Sreyoshi explained the chocolate journey step by step and answered all questions patiently.
The concluding another part of the event was the opportunity for the audience to recreate the Pavlova as made by the experts and this saw some interesting combinations being tried out and even more interesting plating of the dessert.
In all, an excellent event for chocolate lovers and I am sure more and more people will become a part of masterclasses held by Societe de Chocolat on a regular basis and truly evoke the chocolatier in them.