"The Sweetest Thing" Melbourne Food & Wine Festival Event 2012 IMAGES

Getting ready for the first course of dessert

'Recycled Dessert' thanks to SecondBite

Great night in store

Dessert nearly ready to go

Finishing touches

Dessert is served

85% of the ingredients were destined for the rubbish

2nd dessert course from Mr Hive's Daniel Fletcher "White Chocolate Creameaux, Coconut, Mango & Basil 

Pierre Roelofs prepares his "Caramel, Apple, Brie, Dried Apricot & Hazelnut"

Guests enjoying the unique surroundings of Joost's Greenhouse

Having fun!

Luke Whearty from Trink Tank/Der Raum executing his "The Berry And The Bee"

I really enjoyed working with these talented pastry chefs on the night

On the 14th of March this year I was invited to produce a course for an exclusive dessert dinner as part of the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival. "The Sweetest Thing" was held at Joost's amazing recycled restaurant project The Greenhouse and involved some of the most talented pastry chefs in town.

The Greenhouse is a truly inspiring project that has really taken off in other cities in Australia and you can read more on this here. As the theme was recycling I decided to take a different approach to my dessert course. I have done work with the excellent charity SecondBite before at last years Masterchef dinner at St.Kilda Mission and I enlisted their help to try and raise their profile on the night. SecondBite collect unwanted food from all sorts of places including supermarkets and distribute it to missions and organisations who are able to process the produce to feed people who need it. I asked them to bring some of their produce to me to create a dessert from and they were happy to do this for some exposure.

I recieved some amazing produce that was deemed not good enough for the supermarkets due to blemishes etc, I was amazed at the quality of plums, nectarines, peaches and lemons and was happy to get some free range eggs and other bits with which to work with. I produced a "Recycled Dessert" consisting of plum sable, nectarine compote, lemon curd, peach jelly and a honey mousse made from Rooftop bees. It was served on a recycled mini cake stand which was designed to be served on recycled timber and eaten from the stand. All of the left overs including the stand and cutlery was dumped in the compost at the end of the course to continue the theme. I was happy with the guests reaction and proud to say that 85% of the dessert was recycled food and material and I have to thank SecondBite for all of their support.

In all it was a fantastic night and an honour to work with such great chefs in unique surroundings while helping out a worthwhile charity.

Thanks also to Amanda Fordyce for the fantastic photography of the event.

Darren