Jérémy Aspa and Baptiste Sirand won the fifth season of “Best Pastry Chef: The Professionals” against Virgilia Lebigre and Julien Despaquis.
The two pastry chefs, trainers at the Valrhona school, presented a buffet of cakes around citrus fruit which won over the jurors and the customers, and are on their little cloud.
Their victory allows them, in fact, to create a pastry with Pierre Hermé which will be marketed in the chef's shops from Friday July 22nd.
Baptiste also found love thanks to the show since he is now in a relationship with Virgilia, one of his opponents in the final… The two friends confide in their journey.
TV MAGAZINE. - How did you feel when you won the contest?
Baptist Sirand.
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A lot of joy and pride.
There was also the feeling of the work accomplished because this competition required a lot of investment and, emotionally, it was very strong.
Jeremy ASPA.
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I didn't understand right away… When our loved ones jumped on us and I saw the pride in their eyes, I realized a little.
I was very happy.
It's a crazy emotional lift.
What does it mean to you to win this contest?
JA
- It's a source of great pride to be able to highlight the job we do every day in the most beautiful way.
By doing this competition, we wanted to challenge ourselves and push our limits.
BS
- It is enormously satisfying to have gone to the end of this competition because we are competitors.
I think it will bring us visibility within our profession and among pastry enthusiasts.
“Winning this competition was an extraordinary experience but it is not an end for us”
Jeremy Aspa
Do you have common projects like the desire to open a pastry shop?
BS
- Not really because we are very well off at the Valrhona school where we both work.
We want to continue to grow in our profession.
And then, it would be complicated geographically speaking because Jérémy works on the side of Germany while I am in Tain-l'Hermitage.
JA
- We have the chance to do the best job in the world and, what's more, in the Valrhona school where no day is the same.
We travel, we meet our colleagues, our customers, we grow richer every day.
We don't necessarily want to set up shop right away because we see ourselves as young pastry chefs who still have a lot to learn.
Winning this competition was an extraordinary experience but it is not an end for us.
We want to continue to challenge ourselves.
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What exactly do you do at Valrhona?
JA
- We are trainer pastry cooks.
We do demonstrations, training, refresher courses for our customers, we create recipes and we also work in research and development.
BS
- We take the time to understand the product and the material, why it reacts like that and not otherwise.
We are like a center of expertise and then we support our clients and reveal to them everything we have been able to learn.
Why did you two want to do the competition and had you already done it?
BS
- We had never done a competition together before.
Me, I'm a competitor and I love it, I've already done several in pastry.
We immediately wanted to participate both because we are very complementary and we did not see ourselves doing it with someone else.
This allowed us to get to know each other better because, until then, we hadn't really had the opportunity to work together.
When I arrived in Tain-l'Hermitage in October 2019, Jérémy was leaving there.
We only worked together for three weeks and then we saw each other again on assignments.
We immediately had a great feeling and we became friends.
JA
- We always got on well but thanks to the contest, we are even more accomplices and more complementary than at the beginning.
We never argued during the show.
We divided up the roles beforehand so that one didn't take over the other.
Everything went perfectly.
For the record, we had set up a code to communicate discreetly.
"During the first round, I didn't feel comfortable, we had no benchmarks, nothing was going as planned..."
Baptist Sirand
That's to say ?
JA
- At Valrhona, we are lucky enough to work in front of the camera and we were aware that, if we argued, it could have an impact.
We therefore set up a coding with the names of chocolate which allowed us to communicate on the state of the situation in a discreet way.
Opalys was when everything was going well, Dulce if we had to agree on something, Tanariva when one needed the other and Tulakalum when things were not going at all.
BS
- Suddenly, in front of the camera, we always had a smile and we acted as if everything was going well.
This allowed us to avoid embarrassing questions from the journalist who was in front of us, and to stay focused on the contest.
JA
- During the show, we are accompanied every day by a journalist who scrutinizes our expressions.
We also have a high-performance microphone that allows us to hear everything, so as soon as we have a doubt, we are asked a question.
It still happened to us like everyone else because there are always unforeseen events, but we wanted to avoid wasting too much time with it.
How was the final?
BS
- I think the first round of the final was the hardest for Jérémy and me.
I didn't feel comfortable, we had no benchmarks, nothing was going as planned... We felt like we weren't in control.
JA
- In previous shows, we always had one last chance to save ourselves, whereas there we knew we could be eliminated directly.
It added pressure to us.
BS
- Jérémy was angry with himself because he missed the top of the artistic piece and it broke and me because the cake was not as I wanted and my rosette piping was not beautiful... When the test was over, we both apologized.
At the time, I really thought we were going to be eliminated, I was so unhappy with what we had released.
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How was the second part of the test?
JA
- We chose citrus fruits as a working subject, it was risky but it's our passion for both of us and it corresponded to the seasonality.
We made gourmet cakes of all shapes and very colorful.
Opposite, they had made laser cakes, without any defect.
Our two buffets were really different.
I think the result was close.
The winner of the competition was the creation of a cake with
Pierre Hermé
which will be marketed this Friday, July 22, what does that represent?
JA
- It's a childhood dream come true.
I saw myself again when I started in the profession when I idolized the great chefs.
I never thought I would meet them… So I measured my chance of making a creation with Monsieur Hermé, the person who best represents excellence and French pastry.
We worked on the cake as soon as the contest was over.
He left us free of everything, we just had to be inspired by the favorite flavors of his house.
He then tasted the cakes we had made.
He was very attentive and gave us his opinion.
We really built the dessert all three.
Our cake is therefore made with strawberries, mango and pink peppercorns.
With Baptiste, we will try to go to the shops to see it in person.
I think we will feel a lot of pride and that
“With Virgilia, we could see that we liked each other.
There was a staring game and we knew we were going to see each other again once the show was over.
Baptist Sirand
Baptiste, you won the competition but you also found love with Virgilia, the finalist in front of you. Were you already together during filming?
BS
- No, we stayed focused on the competition even if we saw that we liked each other.
There was a staring game and we knew we were going to see each other again once the show was over.
And that's what happened.
We got together right after, in November.
