Jane and I watched some episodes of Masterchef: The Professionals this afternoon. There was some fantastic cooking but also a lot of things which did not look that great and left you wondering just how professional the contestants really were. Perhaps that is unfair though; it must be an incredibly stressful environment to work in and they were called upon to perform some very skilled tasks.

We decided to try the spun sugar (sugar melted to a caramel that is then poured in thin strands to create decorations) and it definitely takes some practise. It was fun and made a great topping for our dessert but it was harder than it looked; on reflection, I think all the candidates made a reasonable stab at it if they hadn’t been warned it was coming up. If they knew about the challenge of course, they should have been up all night practising but I can see that would be a very fattening route to success.

Having eaten all the evidence of our attempts, I think we can wait a few days before trying again. It will be a good technique to get in the repertoire though.