1. Where did it all start? How did you fall in love with cooking, pastry and chocolate?

Some of my first and most cherished memories from childhood are in the respective kitchens of my grandparents and watching, helping (probably hindering), and tasting (the best bit).

I’m sure, like many others, they can remember being handed the spoon by their Nan, to eat the batter and ending up covered in cake mix or the excitement, waiting for cakes to come out the oven and cool just enough so we were allowed to eat them. The nostalgic feeling from childhood of the smell of cakes in the oven, licking the bowl clean and food bringing family together fills me with joy. I didn’t always believe I wanted to be a pastry chef however, it is only upon reflection now I realise these childhood memories have a fond place and could be one of the reasons I became a pastry chef. If we fast forward a fair few years to secondary school this was when I decided I wanted to be a pastry chef, 

My school at the time ran a Duke of Edinburgh award program which I participated in, as part of the programme you had to do a skills activity for 6 months and I decided to do baking I made all sorts of things from your traditional cottage loaf to an Oreo chocolate cake , upon reflection none of the things I made looked or tasted very good but it gave me enough of a passion to decide I wanted to do this forever, I then went on to take food tech as a gcse and while looking for post 16 options discovered the Claire Clark academy for patisserie excellence in Milton Keynes I took a tour of the facility and fell in love in that moment I decided this was my next step to get to my dream of being a pastry chef. I studied at the Claire Clark Clark academy for 2 years I learnt a lot from an amazing lecturer Andrea ruff who showed us plated desserts, bread, puff pastry, sugar work and chocolate work just to name a few, cuoisidently when doing the chocolate unit I decided I hated chocolate work and was never going to do it again I see the irony in that statement now. While at the Claire Clark academy I did work experience at flourish bakery where I learnt about Viennoiserie production and cakes and when it came my time to leave college I was unsure on where I wanted to go we were in a very confusing time with lockdown due to Covid and was unsure what to do until I stumbled across Ryan Thompsons post on instagram looking for people to work at the grove, Ryan hired me straight out of college and I have been working at the grove for almost 2 years now in the two years I have worked in a few different areas including afternoon tea and the chocolate room. 

2. What or who is your greatest source of inspiration ?

I spend a lot of time on my phone just scrolling through social media like most people now, and I think that social media is my biggest influence you can get so many ideas from other chefs and bakers on social media, someone once told me “you can never run out of ideas with so much inspiration at the click of a button”, and I think it’s true it’s hard to not find something you are looking for on social media now and 9/10 you can find thing you couldn’t even think of.