“Some watermelon fruit pie for you? Please do try. Oh post script, it doesn’t contain real watermelon, it only looks like one,” says Samarth Ramesh as he offers his bread and jam-based dessert with the flourishes of a seasoned chef. The 10-year-old is here from Hyderabad to participate in the Young World Sweet Chef competition and excitedly tells us how he had to bank on his father’s mobile phone to register for the contest. “The Internet wasn’t working and I had to nag my mother,” he grins. On the neighbouring table, Haniya Rubbani proudly displays what she calls the ‘Taj Mahal sandesh’. It’s got three layers. “The top layer is white and denotes the Taj Mahal; the second layer is red and stands for the love Shahjahan had for Mumtaz. I have used blueberry inside to indicate river Yamuna that flows by the monument,” says the 10-year-old. The sweet won her the first place. Samhith Joy Thomas, who made mouse-shaped laddoos out of desiccated coconuts and dry fruits, won the second place and Tisha V. stood third with her Oreo cookie delight.
The judges — Chef Rajesh Radhakrishnan, area director, food production, The Park, Sneha and Shruthi Murali, Directors, Sri Krishna Sweets, scored the contestants on the basis of presentation, taste and originality.
The kids were briefed to make Diwali sweets, either traditional or with a twist. Forty-eight children between the age group of 10 and 12 participated in the contest. Undeterred by the torrential downpour, they arrived at the venue and quickly set up their ingredients on the table and got to work, putting together their masterpieces within an hour — laddoos, sweet rolls, barfis, shakes and what not. Chocolate, coconut, and dry fruits were the most popular ingredients.
“Some of their ideas and the way they explained their dishes to us was really good. Their choice of ingredients too was unusual. Some participants used thinai , amaranth, and sabja seeds,” says Chef Rajesh. One of the kids even brought rice paper rolls her father got her from Spain. Her little hands deftly stuffed and rolled them into a multi grain sweet.
The contest threw up a host of interesting desserts such as sweet pani puri, ABC peda (ABC stands for Assorted Bread Crumbs, we were told), sunflower-shaped sandesh, sweets in the shape of firecrackers made from leftover cakes, and a gooey dessert named Indiyas served in diyas.
At the end of the challenge, as the judges totalled the marks, the participants neatly packed their creations into colourful plastic dabbas. One of them walked around sharing the contents of his plate with his new buddies and said, “I am saving one piece and that I will take for my amma .”
