![]() Her Malaysian heritage came through loudly in her chiffon cakes and pandan-infused pineapple tarts, which we often placed on the counter alongside our mince pies around Christmas. From Australia, she brought wonderfully crumbly and sharp yo-yo cookies, her billowy powder puff cakes that are just impossible to put down, and her chocolate cake, which is the cake grown-up kids dream of, and which newspaper once called "the world's best" (pictured). Officially, she's a "product developer" for Ottolenghi, but that doesn't really do her role justice her originality and perfectionism have had an enormous impact on what we do. The combination of the child whose enthusiasm never wanes and the nerd who won't rest until it's perfect led to some pretty sweet results. What we shared was the notion that there is no upper limit to the number of times you can bake a cake or the amount of thought that can go into the components of a tart in order to get it just right that you can discuss the minutiae of a chocolate ice-cream or a nut brittle as if the fate of the entire universe rests on the conversation, without worrying for a second that this may be, just maybe, a tiny bit over the top.īaking brought out both our inner kids – and, also, our inner geeks, with all the precise measuring, timing and weighing that informed all of our chats. I finally realised that it was Helen's restlessness and her insatiable drive for perfection that had brought her to me. It took seeing Helen at work – first on the savoury side of the kitchen, then on the pastry side and then, later still, spending much of her time dreaming up pastries, cakes and all manner of sweet things for the company – for the penny to drop. I heard her story but couldn't quite understand what drives such a star to leave behind a very successful career – Helen is both a talented pastry chef and a successful psychotherapist – in a very sunny Melbourne in favour of a rather elusive future in a rather grey London. I remember meeting for the first time outside one of our shops, big meringue piles looming above us. Helen is an old friend and colleague who came to the Ottolenghi shops fresh off the proverbial boat from Australia, back in 2006. This one hasn't risen properly, the other bowed around the centre, an icing has split during its application, a sabayon lost its air, a sorbet failed to churn, a sugar syrup crystallised, a cookie crumbled and so on and on and on. Helen Goh then walks through our front door like a gust of wind or, rather, an overzealous dusting of icing sugar, carrying more cartons than humanly possible and, before even setting them down, begins apologising for all the things that went wrong with her cakes. My husband, Karl, looks out the window of our first-floor West London flat an expression of clear foreboding appears on his face and then, very quietly, he says, "Helen's here – with her cakes." Here is an image that I can't shake: It's a Sunday afternoon, around four, probably. Jump straight to the chocolate cake recipe.Meet Helen Goh, the Melbourne woman Ottolenghi is sweet on.
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