‘Inspiration’

The Pastry Academy UK is an up-and-coming school for pastry and patisserie, based in Cheltenham it has welcomed the best of the best through its doors over the last couple of years.  In Mid-July 2025, I was fortunate enough to be asked to assist the brilliant Miquel Guarro to help showcase his incredible products.

Miquel is a brilliant professional at the top of his game, but above all a fantastic person who has incredible passion for what he does, and it was so inspirational to see.

This opportunity come about for little old me as I am attending the Pastry Academy in January for their Intensive 5-week Diploma! I messaged Damien Wager, the founder and brilliant chef who runs his own courses, stating I could help if required and he took me up on the offer!

Day 1 was all about the prep… we spent 7 hours weighing and getting to grips (as best we could!) with the intense and meticulous recipes that Miquel had sent over for us. I had no idea what some of the ingredients were let alone what they looked like.

The class was 3 days long and attended by people who had travelled from outside the UK (as far as Brazil and Germany!) to see Miquel curate his signature pastries / cakes / tarts / gastronomic wonders.  I was there to make his life as easy as possible – handing him equipment, ingredients, baking his sponges as required and fetching items as quickly as possible so we didn’t hold up the class progression.

It was a brilliant experience for me – but it was challenging! This was the first time I had been in this kitchen so I didn’t know where a lot of stuff was, and had not even seen most of the equipment which Miquel was asking for. We got there in the end and I even had the opportunity to watch a few mesmerising moments; glazing cocoa beans, free form insert moulding, chocolate spray guns, chocolate tempering, to name some of the many techniques used.

Naturally, on the back of this work I left feeling very inspired and motivated. There are a few things in the locker which over the next few months I will be working on and all being well can showcase soon enough.  For now though, I wanted to honour Miquel’s work and have curated a Macaron Box of my own titled ‘Inspiration’, which has 4 flavours based upon the work he had created at The Pastry Academy. If you want to order one and get my take on this genius’ creations then heres the link.

A final thank you to Damien who looked after us all whilst in Cheltenham, and Miquel for his efforts to come from Barcelona and show us all his truly unique creations. Until next time Pastry Academy!