Radisson Blu celebrate Christmas with a Sparkling theme and Edible Jewellery
This year the Radisson Blu Resort in St Julian celebrated Christmas with a “Sparkling” theme. Pastry Chef Jimmy Aquilina along with his team has been planning for their edible jewellery exhibition since July with the idea of ‘sparkling crystals’ in mind. The exhibits themselves are made out of sugar paste, which is a combination of icing sugar, glycerin, gelatin and colour sprays. The project was set up in cooperation with Diamonds International who provided pictures of jewellery they currently have in their showrooms for Mr Aquilina to use to base his replicas on.
The exhibition has been received very well by the public with some clients actually asking to buy them initially not realising that they were merely sweet replicas, as well as others who are going to be taking some of them once the exhibition is over to keep and display in their homes.
The job at hand was not without its various difficulties. The main difficulty being that there are no moulds to create the intricate shapes and designs to replicate the jewellery, so every piece had to be made patiently by hand taking a total of 80 hours to finish. It was also a case of trial and error because most of what the team was making was on an experimental basis due to the distinct lack of available tools. Another difficulty is that, to successfully make sugar paste, one needs very exact measurements of ingredients making it as much a science as an art.
Being one of the first pastry chefs trained in the art of sugar work, Mr Aquilina is one of the few with the expertise and skill, along with his team, to create such pieces. He was taught the art of sugar sculpture in Mestre in Italy, which is one of many courses abroad that this very diverse pastry chef has attended.
Chef Jimmy Aquilina has been a pastry chef for the last 13 years travelling abroad several times to undergo training in the varied disciplines in the field, such as Verona and Rimini to work on chocolate and ice-cream respectively. What drew him to being a pastry chef is the vast diversity of sweets and what one can do with them. He also commented that one must be born with the passion for being a pastry chef, not merely taught how to become one. His greatest achievements as a pastry chef, he recalled, were serving the Queen of England where, in a reception, he had made the large sugar sculpture centre pieces for the banquet. Along with his team of 12 people, he also catered for 4500 people at a time and other large events like the Presidential state dinner and the August Moon Ball 15 times.