Will M & S strike GOLD with its billionaire pud?
JAmEs CAmpBEll has the best job in the world. The 39-year-old scot is a product developer for marks & spencer, tasked with coming up with the most irresistible puds the High street can offer.
He travels the world visiting restaurants, patisseries, food markets and high- end department stores for inspiration, before coming back to the m&s test kitchen in West london and turning his ideas into reality, testing and re-testing until he’s come up with the ultimate mouth-watering sweet treats.
James often runs his new products past his wife, suzy, mother of their two small children. she must love it, I suggest.
‘No, not really,’ says James. ‘The other day I came home with two products I was working on— one made with 12 per cent butter, the other 13 per cent butter — and I asked her what she thought.
‘she just said: “Don’t be ridiculous, no one cares!” ’
But James, former head pastry chef at london’s michelin oriental hotel and the michelin-starred City Rhodes and Rhodes In The square restaurants, among others, really does care.
And it’s his obsession with the microdetail that has produced such celebrated puds as the Jaffa sphere, the round chocolate mousse with hidden orange centre that became m&s’s fastest-selling dessert of all time when it was launched last year.
Today, I’m visiting James in his gleaming test kitchen at m&s’s HQ in paddington Basin to find out what’s new in the world of desserts, and what tricks he has up his sleeve for this year.
To be blunt: that Jaffa sphere was a hard act to follow — how on earth is he going to trump that?
The answer is lying before me on a black piece of slate: a chunky gold ingot made from thick Belgian chocolate, filled with caramel mousse, a layer of gleaming salted caramel sauce and chocolate- covered shortbread pieces.
Covered with a glittery gold sheen and embossed with the m&s logo, it’s called the Billionaire Bullion Bar, and it’s an absolute showstopper.
This seductive new dessert, the star of this autumn’s new line-up, was invented by James by chance after one of his suppliers asked him to come in and inspire the people who worked at their factory.
‘We took popular desserts that they already made — one of which was millionaire’s shortbread — and played about with them, seeing how far we could go and what we could do,’ he says.
‘I came up with the idea of the bullion bars, and everyone loved them. Then I wanted to give them a gold sheen, so we had to work out how to do that.’
To GET the look, James devised a light liquid cocoa butter glaze into which he added a fine edible glitter. This gold lustre glaze is then sprayed into a plastic mould in a thin layer and, when it is dry, the mould is flooded with molten chocolate and then spun until that, too, has dried.
Then the caramel mousse and caramel sauce are folded in, followed by a chocolate ganache and chocolatecovered shortbread pieces.
It’s heaven on a plate, and i t’s expected to arrive in stores at the start of october.
Another star from m&s’s autumn line-up is so beautifully intricate that it’s almost a shame to eat it. And it features an ingredient tipped by James to be hot this autumn: the tonka bean, a member of the pea family, oddly enough, which tastes rather like a fruity vanilla.
The milk Chocolate, Raspberry &
Tonka Bean Bar is a quivering sliver of milk chocolate tonka-flavour mousse studded with raspberry jelly on top of a gooey dark brownie base, topped with dark chocolate glaze with pink marbling. This pud, which really does look like something you’d be served on a three-tiered cake stand in a smart hotel, was inspired by James’ recent visits to Japan, a country which he says has a very different view of sweet treats. ‘They don’t really do junk food over there the way we do here,’ he tells me. ‘But they have a habit of going out to meet friends once a week for cake.
‘They have just one slice, so it has to be great, and it also has to look great: they eat with their eyes there.’ Indeed, cake is such a big deal in Japan, James says, that while a large London department store might have three or four dessert concessions, Tokyo’s flagship Isetan department store — which he visits for inspiration — has 33.
scandinavia, the u.s. (particularly new york at Christmas) and singapore also all count as foodie destinations for James when he’s coming up with new ideas, though he also says ‘a lot of it just comes from my head’.
This was the case with a beautifully conceived little pudding which has just launched into stores: gooseberry & elderflower scented crumble (two servings for £3.80).
They come in individual little plastic pots shaped like milk churns, and consist of a layer of sharp gooseberry compote topped with a light vanilla custard and then a crumble topping infused with elderflower.
The result is a delicate, beautifully scented summery pud that tastes of childhood and sun-bleached english summers.
‘I love gooseberry — I think it’s really under-rated, and it goes so well with elderflower,’ says James.
BuT he’s had to learn that while M& s is keen to innovate, his products mustn’t go so f ar offpiste that they scare the buyer away. ‘I’ve learned that you can change one thing and that’s it,’ he says.
‘gooseberry and elderflower is quite a niche flavour combination, which might make it hard to sell commercially, so I’ve kept it as a traditional crumble, so that I’m not asking too much from the customers.
‘I’m really interested in creating symmetry and balance in a dish: if you eat the gooseberry compote separately, it’s quite tart, but if you have it all together with the vanilla custard and the crumble, then it’s simply perfect.’
Then he’s onto the crumble and describing how he decided to package it separately (it comes in a little plastic pot and you tip it into the churn just before you serve it).
‘ I ’ ve been r eading studies in moisture,’ he begins . . . and I suddenly begin to have some sympathy for Mrs Campbell.
If you can’t wait until the autumn to try James’s new puddings, here are two more of his delicious M& s desserts that — like the gooseberry & elderflower scented crumble — you can sample in store now . . . RASPBERRY CRANACHAN £1.50 for 115g JaMes went back to his roots for this modern take on a traditional scottish recipe. It features raspberry compote, l ayered with a blossom honey and whisky-flavoured mousse, topped with a crunchy shortbread and oat crumble. ENGLISH AFTERNOON TEA DESSERT WITH CAMBRIDGE FAVOURITE STRAWBERRY & EARL GREY £4 for 2 75g pots THIs summery pud has an almond and earl grey sponge topped with a sparkling wine mousse, strawberry compote, strawberry sauce and white chocolate decoration.