Barcelona Hospitality and Tourism School

This week we visited the Escola d’Hostelería i Turisme de Barcelona. Sergi Vela, the Spanish champion of Chocolate Master 2008 and winner in the Best Chocolate Cake of the World in the World Chocolate Masters 2009 gave a Matcha cooking course to his pastry class students with a collaboration of The Matcha House. The experience was very rewarding.
Our mission was to let them know about Matcha as a perfect ingredient to combine with all kind of sweets. We started with a theoretical session in which we talked about the complex and artisan cultivation and manufacturing process of this product. We also talked about it’s wonderful nutritional properties and about all the possible applications. The students were amazed with the pictures of several Japanese Matcha sweets that we showed, such as Kit-Kat Matcha flavour, Matcha donuts, Mikado of Matcha flavour...etc.
Then we went down to the kitchen where the the students practice every day to make cakes, bread or cookies. Finally they could touch, smell and work with our product.
We demonstrated how to parepare hot Matcha Latte, a delicious drink made with matcha tea and foamed milk. Also they tasted our Matcha Chocolate and a cup of Sencha/Genmaicha green tea without sugar. All were surprised about this. We explained that in Japan normally they do not add sugar to green tea. They drink green tea with something sweet, as they love to enjoy the contrast bitter-sweet.
Sergi Vela prepared a Matcha cream and he showed their students how easy it was to combine Matcha with other ingredients. Just before closing the class, it occurred to him to mix Matcha with the panellets dough that they had prepared some hours before, and in just one minute he made some beautiful two-tone balls ready to bake.
We said goodbye to the pastry group and we went up to cafeteria, where we started again with the demonstration of Matcha Latte and the explanation of Matcha cultivation and production.
We had a very good day and good experience with one of the best pastry chef in Spain and the future pastry professionals of our country. We hope we can repeat it soon!