It was sweet success for John Demetrios last night when he was crowned Dessert Master 2024. With the trophy, title, and $100,000 cash prize under his belt, John truly got his cake and ate it too.
Heading into the grand finale, judges Melissa Leong and Amaury Guichon were joined by past contestants and dessert royalty Kirsten Tibballs, Adriano Zumbo and Dessert Masters season one winner, Gareth Whitton.
903,000 tuned in to the Grand Finale on 10, and it recorded it’s biggest overnight audience since launch.
The three finalists, Christy Tania, Emelia Jackson, and John Demetrios, were tasked with creating a two-course menu inspired by the colours of Australia: green and gold. With four hours on the clock to nail their green course, the finalists then had just a further hour to deliver their gold dessert.
Inspired by the fig tree that grew in his childhood backyard, John chose to hero fig leaf in his green dish. While the judges worried his flavours may become too tannic, John did not share their concerns and created a fig leaf ice cream to sit atop a white chocolate crémeux, complemented with native flavours, like lemon myrtle, and topped off with fig leaf oil. The dessert was aptly named, ‘Can You Fig It?’.
John’s second course, the gold dish, was inspired by the Victorian Goldrush era. The dessert, ‘Eureka’, featured a chocolate cake soaked in whiskey syrup, a cocoa nib crunch disc and a caramel chocolate parfait, a hot chocolate and malted barley sauce and a brown butter emulsion, plated to resemble a goldmine.
Cracking into John’s dishes, the judges couldn’t keep the smiles from their faces. The colours, flavours, textures, storytelling and sheer artistry of John’s dishes earned him the win.
The ever-humble John said, “I can’t believe it, I’m super proud. It’s going to take me a couple of days for this to feel real, I’m sure!”.
