Maxime Michelot, a pastry chef at Harrods, beat off competition from 24 other UK-based chefs to win Classic Fine Foods’ Christmas Log Contest.

He triumphed at a blind tasting, held at the Hyatt Regency London – The Churchill, with a confection of cinnamon-spiced mousse, passion fruit and mandarin jelly with poached pear and a coconut dacquoise base.

Now in its second year, the competition aims to promote UK pastry talent and creativity and challenges participants to create a classic Bûche de Noël (Christmas log) using either dark, milk, white or blond chocolate.

The 25 contestants were initially whittled down to five on the basis of social media interaction, with photographs posted on Classic Fine Foods UK’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. The blind tasting was then carried out by grand jury made of up of representatives from the press, Valrhona Chocolate and last year’s winner Can Misirlioğlu, who is currently commis pastry chef at Hyatt Regency London.

Classic Fine Foods is a distributor of fine foods and operates brands such as cheese, butter and spread company President, coffee brand Illy and Valrhona Chocolate.