Life’s seductively sweet at Cuvée By Liz Rogers

Night time is the right time. The world is quiet and the business of the day has melted away to leave space to really create. In the kitchen.  In recent MasterChef guest and executive chef Deniz Karaca’s kitchen.

In Seaford.

Deniz Karaca has been making life sweet since he was 16 years old when he began training as a pastry chef in Germany. Now a chocolatier supreme who has worked world-wide and created a 1.8m, 45kg chocolate corkscrew at the World Chocolate Masters in Paris in 2013, Deniz feels his best when experimenting with different flavours in his home kitchen.

He explains. “This is where I can really taste and combine flavours. I love chocolate. It is a fascinating medium to work with. You can be so creative and it is forgiving because you can melt it and start again, even though it is hard to work with. My wife and I began our chocolate business Cuvée in 2014 as a side concern to my consulting and mentoring work. It is what I love to do.”

But back to Paris.  It took four months to develop Deniz’s corkscrew concept, four hours to assemble it and three people to lift it. He came third in those world championships, but it was his participation at the Patissier Of The Year in Sydney in 2016 that got MasterChef judges’ tongues salivating and wagging. He made a caramel tart – and it was the best caramel tart!

“The MasterChef experience (aired on Channel 10 in June) was great. We filmed for the day. I was so impressed with the contestants. My ‘Passion for Caramel’ tart was complex. I usually make one in under two hours. Those guys did it in three. Pretty good for amateurs.”

Deniz has been named Australia’s top chocolatier. His delicious Cuvée chocolate is made from the best quality cocoa beans from around the world - think Belize, Ecuador, Tanzania and Ghana, to name a few. This is chocolate that leaves you wanting more and scores a 10 out of 10.

Immunity pin? No thanks – life’s too short not to eat chocolate.