The Mission Impossible soundtrack blares in a packed auditorium in downtown Milan. The music fades to silence as the crowd draws a collective breath. An emu makes its way, slowly but purposefully, to the front of the stage. It’s an extraordinary creature, its wispy feathers transmuted into Australian flora – waratahs and gumnuts, eucalyptus and wildflowers running up its imperious neck.

The emu settled in place, Jo Barrett takes a cautious step back from her creation and the crowd cheers.

Just what is a fantastical vision of half of Australia’s coat of arms doing in Italy with one of the country’s hottest young chefs? Welcome to the pastry Olympics – officially, the International Federation of Pastry, Gelato and Chocolate’s 2019 World Trophy.

Last October, Barrett, along with teammates Bruna Forlin Trevisanito and Bujin Chuluunbaatar, represented Australia – only the second time it has been part of the world’s most prestigious pastry competition. Teams of three are charged with creating artworks on a theme across three disciplines: sugar sculpture and cake; chocolate sculpture and praline; pastillage sculpture and gelato. That extraordinary, fully edible emu created out of pastillage – a type of hard icing made from sugar and gelatin – was the culmination of a journey for Barrett that began as “a bit of fun” but ended up consuming her for two years.

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Wow, what an experience that was. 7.5 hours to get the centrepiece up and present my dessert. As a team the others had to get pralines up and a modern cake and their showpieces. It’s was full on, there was a point where I didn’t think I would get it finished. The end was a madhouse and probably the best part. We had to present the showpieces on a table in front of our booth, that means carrying it 😳 there was music playing that sounded like a montage from a thriller movie. All the teams were scrambling around to finish but also carrying their artworks and being as gentle as possible, I really weird combo. I could feel everyone holding their breath when I walked out with my emu, waiting to see if it would last the journey. Then when I placed it down everyone cheered, that was a nice feeling. Once all the pieces were on the table we had 30 mins to clear the section. The three of us on our hands and knees scrambling. We finished on time 👌🏻 I was covered in sweat and felt completely fucked but the rush was wicked. The whole experience of the 7.5 hrs was bloody hilarious! I’m not sure if you’re invested in the pastry competition world you would find that funny …. I’m not so it was an absolute hoot! One chocolate centrepiece from another team was presented then fell and smashed. This was really heart breaking, the blood curdling scream would have been heard in the whole arena, a year of someone’s life to hit the floor at the point of presentation.. #pastrylife Today the next round compete and it’s all the big dog teams, I can’t wait to see their masterpieces. After that they announce the results. I’m so glad it’s over, that’s my prize 🤙🏼 #worldchampionshipofpastry

A post shared by Jo Barrett (@jobarrett) on Oct 21, 2019 at 9:19pm PDT

For, while Barrett is one of the best pastry chefs around – as anyone who has eaten dessert at the Yarra Valley’s Oakridge will attest – she had never made a pastillage centrepiece before.

In a classic case of ‘fake it till you make it’ Barrett fumbled her way through a qualifying heat, then went on to win gold for her John Olsen-inspired centrepiece and dessert at the Australian final. “I thought, oh shit, now I need to learn how to do this – I’ve somehow bluffed my way through,” she says now.

Cue countless hours of research into techniques and how to translate the competition’s theme of national art and tradition into a concept that was both respectful and creative. After meeting with Indigenous artists and a Central Victorian elder, the team decided on using Dreamtime stories as their springboard – Tiddalik the frog was the inspiration for the sugar sculpture while fire and rebirth represented the 70-kilo centrepiece.

Clearly not one to do things by halves, Barrett taught herself how to engineer an emu that could be reassembled for the competition and to create the flowers and feathers out of sugar – “all the books on making sugar flowers are European; there’s nothing for Australian flora”. She also took up pottery to make painted clay emu eggs to serve her dessert in.

That dessert – a eucalyptus rice cream with native fruits and Davidson plum ice-cream – became a talking point thanks to its garnish of green ants. “I said to the head judge, are you ready to eat some green ants? He looked at me: ‘Team Australia, you’re crazy!’ But for the next 15 minutes everyone was talking about edible insects. That’s what I wanted – to make sure people were talking about our food.”

Australia placed seventh out of 16 countries – not bad going for someone who only got into pastry because she “hated it so much”.

“I always avoided it. But if you want to be a good chef, or a head chef, you have to know all the sections. So I went to The Gordon TAFE,” she says. “I went from never having made a centrepiece, thinking they were super-naff, to flying to Milan to do one. It was an eye-opener – if you want to do anything, you just have to have a go, and plug away at it.”

It’s that determination that has seen Barrett’s star rise fast and shine bright. She began her apprenticeship while still in high school, then worked with master baker Michael James at Tivoli Road before striking up a friendship with Western Australian zero-waste warrior Matt Stone when he was in town for the 2012 Melbourne Food and Wine Festival.

A couple of years later Barrett joined Stone at Sydney pop-up Stanley Street Merchants and the two have been partners in life and the kitchen since.

For the past four and a half years they’ve been running the show out at Oakridge to growing acclaim – Barrett’s handiwork earning the restaurant the best-desserts rosette in the delicious. 100 for two years running, while the restaurant is currently ranked number three in Victoria. What began as a job they’d do “for a year or two, then do our own thing” has become a labour of sustainable love, with an ever growing kitchen garden augmented by whole beast butchery, wild meat charcuterie (duck prosciutto, crocodile bacon and kangaroo mortadella some of the recent experiments) and cheesemaking.

And what about Milan in 2021?

“I said I’m never ever doing this again,” she says. “Just the toll it took – on friends, on work. I was exhausted. Work a full day, come home, shower and start making sugar flowers.

“Looking back, the competition was really fun – the tradition, seeing how serious the teams took cooking on a historical level. When I first started cooking I loved that stuff, so I thought it was so exciting.

“I’d encourage anyone who’s thinking about it to 100 per cent have a go.”

Find recipes by Jo Barrett and Matt Stone, or have a go at creating a centrepiece yourself, here.