To celebrate our tenth birthday, the MiNDFOOD team are putting on aprons to create a cake – or biscuit, or tart – that shouts celebration. As part of our #MakeTheCake competition, we are catching up with some of New Zealand’s best chefs and bakers. Here, Giapo Grazioli of Giapo Ice Cream shares his experience with cakes.
What is your top baking/creating tip?
For us creating means coming up with something that is new and it might be through making it better or changing the function of it. Ice cream doesn’t necessarily need to satisfy a crave or a cooling need.
You make all sorts of toppings for your ice creams, including doughnuts and the waffle cones. What is your favourite thing to bake?
I am fond of baking and using the oven and as it brings me back to my childhood and the time spent with my Nonna. I love to bake the simplest cake as just the smell that goes around makes it so very special.
Giapo and wife Annarosa Petrucci
What is your favourite flavour pairing, e.g. chocolate and mint?
A flavour that is on the menu at the moment, avocado with a sweet gravy of caramel and soya sauce.
Have you ever made an ice cream cake? If so, what flavour was it?
Yes, the last one I did was for Annarosa’s birthday a mille feuillel chocolate ice cream cake. Delicious.
What is your fondest birthday memory?
My childhood birthday celebrations. The whole family including the cousin’s friends and the neighbourhood would come to celebrate at our place. I remember the long day spent playing hide and seek and the cakes that my mother used to prepare.
Enter our #MakeTheCake giveaway here and go in the draw to win a Kenwood Cooking Chef!
Photography by Davide Zerilli