French pastry chef takes part in Beijing 'bun fight'

Each of the cookies Maillard has baked looks the same, while each of the swans Yan has pinched and crafted with the dough has a different posture.

Zhao thinks it's part of the beauty of Chinese snacks that each one is unique, but on the other hand it's difficult for apprentices to maintain quality.

"So, we need to learn from Western methods, as our chefs may make a perfect snack today, but they may not have the same quality tomorrow. Western pastry chefs always manage to achieve a consistent standard," says Zhao.

Zhao and Yan have visited Paris to learn more about French cooking methods and skills hoping to bring that same essence to the production of Chinese snacks.

"Chefs like Maillard know more about the ingredients and the chemistry of how sugar and flour react at different temperatures," says Zhao. "They approach baking as a science and so should we."

Zhao believes that one enviable characteristic of Chinese traditional snacks is the use of more natural, fresh ingredients and less sugar - take kidney bean cake as an example, the kidney beans have to be peeled before they are steamed and smashed for hours in order to make a cake which tastes smooth and still has the freshness of the kidney bean.

In Zhao's mind, the Western and Chinese approaches to making desserts are complementary, and that there are similarities between them.

"The crisp outer layer of a French croissant and a Chinese crisp cake are made under the same principles but with different fats - they use butter to make the crisp bright, and we use lard to make it invisible," Zhao explains.

When it comes to the plating section of the battle, both chefs work together, as each of their plates leaves a spot for the other chef's dessert.

There is no need to decide a winner of this bout, as both of the beautifully presented dessert platters soon get emptied by the hungry audience, while the two chefs try each other's delicacies.

Before his arrival in Beijing, Maillard had never tried Chinese desserts, and for the first week, he admits, they seemed very alien to his finely-tuned French palate.

"Now, however, I can enjoy the mellow taste and softness of Chinese snacks, which is quite a new experience for me," he says, as he gleefully takes a bite of another of his opponent's offerings.