Cherish Finden
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Singapore-born Cherish Finden is the multi-award winning Executive Pastry Chef at The Langham, London since 2009. With over 20 years of international experience, Cherish has created an innovative and imaginative menu for the hotel’s centerpiece, Palm Court. Her work at The Langham, London has ranged from creating irresistible menu items inspired by the collections of top designers and brands to developing magnificent showpieces. The pastry chef’s inventive edge has kept the hotel at the forefront of London’s culinary scene. Growing up as the youngest daughter in a family of five. Cherish began her working life in a different field altogether but after endless encouragement and a steady stream of compliments from her family and friends, she was eventually inspired to further develop her talent at Shatect Culinary School in Singapore. Here, Cherish discovered a natural talent for making pastries using her creative and innovative eye to capture ideas from the world around her using colours and textures to specific objects. She prides herself on incorporating food with art. After leaving Shatect, Cherish indulged her competitive side and entered the Food & Hotel Asia International Culinary Challenge. Cherish later joined the team at The Raffles Hotel, a six star hotel in Singapore, as Sous Chef, and for three years used her skills to create delicious cakes and desserts for the hotel’s various food and beverage outlets. Over the course of her career, Cherish has both supported and lead pastry teams at numerous luxury hotel establishments. She also worked on several promotions with Alain Ducasse, Raymond Blanc and Alain Senderens whilst based at Raffles. Throughout her varied and exciting career, Cherish has continued to challenge herself through training courses and culinary competitions that have resulted in over 25 medals from international events around the world, of which 18 were Gold. Most notably, the Singapore Pastry Team led by Cherish came in first out of 32 national teams and won 8 gold medals at the IKA Culinary Olympics in 2000. Furthermore, Cherish’s work at The Langham, London earned the hotel the prestigious Tea Guild’s ‘Top London Afternoon Tea’ award in 2010 and ‘Service of Excellence 2013’ for three consecutive years. Cherish was also awarded ‘Pastry Chef of the Year’ by the Craft Guild of Chefs in 2012. With each and every creation, Cherish aims to capture the attention of her subjects, be they judges in a competition or guests of a hotel. While her constantly evolving style means that she does not have a signature piece, Cherish notes that elements of her upbringing in Singapore are always evident in her work. Rather than follow the crowd, Cherish strives to push boundaries. Many of her desserts involve use of more exotic Asian ingredients such as goji berry, snow fungus, red bean, ginkgo nut and blue ginger. Cherish’s enthusiasm and passion for her work has also resulted in invitations to appear on popular TV programmes among notable culinary peers including Hesthon’s Great British Food on Channel 4, BBC’s Masterchef, Australian Masterchef and BBC 2’s Junior Bake-off. Cherish is continually testing and redefining the benchmark for the modern pastry chef. Her artistic flare and expert knowledge of ingredients allows her to explore more creative aspects of dessert making. Her contribution to The Langham, London has helped establish the Palm Court as the leading London destination for afternoon tea. |
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| Country: | United Kingdom |
| Establishment: | The Langham London |
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Events Information Thursday 16 April 2015 World Gourmet Summit Charity Gala Dinner (Past-Present-Future) Friday 17 April 2015 Royal English Afternoon Tea: Workshop featuring Cherish Finden UK Pastry Chef of the Year |
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