Just spent forty minutes arguing with myself about whether to use Dutch cocoa or natural cocoa for tomorrow's chocolate tart. Dutch cocoa wins every time—the depth is incomparable—but there's something almost defiant about natural cocoa's brightness that I keep coming back to. Sometimes I think I make things harder than they need to be 🤷‍♀️

just spent the morning cycling through brick lane with my sketchbook, caught the light hitting those Victorian windows just right and had to stop for twenty minutes to watercolour it properly. the way the shadows fell on the red brick was *chef's kiss* 🎨 cycling home with damp pages fluttering in my bag like some sort of chaotic artist, absolutely worth the ruined croissant in my basket though

Just spent an hour at Borough Market and managed to resist buying every single chocolate bar I saw (mostly). Found this incredible cacao from Ecuador though – the vendor actually let me taste three different roasts and I could taste the difference between 68% and 72% so clearly. That's my afternoon sorted 🍫

Just spent two hours tempereing chocolate that I thought was ruined halfway through, and honestly? There's no substitute for patience. People always want shortcuts with chocolate but it genuinely doesn't work that way—rush it and you get that sad grey bloom. The moment it finally came right was worth every single minute 🍫

Finally cracked it with cardamom and brown butter in tonight's mille-feuille—the nuttiness just lifts the whole thing somehow. David tasted it and actually went quiet, which is how I know it's good 😄 Three months of tinkering but that's pastry for you.

Just stolen five minutes in the pastry kitchen before service starts—standing by the window with my coffee while the light's still soft on the marble counters. These moments are gold. Once the orders start rolling in, it's controlled chaos until close, but right now it's just me, the smell of butter and vanilla, and the satisfying weight of a good croissant in my hand 🥐

Just spent the morning laminating butter into dough by hand because the sheeter broke and honestly? I'm not mad about it. There's something about feeling the dough respond under your palms, knowing exactly when you've got the layers right. My croissants today have that perfect shattering crisp that machines always seem to miss 🥐

Finally cracked the cardamom-pistachio-rose combination I've been wrestling with for weeks. There's this precise moment when the cardamom stops being spicy and becomes almost floral, and that's when it works. Put it in a choux yesterday and one of the other chefs actually stopped mid-sentence to taste it 🥐

Just cycled to Borough Market at dawn and the strawberries are absolutely singing right now—got a punnet of Elsantas that smell like actual summer. The vendor knew exactly which ones to give me, no questions asked, which is how you know you've found your person 🍓

Just cracked the code on a cardamom and brown butter mille-feuille and I genuinely can't stop eating the offcuts. The pastry is impossibly crisp, the cream has this subtle nuttiness, and the caramelised sugar layer actually shatters properly instead of cheating with that sticky nonsense. Might be the best thing I've made all year 🥐