{"id":21,"date":"2011-09-01T03:48:11","date_gmt":"2011-08-31T17:48:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/inthenews\/?p=21"},"modified":"2015-04-29T13:59:00","modified_gmt":"2015-04-29T03:59:00","slug":"cardiac-surgery-team-takes-the-cake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/cardiac-surgery-team-takes-the-cake\/","title":{"rendered":"Cardiac Surgery team takes the cake"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>The RCH Cardiac Surgery team was honoured to have the very best judge for their Great Pavlova Competition grand final this morning\u00a0– renowned Australian cook, retaurateur and food writer Stephanie Alexander.<\/p>\n

The competition was the brainchild of Cardiac Surgery Director, Christian Brizard.\u00a0 Since January,\u00a0one contender (surgeons, nurses, perfusionists, anaesthetists and administration staff) per week baked a pavlova\u00a0for tasting by their colleagues.<\/p>\n

Each pav was marked according to three categories: flavour, creativity and sheer beauty.\u00a0The top six\u00a0earned\u00a0places in the grand final.<\/p>\n

This morning’s\u00a0grand final saw the six finalists\u00a0bake their pavlovas once more for tasting by master judge Stephanie.\u00a0\u00a0And the stakes were high – all cooks vying for the revered title of\u00a0“Great Pavlova Champion”.<\/p>\n

\"\"Stephanie scrutinised each pavlova thoroughly.\u00a0 She sliced,\u00a0prodded and sampled the cakes, looking for “maximum marshmallow”.<\/p>\n

Finally, Stephanie declared one team member the winner: senior cardiac surgery fellow Johann Brink.\u00a0 Johann’s impressive double-meringue pavlova\u00a0was made from 15 egg whites and flavoured with vanilla bean.\u00a0 Proving cardiac surgeons don’t do things by halves, Johann topped his\u00a0pavlova\u00a0with a toffee butterfly, homemade\u00a0with the help of a\u00a0candy themometer and syringes.<\/p>\n

He admitted he’d only baked two decent pavlovas in his lifetime, both for this competition.\u00a0\u00a0After failing on many attempts, he consulted YouTube before taking his tuition to the next level.<\/p>\n

“I’d heard of a famous meringue specialist in Warrandyte.\u00a0 I spent a whole Sunday with her learning how to bake meringues.\u00a0 I call her my ‘meringue mentor’,” Johann said.<\/p>\n

RCH CEO Professor Christine Kilpatrick applauded staff initiatives like this competition\u00a0for contributing to\u00a0a high level of\u00a0camaraderie both within hospital departments and across the organisation.<\/p>\n

First Place<\/strong>: Johann Brink, Senior Fellow Cardiac Surgery
\nSecond Place<\/strong>: Suzanna Kralevski, Cardiac Surgery Manager
\nEqual Third Place<\/strong>: Margaret Sullivan, nurse; Alison Horton, perfusionist; and Ben Turner, anaesthetist
\nFourth Place<\/strong>: Christian Brizard, Director Cardiac Surgery<\/p>\n

Right: Stephanie Alexander judges The Great Cardiac Surgery Pavlova Competition before crowning senior cardiac surgery fellow Johann Brink the winner<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The RCH Cardiac Surgery team was honoured to have the very best judge for their Great Pavlova Competition grand final this morning\u00a0– renowned Australian cook, retaurateur and food writer Stephanie Alexander. The competition was the brainchild of Cardiac Surgery Director, Christian Brizard.\u00a0 Since January,\u00a0one contender (surgeons, nurses, perfusionists, anaesthetists and administration staff) per week baked … Continued<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1042,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21\/revisions\/1042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rch.org.au\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}