Cercle V Calendar x Jesus Camacho Higuera

We’re heading to Spain for the last creation in the 2023 Cercle V calendar. Jesús Camacho is the pastry chef at Donaire, on the Spanish island of Tenerife. Here, pastry-making has room to flourish and has become an art in its own right. Jesús - a chef with a chocolatier’s gifts - showcases flavors, seasonal ingredients and a certain elegance in his desserts. 

“My pastry-making is largely characterized by flavor, seasonal products and a lot of elegance.” 

In homage to Jesus’ origins, this creation highlights one of the Canary Islands’ greatest treasures, the banana. The fruit is used here as a jam and combined with a Caranoa 55% and namelaka cream, a banana plantain jam, a rhubarb sauce, an ice cream with five Chinese spices and finally, a very thin sheet of Guanaja 70%. The result is a subtle blend of bitterness and indulgence. 

Jesús has been a loyal Valrhona customer for eight years, finding that its ranges offer a limitless playground for his work as a chocolatier. Another thing that unites Jesus and Valrhona is a desire to reinvent pastry-making’s future, making it more ethical, less sweet and more reasonable in its use of ingredients.