Danish pastry chef named country’s best after over 40 years in the trade

A veteran pastry chef with more than four decades of experience has been crowned Denmark’s best for the first time. Allan Colding-Andersen, head pastry chef at Copenhagen’s Bodenhoffs Bageri, won the title of Danmarks Bedste Konditor (Denmark’s Best Pastry Chef) in a competition held this weekend, DR reports.

Organised by the industry associations BKD (the Danish bakers’ and pastry chefs’ guild) and NNF (the food workers’ union), the contest required participants to create three distinct pastries: a 60-centimetre-tall sugar or chocolate sculpture, a layered ice cream cake, and a three-tier wedding cake. Judges evaluated entries on texture, colour, and technique over a six-hour period.

Colding-Andersen, who also serves as guild master of Copenhagen’s Konditorlaug (Pastry Chefs’ Guild), described the win as deeply rewarding after years of preparation. “I’m happy—it’s clearly been worth the effort, because it was tough to get ready,” he told DR. “It’s great when it all pays off.”

His winning entries included a wedding cake with chocolate layers, an ice cream cake featuring lime, tarragon, and eucalyptus-honey gummies alongside a surprise ingredient (orange), and a sugar sculpture depicting a pastry chef shielding a cake from falling dishwater droplets with an umbrella—entirely edible, down to the “drips.”

The victory comes just ahead of another competition: Colding-Andersen will participate in a rum truffle contest in Herning on Monday. BKD, which co-hosted the event, represents roughly 300 of Denmark’s estimated 520 professional bakeries and pastry businesses.