Jess Liemantara, also known as Jess Lemon, is a pastry chef, self-published author and now Head of Innovation and Development at Ned’s Bakes. Jess has graced the MasterChef kitchen three times, first making waves in 2018 as the youngest contestant ever to compete and earning a spot in the top four, then in 2020 for Season 12 – Back to Win and then in MasterChef’s Dessert Masters where she finished 3rd against Australia’s industry best. I first spoke to Jess just after her first MasterChef season. She was working at Nobu and she shared the story of how she fell in love with dessert creation, inspired by watching her grandmother and aunt work their magic in the kitchen. Now as Head of Innovation, Jess has her own magic going on. She has perfected the art of laminating viennoiserie and continues to push the boundaries of pastry making. If you have a look at Jess’s Instagram account, you can see that she has creativity in spadefuls but she is also fastidious in her execution so that she might be making hundreds of croissants or hundreds of macarons, but they are all perfect. It was lovely to catch up with Jess again and she gave me a list of things to try at Ned’s which I can’t wait to get started on.