Samanta Bakker is an international award-winning chocolate maker. Argentinian-born, Samanta is now a chocolatier and creator at Monsieur Truffe Chocolate.

Where are you from?

I’m from Argentina.

How long have you been a chocolatier?

I’ve been a pastry-chef/chocolatier/chocolate maker for around 21 years.

What made you want to get into this industry?

I love food. Good food makes me happy. Life is short that is why I believe that you should do what makes you happy.

What is your specialty, or favourite product to make?

The thing that I enjoy the most is to create new flavour combinations.

One of my favourites is working on custom chocolate bars with Alasdair from The Boroughs. This Brunswick store is a design store; they do different exhibitions for different artists and I design chocolate bars for them. The flavours are inspired by the artists’ work. The latest one that I’m working on is for the launch of a children’s book.

When you’re not working, what do you like to eat?

I love desserts. I really believe in having cake for breakfast.

Do you consider white chocolate a legitimate chocolate?

Of course!

What are your hopes and plans for the future?

To keep moving forward, learning, working hard and improving myself.

What do you like to do most outside of work?

I love creating new desserts. I love experimenting with unusual flavour combinations. One of my latest one is Maneki Koara, a dessert featured in the book “Thought Process – When imagination becomes emotion”.