The best pastry chefs and chocolatiers gathered in Singapore from July 15-18, 2026, to take part in the Asia Gelato Cup.

The event served as a qualifying event for the Gelato World Cup, which is set to be held in Rimini, Italy, next January.

Team Australia was comprised of some of the leading names in the industry: two-time Belgian Chocolate Master Ryan Stevenson, Adriano Zumbo and Rhian Shellshear alongside team manager and Gelato Messina co-owner Donato Toce.

Ryan said he became involved with the team after being approached by Rhian and Adriano to help them qualify for the world final. What followed was months of intense preparation.

“The preparation involved reading the rules, which ended up changin about five times, then working out who would make what,” Ryan said.

“The competition had seven elements to make, which included a plated dessert, gelato entremet, water-based gelato – so sorbet, a milk-based gelato, two different types of gelato on sticks, and a chocolate and sugar sculpture.

“From there we needed to decide on flavours and shapes, then trial all the flavours until they became good and practice making them over and over again.”

There was an added logistical challenge in that Ryan is located in Melbourne, Adriano live son Queensland’s Sunshine Coast and Rhian is in Brisbane.

Ryan said this issue was solved with the blessing of team sponsor Puratos, and with their assistance managed to hold one training session in Brisbane where Rhian works, and a second session in Sydney at Gelato Messina.

After arriving in Singapore the trio then had a short amount of time together when they could make all the sugar elements, prepare biscuits and find and weigh fruit purees, milk, cream and butter.

“The competition ran smoothly until approximately three hours in the planned seven hours, when we noticed the blast freezer, which is crucial to making gelato fast enough for the competition, was not working adequately,” Ryan said.

“This meant that all our timings were off and we struggled to regain the time lost from products not freezing quick enough.

“The end result was a silver medal but fifth place. This is due to their marking process, which was not a good enough result to proceed to the final.”

Team Japan claimed the top spot, closely followed by the teams from Singapore and China.

Ryan said he and the rest of Team Australia were happy with what they made, particularly given the difficulties of distance between each of them and the equipment they had in the competition.

“For me, this will the last competition, which is a bittersweet way to go out, but I’m still pleased with our performance,” he said.

“For any future competitors, my advice would be to have a two part approach to the competition where the flavours and taste are drastically different for the Asian selection than in the final in Europe.”