SWEET DREAMS ARE MADE OF THIS

"A humble but fancy AF artisanal dessert studio" is how Pretoria's Stephanie Ceronio describes her Jack Rabbit Chocolate Studio, and there's no better way to define the space where she conjures up her award-winning creations

- Stephanie Ceronio

STEPHANIE CERONIO HAS CHUTZPAH.

It's a key ingredient in becoming a self-taught chocolatier, winning awards in Europe and supplying a Japanese department store with 1 500 chocolates five times a year from an unassuming suburban shopping centre in Pretoria.

"I always wanted to study pastry," she says, "but my dad wanted me to study engineering, as the rest of my family had. I ended up studying programming at Varsity College." After graduating, Stephanie got a job, but hated it. "I quit and waitressed while trying to teach myself patisserie in my spare time. I didn't have a TV, so I'd sneakily try to change the channel at work to watch what few cooking shows there were back then - Ainsley Harriott was teaching people to grill steaks!

"I was earning very little, so I'd save what I could to buy ingredients and experiment. And I'd lurk around my local Exclusive Books, reading the expensive recipe books and writing down the recipes, until they asked me to stop. So then I'd commit them to memory before going home to try and recreate what I'd read. I bought an old Kenwood at a hospice shop that only had the whisk attachment. And whenever I had the money, I bought a book so I could learn even more."

Stephanie slowly found her groove and people started ordering cakes from her, which meant she could buy ingredients and have some left over for experimenting. "I wanted to challenge myself more, so I tried macarons. After a lot of trial and error, I got them right." In 2012, she took a stand at the Good Food & Wine Show. "I made 6 500 macarons in two weeks, baking at night after I'd put my daughter to bed while working full time. I sold three-quarters of what I made."

At the end of the show, she scraped together what little money she had left and bought a ticket to the gala dinner hosted by Gordon Ramsay.