Swedish national team's sweet success: The honey monster Josefine Pagander

The Swedish pastry team have been active participants in the Coupe Europe de la Pâtisserie since the very beginning. Since the competition started in 2013, the country has won several medals with their outstanding patisserie with a Scandinavian touch: one gold, two silver and one bronze medal to be exact. This makes Sweden an impressive opponent for other European teams.

Over the years, Swedish pastry chefs have demonstrated their talent, dedication and innovations at international competitions, earning the respect of pastry chefs worldwide. The strikingly feminine touch in the pastry has also inspired younger generations of female pastry chefs in Sweden to pursue their dreams and fulfil their ambitions in the world of pastry.

Josefine Pagander is one of these young, Swedish baking talents. Together with Axel Roth and Lisa Dagnäs, and led by female coaches Maria Grave and Beatrice Algra, they will be the youngest team ever to defend their homeland at the Coupe Europe de la Pâtisserie in January 2024 in Paris. "It is inspiring to see how openly this generation shares their knowledge," says coach Maria Grave. "The ambition and focus of each of these team members is phenomenal. The mentality we see in these young pastry chefs creates high expectations for the future!"

Josefine Pagander grew up in Fjällbacka on the west coast of Sweden in an entrepreneurial family. From a young age, the talk around the table at home was mainly about entrepreneurship. She was sure she wanted to do something creative and found her calling through popular baking programmes on television. Combining that vocation with an economics degree and her strong, inner drive to be independent made for an early career.

While studying at Yrgo in Gothenburg, Josefine used her holidays to work in a local bakery. It motivated her to add an extra year to her studies, to delve even deeper and understand more about processes, ingredients and techniques. She was an intern at a bakery in Gothenburg, worked as a pastry chef at a hotel in Stockholm, and eventually left for the French Alps to work as a pastry chef at a Swedish winter sports hotel. Then she met Andersen Oskarsson: the chief pastry chef of the Swedish pastry team, who won a gold medal with the team at the World Pastry Championships.

"Together with Andersen, I created a dessert menu for the hotel where I was working at the time," Josefine says. "Of course we then also talked about his international competition experiences. His stories captured my imagination immensely. I wanted to hear everything from him about teamwork, the different disciplines, and that feeling that the international stage can give you. During those conversations, the seed was definitely planted in me."

Upon returning to Sweden, Josefine joined Leijon Stenugnsbageri & Konditori in Uppsala and also took her first steps on the competition stage. "Those efforts were immediately rewarded," Josefine says. "I was awarded the title 'Young Baker of the Year' in 2020, which earned me a place on Sweden's national pastry team. A fantastic experience and outcome, of course, that left me both proud and humbled. Being part of a team, where I came across what I considered to be the best pastry chefs in Sweden, gave me the extra motivation to go for it fully and full-time."

Unfortunately, the Covid outbreak put a spanner in the works of her ambitious plans at the time. "I was forced to make some adjustments to my plans. But I remained committed to excelling at a national level, which eventually led to the title of 'Patisserie Chef of the Year 2022'." Josefine started her own consultancy firm, and since December 2022 she has been in charge of the patisserie and chocolate department of Gothia Hotel Gothenburg: an international hotel with multiple restaurants, cafés and conference rooms. With her department, Josefine supplies the products for nine different departments. "The large quantities we deal with here, the themed parties and, for example, the use of super fresh ingredients, such as herbs, flowers, decorations or sauces on plates, make this job very challenging and not comparable to the work in a classic patisserie or chocolaterie."

However, Josefine is not easily deterred. "You can make your own success and roll out your career. Surround yourself with seasoned professionals. Learn from them, always be curious and don’t be afraid to ask questions. Don't be afraid to fail. You have to train certain techniques: even my first cakes looked really bad. Try again and again, until you get the hang of it completely."

The recipes Josefine Pagander shares are a realistic elaboration of competition techniques and flavour combinations. The reference to honey has to do with her own nickname: Josefine is also known as the ‘honey monster’.