Home Quest News Chocolate Challenge Team Build at Hedsor House

Chocolate Challenge Team Build at Hedsor House

Team Building with Urenco for the first time

Quest was thrilled to be approached by a team from Urenco to deliver a team building event, after they had found Quest on the internet.

The Urenco team had already identified the venue they wanted to use, the beautiful Hedsor House in Buckinghamshire.

In addition the event needed to be conducted indoors and it was to be delivered for a small team of six.

Working with Food ~ An Ideal Solution

The team were to take part in some “classroom” team building sessions in the morning, and needed the opportunity to put some of that learning into practice in the afternoon.

Given that information, the size of the team, the available space and the importance of communication being practiced, working with food in some way was greeted positively by the client.

After considering Canape Creation and Chocolate Challenge, it was the chocolate option that was chosen, wise decision!

Collaboration and Competition

Quest designed the team building event so that the whole team had the opportunity to work together, and also had the opportunity for some competition too.

The competition started with some fun, as the two teams were asked to nominate one person to step up for the Egg White Challenge!

Having separated the eggs the two volunteers then had to just beat like mad before holding the bowl with the firmly beaten egg white inside, upside down over their head. It was close and ended with a great flourish... and no mess, phew.

Chocolate Box Creation

The mix of competition and collaboration in the team building event continued after this fun start as the team were given a detailed briefing on the core activity of the afternoon, the planning, creation and filling of a team chocolate box.

One box had to be made for the whole team. However, half the chocolates had to be made by each sub-team, and they would be scored on their taste and appearance.

The team set to with great enthusiasm and roles were quickly allocated with two of the six designing and building the box.

Lots of shiny coloured card, scissors, pencils and all manner of other materials and equipment were supplied and a beautiful box in Urenco colours soon started to take shape.

Concurrent Stages

Whilst the box was being built the fillings for the chocolates were planned and created.

The chocolate to be used to coat and cover all those centres needed to be prepared, and this is where the process of Tempering was to be introduced.

The Quest Chef gave a detailed explanation of tempering chocolate and then equipped with the appropriate equipment the delegates started to work at the “dark art!”

They rotated through this process and continued to prepare centres and fillings, whilst putting the finishing touches to the chocolate box itself.

It was starting to get very busy and very challenging. Classic team building.

After some very careful weighing, grating and temperature control the chocolate was tempered and ready to be used.

Moulds were filled and centres dipped, suddenly the content of the chocolate box was starting to take shape.

Then just as the team started to relax, they were thrown a curve ball.

Yule Log Race

Another team building briefing document was handed out this time instructing the two sub-teams that they would soon be taking part in a timed challenge to transform a plain chocolate Swiss roll cake into a stunning Christmas Yule Log.

Ingredients were provided and plans were quickly made for creating the log.

The logs soon began to take shape. Holly leaves started to appear, and a snowman put in an early appearance.

The instruction given earlier on how to pipe chocolate run outs was put to great effect and the words Happy Christmas were perfectly formed.

Time soon ran out, but not before both teams had transformed a very dull cake into a work of art, and given the Quest facilitators a difficult judging task.

Finishing the Box

The end of the team building event was now fast approaching.

Some beautiful chocolates were popped out of moulds and carefully laid into paper cases before being placed lovingly into the stunning looking shiny blue box.

At the end of the afternoon, the team were able to reflect on a day of useful learning and fun practical application, whilst looking forward to sharing all they had so carefully created with their colleagues back in the office the following day. Wouldn’t they be popular!