I once ordered the eight-texture chocolate cake at Sydney's Bennelong restaurant and - being nosy - asked the waiter what the eight textures actually were. The details were so complex and expansive that he had to find the piece of paper that listed each detail. It took a long time for him to read it all out.

At the restaurant - which is located in the Sydney Opera House - the dessert is actually called the Chocolate Cake From Across The Water. It's a geographic tribute to its origins at Quay, located across the harbour.

Peter Gilmore, who is executive chef for both award-winning restaurants, created the current eight-texture version of the cake to (deliciously) mark his eighth anniversary at Quay.

The dessert would go on to be named by our food critic Terry Durack as as one of the 10 dishes that changed Sydney. He traces the cake's chocolate-rich origins to an earlier point in Gilmore's career. It originally had four textures, upgraded to five at De Beers in Whale Beach (where Gilmore was working in 2000) and then decadently expanded to eight textures in 2009 at Quay.

Watch Peter Gilmore make it in the video above, building it from the base up through to the dramatic moment he air-drops a hot dollop of chocolate decadently through all the top layers.