Just Desserts, The Clunky Episode

I don't know what it was about this episode but it just felt clunky, off it's stride, just sorta eh. Maybe it's all the sadness of Whiny Heather's departure?

Yeah, perhaps the crocodile tears were appropriate in this circumstance. Still Yigit seems to be letting her auffing, along with his visit to the loser's table for Dessert Wars, really mess with his head. However now is not the time to go all stupid with your skills. Shinmin Li is in the House that Sugar Built.


She's here for intricate sugar work, not to listen to a bunch of excuses or whining or whatever you think is pretty. She'll tell you if it's pretty or not. You know why? Because bitch can do this!

And these!


(Do those shoes go with that bag?)

What is Shinmin looking for? A heightened sense of sophistication and creativity. Intricate details and showcasing your sugar pulling skills. Right off the bat chefs without those skills start reverting to what they know best and ignoring the challenge set before them. No more immunity for the Elimination challenge but to sweeten the pot there is $5000. Not to mention a whole 3 hours to create their bouquets.

Zac appears to be doing something with a big chocolate letter C?

Danielle does a lot of candied orange peels and marshmallow flowers and neglects to finish the backside of her arrangement.

Eric decides to make....a giant cupcake.
It better be the best looking giant cupcake ever because flavors don't mean diddly squat for this challenge.

Morgan is hitting both his chocolate skills with the shiny dark chocolate that he used before in his little black dress and pulled sugar with an intricate ribbon bow. However it is his stint at the heat booth that gets him in trouble when he hits Yigit's pulled sugar vases and destroys one of them.

Which really sucks because I get the impression that this was a time consuming process for Yigit. Did Morgan do it on purpose? Only Morgan can say and really, is there a penalty for accidentally destroying another contestant's work? Again, don't know but I'd like to give Morgan the benefit of the doubt....except it's Morgan, biggest jerk left in the game. So no, sorry Morgan, acting like a jerk 95% of the time will only get the general belief that you broke that vase on purpose. The flip side is that it's entirely possible that the vases would have never worked due to their extremely fragile nature. I'm just sad we never get to see Yigit present his original vision.

Zac goes old school Crack with this Disco Flowers arrangement.

Danielle and her not so pretty lime and orange zest roses.

Eric's squatty Giant Cupcake.

Those are your bottom three contenders and really no surprise there. Seems like folks just getting through the challenge.

Yigit and his 13 minute, on the fly bouquet. Uh, damn. Nice recovery from the Morgan disaster.

Morgan's arrangement with bow.

Morgan and Yigit take the top two spots with Morgan easily taking the win and the money.

Which is all well and good but I'd love for Morgan to deal with a disaster and still present a winning piece in 13 minutes and be as magnanimous as Yigit for not outwardly blaming another contestant for possible sabotage of his work. (coughcoughlemonscoughcough)


Tomorrow? Let's pretend Celebritards are more important than 99.9% of the rest of your life.

Day of the Damned Dawn

When we last left our intrepid pastry chefs they had just been released from their pastry garment sweatshop after grinding out edible fashion. Time for another Quickfire or as it's known in my house, The Day of the Damned Dawn. You see for their dessert the chefs can only use one pot to cook their dish in.
They can wash it as many times as they want but they can use no other cooking or mixing vessels. This is also revenge of the Production Assistants who sometimes can spend a huge part of the day washing dirty pots and pans. What will they be cooking in their Pot?

Their mission is to make a savory dessert. Perhaps with bacon.

Now according to the Remaining Heather, a heinous crime was committed during the mad grab for bacon. Apparently Morgan dislocated her jaw as he posted up some beets. I suspect Remaining Heather is hoping to invoke the No Violent Touching Rule used back during Season Two of Top Chef to have Morgan jettisoned from the competition. Sadly the Referees fail to make a call therefore there is no foul. A torrent of milking ensues for the rest of the episode of Remaining Heather's massive injury. While Morgan may have won the battle of the beets, Team Go Diva totally bogarts the bacon.
Can I really blame anyone for keeping all the bacon to themselves? I think we all know the answer to that question. But will it help the Team win?
Zac apparently held on to some beets and comes strong up the lane with Beet Cake and Lemon Thyme Gremolata.

Eric stews some fruit, throws some prosciutto on top and hopes for the best.

Danielle made something that only made sense in Danielle World.

Morgan does some interesting things with his spoils of war.

Yigit goes crazy with the chocolate, bacon fat and foie gras. Now, I must point out that this is not the first time in the Top Chef Universe that chocolate and liver has been paired in a single dish. Ilan Hall tried his hand at it with disastrous results, encasing a chicken liver in a wad of chocolate. Yigit at least leaves the liver on the outside and keeps the bits small and manageable.

Remaining Heather has a lot going on in one tiny dish.

Erika's dessert is suspiciously absent from review on the show (never a good sign). However I did find a photo of it at Bravo's website.
This is described as a Blue Cheese Milk Chocolate Soup. I don't know about pairing Blue Cheese with Milk Chocolate. Still it didn't end up in the bottom three like Danielle, Eric and Remaining Heather's did. Who ended up the the top three? Again we've got Zac, Morgan and Yigit as the three to beat. Immunity is up for grabs but it finally comes down in Zac's hot little hand. Zac immediately proclaims himself as the Susan Lucci of Just Desserts. So it was written, So let it be done.

(With apologies to La Lucci)

Gail, not to be outdone by a queen in a better dress, has an offer for Zac. Would he trade immunity?
For ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS?

Zac, no dummy to the High Stakes game knows that Gail's shoe budget is higher than a measly thousand dollars and asks for more. Gail, no dummy to good TV, says, why yes, Zac, I'll up my offer to five thousand dollars. Zac caves and sells his immunity for the offer. I think he should have held out for a pair of Gail's red pumps. We'll see if Zac regrets selling his immunity for the Elimination Challenge. We'll also see if Remaining Heather can milk her booboo to any advantage what so ever.

You're Either In or You're Out

I like this show. I like this show for a lot of reasons. One is the challenges. I don't know much about the world of pastry chefs but now I know there's a thing called modeling chocolate, that there's a chocolate convention every year and that making edible couture is old hat to some of these chefs.

I don't think this challenge is out of line for this show. Making edible dresses does seem a bit silly, erotic almost bordering on cannibalistic but for a Bravo reality show it's pretty tame. It's also a good skills and knowledge challenge. Obviously chocolate work is what they are looking for and your skills at petit fours.
The last reason I really like this show is how at ease Gail Simmons is at her role as hostess. When they rolled this table of shoes out...

...and Team Diva went crazy...

...it wasn't just because they love shoes but because they ask Gail to model what shoes she's wearing every morning.

She obviously plays along and why not. She's having fun and it shows.

So it's a tough challenge and not much time to make mistakes. I would have thought the ladies of the group would have had a much stronger showing but none of them really impressed with their offerings. Zac and Yigit performed exactly as expected and poor Eric I think was lucky to have something on his dress form. The biggest surprise was Morgan, apparently a woman's shoe freak from way back.

He's done early enough to stand around and fantasize about whatever woman he can get in and out of his dress. Still it's a beautiful simple piece and I love the way the chocolate discs look like actual large sequins.

However my personal favorite was Yigit's white chocolate dress. I loved that he used white with splashes of color to continue the color from the shoes he chose.

Morgan wins the challenge and $20,000. As beautiful as Yigit and Morgan's dresses were, Heather, Eric and Danielle's dresses were a disaster.


Eric's I understand. Just not his challenge and he's lucky the other two standing up there with him were just so off the mark. Yes, in theory, you can eat Heather and Morgan's dresses, ideally if you were a goat but this is still a pastry contest. Danielle's dress from a distance looks like a bad version of the meat dress Lady Gaga wore not long ago. Except Danielle's added a what looks like a tube of intestines as a necklace.

Yet as bad as that was, poor Heather is auffed yet again only to re-enter the condo of shame and Zac is left to brood at being beat in the edible couture challenge by a straight guy from Texas. Oh the shame...

Choppy First Impressions

Prima Donna: Doofus Wainwright Does Just Desserts

Gail Simmons
Woman on a Mission

Man knows his Disco Dust
(I couldn't decide which outfit he'd like better?)