Previous Episode: MasterChef Australia Season Four – Kylie Kwong Wields the Elimination Knife
All good MasterChef seasons needs an Adriano Zumbo challenge. This is it!
Contestants get ready and head for the kitchen for the final team challenge of MasterChef. By the end of today, three of them will be through to finals week. So what will they do today? Everything they’ve done so far pales in comparison to this one.
So, with seven contestants, the contestants need to be sorted into teams.
Challenge Brief: Contestants have one hour to create a French-Inspired dessert. This will sort contestants into teams and send one contestant into the finals week. That same person will get to choose the teams for the team challenge.
Progress: The contestants get to it. Andy is a bit thrown as desserts are not his thing. Audra is doing a poached pear tart- the thing she wanted to do in top 50 week when she forgot the eggs. She calls this redemption- but redemption for what? Her alternative dish was a gold mine. They’re all doing very sophisticated French desserts, so I won’t list all of them right now. Alice is doing snow eggs. Julia is doing an opera gateau which looks very delicious but Matt calls it a hard dish to create in an hour.
Not too much stress here with Audra and Kylie most calmed however the judges are not a fan of Alice’s ideas. They are surprised by Andy. Andy’s dessert requires a cream base, however he’s used a thick pan to cook it and it becomes hard to get it out.
But luckily, he gets it out- however he now needs to transfer it to a plate. Not easy with this piece of jelly cream. Soon, their time is up.
Tasting & Results
Julia
Cooking: Opera Gateau.
Comments: Gary calls it good cooking and he quite likes it.
Andy
Cooking: Rosemary Cream.
Comments: Despite the horrible presentation, they love the flavours, with George complimenting the crumb.
Ben
Cooking: Chipotle & Chocolate Parfait.
Comments: Gary likes the brioche croutons.
Mindy
Cooking: Burnt Custard
Comments: Matt calls it a bit of a ‘failed beautiful mess’.
Alice
Cooking: Floating Island
Comments: Gary tells her before he tastes it that it will be good.
Audra
Cooking: Chocolate Frangipani Tart.
Comments: George loves the presentation, calling it sophisticated.
Kylie
Cooking: Salted caramel mille feuille.
Comments: Matt likes the flavours, but not the textures.
Results: The three dishes that impressed the most were…Alice, Audra and Julia. The winner of the challenge and therefore the first through to finals week is…Audra.
Surprising- would have thought she came second or third in that trio, but ok. Audra is the first person through to finals week.
So what’s the team challenge?
Challenge Brief: Adriano Zumbo walks in with the cake to end all cakes. It seems to be a collection of many of his previous challenge dishes. The contestant’s challenge today is to create a Careme-styled dessert centrepiece- like the one Adriano has. There will be three teams of two. The winning team go into finals week while the bottom two teams head into elimination. Audra picks the teams.
Green: Julia and Alice
Red: Mindy and Andy
Blue: Ben and Kylie
The contestants will have to plan their creation before Adriano takes them all to Le Cordon Bleu school where they will have until midnight to create the centrepiece. They will then be woken up early and taken to Curzon Hall to assemble their centrepieces. The wonderful part is that Matt, Matt Moran and six pastry chefs will taste and judge the centrepiece.
Progress: They head off to plan. It sounds like Julia and Alice want to be inspired by Careme himself while Ben and Kylie want a French-inspired creation. Mindy and Andy are drawing blanks.
They then head to Le Cordon Bleu where Andre Sanderson, one of the head teachers here, is waiting for them. He and Adriano will be their references if they need help with something. At this point, they have six hours.
Julia goes through their design more and it sounds similar to Adriano’s tower with macarons and a box-like structure somewhere near the top. They also hint at a butter cake.
Ben and Kylie are doing a five layered centrepiece which include eleven elements. It sounds quite complex. Kylie will look after the fancy stuff while Ben will look after the cooking stuff.
Andy and Mindy finally work out a 3-layered design which includes a jewellery box-inspired layer and an 1850’s hat-inspired layer on the top. Meanwhile, Kylie is working on some lolly jewels which Adriano is impressed with.
Alice is being bossed around by Julia, but that’s OK in Alice’s books. The judges worry they are all going quite slow at the moment. They’re all working super hard on getting their elements all prepped and ready to cook. Julia is creating a purple edible box. It looks complex, but she is confident she can do it. Andy, meanwhile, is trying to create the Eiffel Tower.
Julia tries to cut a hole into the sides of one of her box pieces, but it cracks. She is able to bring the tile back into shape, but it is a shame it is now cracked as it looks great. She tries it again and with little time left, she gets it done. Soon, midnight hits and the contestants get some ‘rest’.
The next day, they head off to assemble their cakes. Alice thinks her team don’t have enough macarons but Adriano and Julia assures her they do. Meanwhile, Kylie is trying to drape fondant icing over her centrepiece to make it look like a dress, but it keeps falling off. Adriano and George don’t know why she is putting white icing over an already pink-decorated piece of the cake. She decides to ditch the idea.
Then comes the time for Julia to pop her edible box onto the top of the macarons tower. Firstly, they pop the tower on another one of their cakes. Then, on goes the box. It works! Julia’s slightly less excited than I thought she would be. Meanwhile, Mindy begins work on her little fondant Matt, Gary and George.
Soon, time is up and their creations have been created. Julia & Alice’s piece takes the cake for me!
The judges, along with our two Matts, are Kirsten Tibballs, Dean Gibson, Darren Purchese, Vincent Gadan, Alistair Wise and Philippa Sibley.
Judging & Results
Green Team: Vincent likes the look and creativity of their creation. Kirsten is unsure if the box on top fits with the rest of the creation however Dean actually likes that the box is on an angle. Darren likes the amount of technique they have shown. Alistair likes the macarons and the profiteroles in the box are a hit as well.
Red Team: Dean loves the figurines but Kirsten would like to see the jewellery box look more like a jewellery box. They don’t like the cake that makes the hat. They find some paper in the jewellery box cake and Philippa and most people call it packet cake.
Blue Team: I actually think this one looks better than the green team’s invention now! They are so happy for the creation, loving the added croquembouche.
Results: The winning team is… Kylie & Ben. These two will head into finals week. Andy, Alice, Julia and Mindy will be heading into elimination.
MasterChef Australia next airs Jul 19 at 7PM on TEN.
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