Sugar Rush Christmas (2019–…): Season 2, Episode 6 - Deck the Halls - full transcript
The bakers compete in three rounds of Christmas decor themed challenges. Abigail Breslin guest judges.
This is Sugar Rush Christmas...
the baking competition where
time is the most important ingredient.
Four teams of brilliant bakers
battle it out
for sugary success
over three rounds of competition,
-racing against each other and the clock.
-[chimes]
The faster they work, the better, because
any time saved in round one, cupcakes,
and round two, confections,
will be banked and added
to their third and final round,
cakes.
I'm your host, Hunter March,
and determining which of these teams
is putting $10,000
into their stocking this year
is our panel of judges.
She gave us the gift that keeps on giving
when she created
the world's first cupcake-only bakery.
It's Candace Nelson.
And he's the true meaning of Christmas.
It's celebrated Australian pastry chef
Adriano Zumbo.
We're deckin' the halls
in the Sugar Rushkitchen,
as our bakers are competing
in three rounds of
Christmas decor-themed challenges.
And finally, our guest judge,
actor and musician Abigail Breslin.
Candace and Adriano are inside
presenting the first two rounds
-of our Christmas decor-themed challenges...
-[chime]
...and that sound means
that competition has just begun.
Let's check it out.
Alex and Maddie,
feel free to mingle all the way.
Dustin, Tyler, happy holly-days.
It's not my best,
but I love you nonetheless.
-[laughter]
-Hi, judges.
-Hi, Hunter.
-Hello.
It's so festive. Merry Christmas to
Candace, Adriano, and Abigail Breslin.
Happy holidays.
Everyone looks so festive right now.
-You look like a Christmas angel.
-Thank you.
-And it's snowing.
-Indoors.
All right, Candace, what are
our bakers working on right now?
Well, Hunter, today our bakers
are focused on Christmas decor.
And what's more holiday
-than a Christmas ornament?
-Ooh!
So, our bakers are making cupcakes
inspired by a holiday ornament.
Are you a big
"ornament on the tree every year" person?
Oh, yes. And I like a themed tree.
-Do you do a themed tree?
-I'm single right now.
-There's not even a tree in the house.
-[laughter]
Ornament cupcake.
Our ornament can be a melted
chocolate dome with some marbling.
Everybody loves our hot chocolate.
-Why not do chocolate?
-Okay. Like a chocolate mug?
-What kind of ornament?
-Something from when I was a kid.
Let's do something with peppermint.
Brown butter will make it taste
-nice and warm.
-Okay.
My name is Alex,
I'm from Sherwood, Oregon,
and I am the owner and pastry chef
of the Hungry Hero Dessert Company.
My name is Maddie, and I'm a baker
at the Hungry Hero Dessert Company.
How long are you thinking for the round?
I wanna get this whole thing done
in an hour.
Okay.
[Alex] Thinking of the ornament challenge,
I have a flashback to childhood
and I think to myself,
"What can I make that is going to be
cute and not overly fussy?"
Candy canes.
We can do that thing
where we take the cookie cutter,
and let's melt down
some of the peppermints.
[Alex] For our ornament cupcakes,
we are making
a brown butter vanilla cupcake,
but we're gonna fold in
some crumbled peppermint candies,
make a brown butter vanilla buttercream
frosting with a little bit of peppermint,
and then we'll put our candy cane on top.
Gonna put them in
for probably, like, six minutes?
That should be good.
Brown butter is going in.
-[Maddie] It's like a mint sugar cookie.
-[Alex] Perfect.
All right, cupcakes goin' in.
-You wanna do a chocolate cupcake?
-Yeah.
-Okay.
-Then, maybe...
-we should fill it with mousse.
-Okay.
-And then...
-Oh, you know what?
It's Christmas, let's do some peppermint.
My name is Darlene.
I'm owner of the Best Goodie Bag
in Queens, New York.
My name's Eleesa.
I'm a owner of the Goodie Bag as well.
And I'm her daughter.
-[Eleesa] I'm starting on the cake.
-Okay.
I was a police officer
for close to 25 years.
Once I retired,
I went from being a police officer to...
-A baker.
-A baker! [laughs]
Okay.
[Eleesa] For our Christmas
ornament cupcakes,
we're gonna make a chocolate cupcake
with chocolate mousse,
and a peppermint whipped cream.
We also decided to do a hot chocolate,
which is something that we're known for.
[Darlene] How you doin'
over there with that stuff?
Using paramount crystals
so the chocolate won't burn.
We're gonna make
a chocolate cup and saucer
out of candy melts,
to make it look like an ornament.
-[Eleesa] I'm putting it in the oven.
-[Darlene] Okay.
-Darlene, how are you guys doin'?
-We're hangin' in there.
-[laughs]
-You got it, girl. Don't stress it.
-I see sweat.
-It's hot in here.
[laughing]
-[man 1] Let's do a spice cake.
-[man 2] Okay.
The ornament topper
-has to be one they can eat.
-Let's...
-I don't wanna use fondant.
-Right.
I'm Dustin. I'm from Madison, Wisconsin,
and I own D Bar Bakery.
This is Tyler, and he is my partner
in the bakery and in life.
[Tyler] We get asked the question
frequently
if we're twins or if we're brothers.
-We're not.
-He's very good-looking.
So they're saying I'm good-looking.
I'll take it.
[Tyler] Is that cupcake batter
comin' along?
[laughs] It will be.
[Dustin] For our Christmas
ornament cupcake,
we are gonna do a spice cake
filled with some pecans
and toasted coconut,
cream cheese frosting,
and a chocolate ornament
with red candy melts.
And make it look like
the shiny ornament that would hang
on an actual Christmas tree.
Did we put everything in there?
I'mma taste it.
Mostly because I'm really hungry.
[Dustin] The spice cake
and toasted pecans and coconut
just reminds us of the holidays.
-Very Wisconsin.
-It's just cozy.
[Dustin] Okay.
-[Tyler] Cupcakes in?
-Yep.
Perfect.
So, what I was thinking
was a green pistachio cupcake
with a nice strawberry buttercream,
and we'll cover it with a dome
that's nice and marbled.
My name is Laura. I'm from San Diego,
and I am a home-based baker.
My name is Eddie,
and she's my ride-or-die...
-Aww!
-...in life.
-[chuckles]
-And I'm here to help out my partner.
What do you want me to start with?
-Start with the strawberry purée.
-Okay.
-And I'll start on the cupcake batter.
-Okay.
-All right. Sounds good.
-Let's do this.
Holidays in our house are really festive.
I like to go all out.
[Eddie] How much time
on this round?
-Let's do at least 45 minutes? An hour?
-[Eddie] 45 minutes?
I want the flavor of the cupcakes
to be really bold,
so we're making a pistachio cupcake,
strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream,
with a marbled chocolate dome ornament
covering the entire cupcake.
[Laura] Looks really good like that.
Good things come to those who wait.
[laughs]
We're making our ornaments
out of, uh, white chocolate.
I gotta put some food coloring
to give this cool marble look to it.
[Eddie] Say a prayer.
Hopefully this works.
I've been prayin'.
[Eddie] And then dip 'em,
let 'em cool, pop 'em out.
Hopefully they don't break.
-Boom. Out of chaos... somethin'.
-[Laura] Yeah! Okay.
-How's it goin' over there?
-[Laura groans]
-Good?
-Time is running out already.
I feel more relaxed. Thank you, guys.
[Laura] Okay.
Cupcakes are finally going into the oven.
-[Alex] How are they lookin'?
-[Maddie] They're perfect.
Adriano, are you a big, uh...
-"ornaments on the tree" guy?
-Uh, not really, no.
-See pictures of it and I'm happy.
-This is the holiday episode.
-[Abigail] Seriously!
-Bring the spirit. Abigail, save us.
-Your Christmas traditions.
-Well, I'm a very big, uh, believer
-on having a real tree.
-Thank you.
I have sentimental meaning to,
like, every ornament,
-so, you know...
-Aww, that's sweet.
-Come on.
-[Maddie] I know some of 'em will break.
[Alex] Don't have that attitude.
I'm just nervous 'cause
they're, like, a little bit thin. Okay.
[Alex] I'm gonna check these cupcakes
real quick.
They are still really soft.
[Maddie] Oh, my God.
They do not look like our normal cupcake!
Sour cream, canola,
we got everything in there?
-Sour cream. I didn't do that. I didn't.
-Start over quick.
-Oh, my God! I'm so sorry, Alex.
-Start over quick. Hurry.
It's gonna be all right.
It's not a big deal.
We'll start over and get this done.
-[Maddie] All right.
-We got it.
All right, Mad, these are goin' in.
Two and a half hours, bakers.
Two and a half hours remaining.
[Dustin] We're just a skosh
behind schedule.
The buttercream's almost done,
and we'll be almost done.
[laughs]
I feel like the cupcake needed some more
fresh ingredients, so I figured
I could get this banana, slice it,
and get a strawberry and slice that,
and make a Santa-looking hat
and throw that
on top of the buttercream.
[Laura gasps] Those look really nice.
Beautiful.
-I hope they don't beat us.
-Don't look over there. Look over here.
I'm putting everything together and
makin' it look like a hot chocolate mug
while she's makin' a chocolate mousse.
Let me see.
[Darlene] Oh! Mm-mm.
It need more sugar.
-[Eleesa] Why?
-[Darlene] It's not sweet enough.
-Well, what do you normally use?
-Sugar.
-Sugar? And they don't have sugar?
-[gasps]
Leave me alone. Finish what you doing.
-I sometimes have to wrangle her.
-[laughs]
Put the sugar in here.
She keeps tryin' to tell me what to do.
Maybe more heavy cream
or something?
Mm-mm. You can't keep whippin' it,
it's gonna turn to butter.
-I am her mother. I know what I'm doing.
-Okay.
[Darlene] Taste this.
-Say, "It's yummy."
-Mmm.
No, it's good. It's, like, really good.
[humming] That should be good.
The frosting will have
Kringle Cream liqueur,
-which is like boozy butter.
-An almond Danish.
Yeah. It's real good.
Do you think we can recreate these
for the annual Christmas party?
I think our friends would be a little
surprised we went that boozy for 'em.
-[Dustin] What you got goin' on?
-[Tyler] I got goin' the ornament toppers.
[Tyler] I need to make sure
that I'm brushing that chocolate evenly
so when we go to pop them out,
there's not any breaking on the edges.
If these ornament toppers don't come out,
-I might end up on someone's naughty list.
-Mm-hm.
We're doin' fine on time.
Those are comin' together nicely.
[Laura] So, now I need
the little cinnamon hats inside.
A little bit of pistachios.
-Hit the buzzer, hit the buzzer!
-All right. Go for it. Do it. You do it.
-[chimes]
-[bells jingle]
-Oh, man.
-First bakers done.
Let's go check out
Laura and Eddie's ornament cupcake.
Look what they did,
the little ornaments.
-Those are really cute.
-[gasps] Precious!
Laura, Eddie, first ones done.
Why don't you pass out your cupcakes
and tell us what your flavors are?
We've got a pistachio cupcake
with strawberry buttercream.
A little bit of almond extract,
topped with a little surprise.
So, if you lift your ornament,
you'll get a surprise inside.
-[Candace] A Santa hat!
-A Santa hat.
-[Candace] Oh! A strawberry Santa hat.
-[Abigail laughs]
I like your idea. It's a beautiful cupcake
with a little Santa hat underneath.
The textures of your cupcake
are delicious.
I mean, the cupcake's nice and moist.
Only thing for me is that almond extract.
I can't get pistachio.
All that extract that's in there
overpowers it.
I love the beautiful marbling
you guys did on your holiday ornament
that was also edible.
That was really just attacking
the challenge, so well done on that.
The texture of your buttercream
was really silky and lovely,
but my one note would be that
the strawberry and banana
weren't reading that "holiday" to me.
-Okay.
-[Hunter] Okay. Abigail?
I like the taste of almond, but, um...
my only thing is
that I'm a super-messy eater,
and it was
a little bit hard for me to eat.
But I really liked it. I thought it was
pretty, and I love strawberry.
-Thank you.
-Thank you.
Ooh, these are gonna be so yummy.
It's just difficult to fill them.
[Tyler] Those look good.
-[Dustin] Let's do it.
-[Tyler] All right. Ready?
-[chimes]
-[bells jingle]
[Hunter] Oh. All right.
Dustin and Tyler just finished.
We'll be there in one second.
Bakers, you did an incredible job.
You were the first ones done.
-How do you feel on time right now?
-It's a little tight, but we can do it.
Adriano, remind them
what they have to do in round two.
For round two, we wanna see
a wreath-inspired confection.
-Sounds good. We'll make it happen.
-[Hunter] Thanks.
And judges, we are turning
right around to Dustin and Tyler.
Maybe we do something really traditional.
A Mexican tradition, which is a... a tamal,
but instead we're gonna just
create it into a holiday wreath.
You're makin' it easy for us, in terms
of movin' around the kitchen right now.
-We do what we can.
-Pass out your cupcakes,
-tell us what you made?
-Sure.
So, we have a spice cake
that is filled with pecans and coconut,
cooked down in some brown sugar.
And Kringle Cream liqueur,
which is like buttery cinnamon liqueur,
topped with a cream cheese frosting
and an ornament for you.
That's so good.
-I'm not a judge, but... yummy.
-[laughter]
We'll take what we can get.
I love the direction you took
with your ornament, making it edible.
It just feels like
Christmas holiday to me.
-Thank you.
-Thank you.
I love the cake. Moist and delicious.
I like the Kringle Cream in the middle.
Only thing I'm gonna complain is
I found the frosting a bit grainy.
-[both] Okay.
-I love this.
I would eat this whole thing right now.
And I... I love Kringle Cream now.
-[Dustin] Yes!
-Perfect.
-Really turned me into a fan.
-Made some new...
If you make it past the elimination,
we wanna to see confections
inspired by holiday wreaths.
-Excellent. Thank you.
-Okay.
We have two more cupcakes to try, you have
an hour 40 for your confection.
-Good luck, bakers.
-[all] Thank you.
-Just modern circle wreath?
-[Dustin] Yep.
We'll do it like a fruit pizza style.
If you wanna start with the fruit
-and chop up the rosemary...
-Chop fruit...
-Rosemary...
-...while I get the cookie batter going.
Come on, Eleesa. We can do it.
-We're almost there.
-Aah!
-[Darlene] Need more peppermint?
-[Eleesa] No.
Aah! This one cracked.
These ones are not set.
The red chocolate cups
are taking forever to set.
[sighs]
But sometimes,
-slow and steady wins the race.
-Mm-hm.
[Darlene] Are they comin' out better?
[Eleesa] No. [laughs]
-Chilled and ready for decorating.
-Okay.
The cupcakes come out of the oven
and they're perfect.
-Exactly as we want them.
-They smell amazing.
They smell like a warm,
pepperminty sugar cookie.
[Alex] Well, if that's not
the cutest thing I've ever seen.
Guys, we might have
another set of cupcakes to try.
-You ready? Go!
-Ready?
-[chimes]
-[bells jingle]
Maddie and Alex are done.
Judges, let's head on down.
[Darlene] Oh, my God.
[sighs]
[Hunter] Alex, Maddie.
-[Alex] Hello.
-Pass out your cupcake.
-All right.
-Tell us what you made.
We've got a vanilla, peppermint crunch
and brown butter cupcake.
-Mmm!
-And we made you guys an ornament
like something I would do
from my childhood.
-Super cute, right? Yep.
-Super cute!
-[Hunter] That is...
-[Alex] It's nice you can't eat it all,
so when you're done,
you have a snack for afterwards.
The frosting is a cream cheese buttercream
with a little bit of brown butter,
a smidge of peppermint,
and then more peppermint candy
rolled on the outside.
I really, really love this ornament.
I think it's so cute. And I love
that you used, like, an actual string.
I really like the frosting a lot.
-It's a little nutty. Is there something...
-Brown butter.
-The brown butter.
-Oh. Okay.
We did that to cut through the frosting
so that it didn't taste like toothpaste.
Great presentation, I like the look of it.
It's nice and pastel-y and subtle.
Like that beautiful candy cane on top.
Love the brown butter cake.
It's so ingenious how you melted down
peppermint candies into this shape,
and I also love anything brown butter.
Only note I would say is that
with peppermint,
-it can tend to go really sweet...
-Mm-hm.
...and your frosting didn't do much
to temper that sweetness.
-But otherwise a wonderful cupcake. Yeah.
-Thank you very much.
How do you feel about time?
Um, I'd like to get started.
-[laughter]
-Well, get goin', bakers.
-See you soon. Thank you.
-Thank you.
-What are you thinking?
-I'm thinking we need to do something
different than peppermint,
so let's go chocolate caramel-y salty.
-Sound good?
-[Maddie] Peanut butter?
-With chocolate, nostalgia.
-A bit of peanut butter'd be good.
-I need the cupcakes so I can pipe 'em.
-Okay, here.
[Hunter] We still have one more cupcake
to try. Darlene and Eleesa.
We're an hour and a half in,
and they're still not done.
I'll be interested to hear
what dragged them down.
Hurry up.
[Darlene] Let me taste this hot chocolate.
Mm!
[Hunter] Oh, the hot chocolate accessory.
[Adriano] They have to know
it doesn't count.
It's nice,
but doesn't give you any points.
-[Darlene] You ready?
-Guys, time's runnin' out! Let's go!
-Okay!
-[Hunter] All right!
-Hi, guys!
-Final team buzzed in.
-Judges, let's go to this final cupcake.
-Yay!
Darlene, Eleesa, final ones done.
-Aah! Final.
-We're here, though.
Pass your cupcake,
tell us what you made.
-Hurry, so you can get to your confection.
-Okay.
We made chocolate cupcakes
filled with chocolate mousse
and a peppermint whipped cream.
At our shop,
people love our hot chocolate,
so we wanted to have you
taste some of our hot chocolate
as well as our hot chocolate cupcake.
-It's a very yummy hot chocolate.
-[Candace laughs] Yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
I can see why you guys are known
for your hot chocolate.
I mean, this is like a chocolaty,
creamy, dreamy experience.
It's just light and luscious
and packed with chocolaty flavor.
-Thank you.
-I love that cake, it's moist.
There was just enough peppermint,
the surprise of chocolate mousse
in the middle gave a good balance,
and with that whipped cream,
it was really pleasant, you know.
-[both] Thank you.
-It was just like eating air, really,
-Chocolaty, with a slight minty taste.
-Wow.
I really, really liked the chocolate cake.
I felt like that was really good,
'cause I love chocolate, and
it's really, like, deep, dark chocolate.
The hot chocolate, though,
I'm gonna definitely finish.
Speaking of that hot chocolate,
how do you make it so good?
It's a secret.
-[Hunter] A secret?
-Yes.
All right.
We won't take too much of your time.
-Good luck. An hour 13 remaining.
-[both] Thank you.
[Hunter] And judges,
we have a decision to make.
How about, like, a deconstructed wreath?
-Somethin' like that?
-[Darlene] Okay. Yes.
All right, judges, we have tried
all four cupcakes, but unfortunately,
only three teams can make it
on to the confection round.
So, before we make an elimination,
let's talk about who had
our top two favorite cupcakes.
Dustin and Tyler gave us a really fun,
punchy ornament, really cheerful,
and then the flavors of their cake
were so satisfying.
That Kringle Cream center,
I thought it was great texture.
Great presentation, beautiful colors.
Really fitted with the Christmas theme.
I loved the cinnamon-y spiciness of it.
And then I really liked
Darlene and Eleesa's,
but it was disappointing that it didn't
have that ornament feeling to me.
I have to agree. They definitely took some
creative license with the ornament theme,
but what they actually presented to us
was beautiful, and was it ever tasty.
That chocolate flavor, and then to have
that filling with the chocolate mousse,
and then on top of it,
that lightly-scented whipped cream.
It was just such an experience.
I thought it was well-balanced. I think
it had great flavor, great texture.
That little hot chocolate,
even though I said doesn't count,
-it did go well with it in the end.
-[laughs]
Now it begs the question,
why were the other two teams
your least favorite cupcakes?
With Laura and Eddie,
it didn't feel like Christmas to me,
with the pistachio and the strawberry.
Yeah. But altogether,
with all that almond extract,
I didn't feel one bit of the pistachio.
[Candace] I was a little confused by that
strawberry-banana Santa hat.
Didn't think it was as sophisticated
as the rest of their presentation.
I really, really liked the presentation
with Maddie and Alex.
I just really liked the fact that
they actually used an ornament.
-[Candace] Mm.
-I felt like that was the challenge.
The cupcake was so buttery and tender,
but the frosting was too sweet.
You know, I think, for me,
it was quite a simple design.
I just found their icing a bit sweet,
and unfortunately it was a tough round.
Okay, judges,
sounds like you have made a decision.
I will go and let our bakers know.
All right, bakers,
can I have your attention, please?
Our judges have made their first decision.
The team with
our judges' favorite cupcake is...
Darlene and Eleesa.
-You're lying.
-[Hunter] Very well done!
-[Darlene] Wow!
-Sometimes time does pay off.
You guys did an incredible job.
You guys are safe from elimination,
and because it's the Christmas season,
we're gonna send you home
with two brand-new stand mixers.
-Oh! Thank you!
-Thank you.
But you have to make us
that hot chocolate all day every day,
-and it's gotta be free.
-I promise.
-[Hunter] Get back to work. Go ahead.
-Thank you.
So, unfortunately,
one team has to go home.
And I'm sorry to say this,
but the team
with our judges'
least favorite cupcake this round is...
Laura and Eddie.
-[laughs]
-Oh, man.
We're so sorry.
Today was such a stiff competition.
You did incredibly well,
but your time in the Sugar Rushkitchen
has run out.
-All right, Thank you.
-Thank you. Good luck, everyone.
-Good luck!
-Have fun! [laughs]
I'm bummed,
but it's been a whole rainbow of emotions.
-[Hunter] You did great.
-[both] Thank you.
[Eddie] It was such an awesome experience,
just to show our kids that...
find something you love and keep doing it.
I'm proud to have the opportunity
to let Laura shine.
It was fun. It was a lot of fun.
[Hunter] Alex and Maddie, Dustin
and Tyler, you are safe from elimination.
You're now on the confection round.
You have 55 minutes remaining.
Get back to work.
Let's do it.
How about a deconstructed wreath?
I don't wanna be like everybody else.
[Eleesa] I don't wanna do a wreath
on each individual plate,
so I'm thinkin' a deconstructed wreath.
Everybody loves our ice cream.
-Okay.
-So let's do a ice-cream...
-[Eleesa] Oh, what about ginger?
-Oh! Yes, yes.
For our wreath confection,
we plan on making a ricotta,
candied orange, cranberry,
and pistachio ice cream
with cranberry mousse
on top of a ginger cookie.
[Eleesa] 350 is fine?
-[Darlene] Yeah.
-Okay.
[Tyler] All right, so...
[Dustin] Wreath.
Let's do, like, a fruit pizza style.
Fruit pizza is something we have
in the summers in Wisconsin.
Usually it's sugar cookie dough,
but we are going to make a lemon rosemary
shortbread cookie for the wreath,
with some vanilla cream cheese frosting,
and then we'll just shingle
some different fruit around the top.
I think wreaths scream the holidays.
And we usually have one that is
extremely oversized for our front door,
which makes the door hard to close,
but you gotta have that holiday cheer.
-[Tyler] Goin' in?
-[Dustin] Yep.
Mad, I'm thinking
we can get this done in about an hour.
Get all that ground up really well, like...
-Really well.
-Yeah.
Immediately, when I hear "wreath,"
I'm thinking of something
that makes you feel nostalgic.
When you bite it, you'll feel like
a kid on Christmas morning.
All right, Mad,
I'm gettin' started on the shells.
[Maddie] Okay.
For our wreath confection,
we are making a tart
with a peanut butter mousse
that we're gonna tint green,
salted caramel, and a chocolate ganache,
and then butter cracker,
graham cracker, brown butter crust.
-It's like grown up PB and J.
-Yeah.
[Alex] I'll start getting
the tart shells in the oven.
I feel like we got our stride now.
[Darlene] I'll make the ice cream.
I'll whip this up
and put it in that chill blaster.
-Blast chiller.
-Oh!
[both laugh]
We don't have any time to waste,
'cause the ice cream has to set.
-[Eleesa] Enough? Okay.
-[Darlene] Fine. More than enough.
I'mma put that stuff in here right now.
[Darlene] We already lost a lot of time
in the first round,
so it's gonna be a challenge.
I'mma put this whole thing
in the blast chiller right now.
Just want this to be smooth.
I don't know if it is yet.
[Dustin] For our wreath confection,
we're making cream cheese frosting again,
but the frosting was grainy,
so we just have to sift
all the powdered sugar.
-No problem, we've got all day.
-[chuckles]
Those getting golden brown at all
-around the edges yet?
-Oh.
[Dustin] Yeah.
They need a little bit more time.
[Alex] Maddie, caramel is almost done.
What are you workin' on?
I'm gonna start making
the peanut butter mousse.
-How are the tarts going?
-Tart shells are out of the oven.
We've got the caramel ready,
the ganache is nice and thin.
We're gonna give these
a good ten minutes in the blast chiller.
All right, this mousse is good.
Let's get some green in it.
[Alex] To make our confection
look like a wreath,
we're gonna tint
our peanut butter mousse a green color
and then pipe it on top.
-[laughs]
-"Time to dye"!
[both laughing]
[Eleesa] It's startin' to whip.
Is this fine, or should I stop it?
-Stop it. Let me see? Yeah, stop it.
-Okay.
[Darlene] 'Cause I'm gonna put
the cranberries in there.
For our wreath confection,
we'll have something festive and pretty,
so we plan on making a cranberry mousse.
Get the ice cream.
We want the judges to love our flavors...
Scoop.
...so we're gonna layer ice cream
with the mousse and then the cookie.
Gives it a nice little crunch.
All right.
Gotta hurry up.
Oh! That's yummy.
[Tyler] The cookies look great.
They are cooked perfectly.
Now we have to make sure
that they look like wreaths.
[Dustin] I kind of like them without it,
but too late, I've already put 'em in.
As soon as I put the kiwi on,
I realized that it's not gonna look great.
It's better without. It looks neater.
And it's not really the green...
-That we want.
-Yeah.
There's not gonna be green, I guess.
So, hopefully
the judges can tell that it's a wreath.
[Tyler] There you go.
-[Dustin] A blizzard! We're good to go.
-[Tyler] Ready?
Looks like they're about to...
Dustin and Tyler!
-[bells jingle]
-Dustin and Tyler buzzed in first
with their confection.
-Judges, let's go try it.
-[Alex sighs]
-Those guys.
-Them guys.
[Hunter] Dustin and Tyler.
That is so cute.
Why don't you pass them out
and tell us what you made?
[Dustin] All right.
So, this is our signature cookie.
It is a shortbread cookie
with lemon and rosemary,
shaped into a wreath,
so it's a little sweet, a little savory,
and then it's our take on fruit pizza.
I love this. Like, I could
eat the rest of this right now.
[laughter]
It looks it'll be really sweet,
but it's really light.
The only thing that I'd say is
I wish there was some green
to make it a little bit more wreath-y.
-[Dustin] Sure.
-[Adriano] You nailed the flavor.
I think they're really tasty flavors,
they're really well-balanced.
And it's so crumbly and short,
you know, which is what you want.
Well, I can see why
this is your signature cookie.
It's got such a great buttery texture,
and I love the rosemary,
it adds that savory element.
I would've loved to have seen you
push the decorations just a bit more,
but otherwise, nice job.
All right. Well, thank you, bakers.
-[all] Thank you.
-[Tyler] Thanks a lot.
[Hunter] judges, it looks like
no one else is quite ready yet,
so let's head back to the judges' table.
[Alex] Hello.
-[Maddie] Okay.
-[Alex] It's gorgeous. Okay.
That one's broken. So, she gone.
Okay. At least we did extra.
[Alex] Start garnishing with raspberries.
Let it snow.
-[Maddie] Just go hit it.
-[grunts]
-[bells jingle]
-Another team is done. Alex and Maddie.
-[Maddie] Yay!
-[Alex] I cannot believe we got that done.
We're always last.
[Hunter] Okay, Alex and Maddie,
second ones done.
Tell us about your confection
and your wreath design.
All right, well,
we brought the brown butter back.
-[laughter]
-We did a brown butter,
graham cracker, and butter cracker crust
with a little bit of brown sugar,
a salty caramel for in the center,
a chocolate ganache,
and peanut butter cream cheese mousse
with fresh raspberries, mint,
and then we made little bows
out of licorice candy.
And then we added gold leaf and
some sparkle because it's the holidays.
-[laughs]
-For us, a little bit of a adult PB and J.
Whoa! That is good.
-[laughs]
-Yes!
I love you brought the greenery here
with the wreath.
Really tender graham cracker crust
with the richness
of that chocolate ganache,
and then the freshness of the raspberry
and the beautiful piping on top.
-I think you guys just nailed it.
-Yes!
Merry Christmas!
-Thank you!
-Thank you! You too.
Yeah, you guys
smashed that one out of the park.
-Oh, God.
-It's super delicious.
-Like, the flavors...
-Thank God.
You picked great flavors,
and you executed it really well.
But also you nailed the presentation.
-It looks like a wreath.
-[Alex] Thanks.
Yeah, it looks gorgeous.
I didn't even wanna touch it at first.
-[laughs]
-But the crust is delicious,
and I think I'm just gonna compare
every PB and J to this.
We've ruined her for life.
-Thanks for your delicious confection.
-[both] Thank you.
Judges, we have a bit of time
until our last team is done.
Let's head back to the judges' table.
I'm gonna go throw up now.
There's a trash can right there! [laughs]
No surprise,
Darlene and Eleesa have not
finished their confection yet.
But if it's like round one,
we have
a very delicious confection to try.
[Darlene] Mmm.
-[Eleesa] Want me to put the crust on?
-You could drizzle the cranberry on top.
[Eleesa] That one is not ready.
It's too soft.
I don't know
what you want me to do. It didn't set.
One of the ice cream is not setting,
and we really don't have time
to keep it in the blast chiller.
Are we the last ones again?
-Oh, my goodness. Oh. [laughs]
-[Eleesa] Yes! Where have you been?
I don't even know we're the last.
I look up and I'm like,
"Why are these people looking at us?"
These things gotta go in.
[Eleesa] No, but it's too much.
-[Darlene] Is that everything?
-Yeah.
-All right, here we go.
-[bells jingle]
-Darlene and Eleesa, finally done.
-[Darlene] Oh, Lord!
Judges, let's head on down
and try our final confection.
-Finally. Yet again, last ones done.
-Oh, my God.
Is that whole thing the wreath there?
-The whole five of 'em?
-[both] Yes.
-Six of 'em?
-A deconstructed wreath.
-[Abigail] That's cute. I like that.
-[Adriano] Got it.
Deconstructed wreath. Right.
[Hunter] All right,
walk us through your confection.
I love ginger,
so on the bottom we did a ginger cookie
with some candied gingers inside.
The ice cream on top is ricotta,
pistachio, orange, cranberry ice cream,
and in the middle is
a cranberry mousse-y whipped cream.
It's Christmas season, so we put
a little bit of cranberry sauce on top
just to give it a little bit more flavor.
Darlene and Eleesa, I always feel like,
"What's goin' on in there?"
-"Like, what's happening?"
-[laughing]
I'm worried for you two,
and then you always pull it out
with the most incredible flavors.
I love your candied ginger cookie,
love your delicious mousse-y ice cream
with cranberries.
I think you guys are
really masters of flavor.
A little greenery would've been nice,
but as you did in the first round,
you took some creative license,
and I think that was a really nice job.
[both] Thank you.
You nailed the flavors. Only thing was,
I would really want a bit more cranberry.
Also, I wanted to see more wreath.
I wanted to, like, be able to look at it
and understand it was a wreath.
-Okay.
-I'm not super into cranberry,
but I actually really liked it
in this ice cream,
and I liked the mousse inside of it.
And I've never seen
that done with ice cream.
-Oh, thank you.
-Oh, wow. Thank you.
Well, you guys banked six minutes,
44 seconds.
Not bad, considering
how long your first round was.
-We'll do whatever we have to do.
-I'm shocked.
I like the confidence.
Well, we have a decision to make, judges,
so let's go ahead,
-head to the judges' table to deliberate.
-Thank you.
-Now what do we do? Clean this mess up?
-[sighs]
All right.
All three confections have been tried,
but only two teams can make it
on to the final cake round, so,
who had your favorite confection?
I would have to say Alex and Maddie.
It was so different and unique.
The peanut butter...
They were right when they said it's like
an adult peanut butter and jelly, almost.
They worked with
totally untraditional flavors,
they worked so masterfully
with those flavors,
and their decoration was just beautiful.
It was just a home run for me.
It was kind of a surreal confection,
'cause it looked like a wreath,
but yeah, it tasted
like a PB and J sandwich.
Well, looks like we have
a clear winner of the second round.
Why were the other two teams
in your bottom two?
I knew this was gonna be a tough round.
I mean, Dustin and Tyler
gave us a really delicious cookie,
but it just didn't feel like
a Christmas wreath to me.
I was missing some greenery.
Something was missing
in their presentation.
Great flavors, great textures,
but we're just missing
that extra pop of color and detail
in making it look like a wreath.
I actually really loved
Dustin and Tyler's cookie,
and I actually could eat that
almost every day 'cause it's really light,
and it was really nice, again,
after the first round,
to have something a little bit lighter.
Darlene and Eleesa, once again,
bringing those amazing flavors.
They gave us a deconstructed wreath,
so all of our confections together
look like a wreath,
but when they stand alone,
it didn't look much like a wreath.
For me, Darlene and Eleesa completely
missed the mark, for me. It was a dome.
For me, it had no representation
of being a wreath.
But the flavors were amazing.
They're really good.
Darlene and Eleesa, I loved their flavors.
I liked the cranberry,
I liked the ginger cookie,
but the presentation
didn't look at all like a wreath to me.
Okay.
Well, judges, it seems like
a decision has been made.
I will go ahead and let our bakers know.
Okay, bakers,
can I have your attention, please?
So, our judges have made
their second decision.
And the team who really strung it together
to become the winners of this round are...
Maddie and Alex.
-Oh!
-[Darlene] Wow!
[Hunter] You had the winning confection,
so you are safe from elimination.
-And because it's the Christmas season...
-[Alex] I told you!
...you're getting to "wreath" the benefits.
Uh, we're gonna give you
two brand-new food processors!
-Oh! We need that! [laughs]
-Yes!
Thank you.
-[Maddie] Thank you.
-Whoo!
Congratulations, Alex and Maddie,
you are safe and
moving on to the final cake round.
Unfortunately, that means that
one of our two remaining teams
will not be moving forward.
And the team with our judges'
least favorite confection this round is...
Darlene and Eleesa.
Your time in the Sugar Rush Christmas
kitchen has run out.
Unfortunately, they wanted
to see more wreath element
incorporated into your confection.
-Incredible job. You guys did so good.
-Thank you.
-[applause]
-[Hunter] Thank you, bakers.
You know, I'm disappointed,
because I wanted to go to that last round.
I want y'all to see my daughter shine.
-Really.
-Aww.
Bye. Good luck, guys.
Good luck.
[Eleesa] I'm proud of my mom.
She taught me how to take a chance.
-I do that?
-Yeah.
[laughs]
Okay, Alex and Maddie, Tyler and Dustin,
congratulations, you have earned
your spots in the final cake round.
For our final round,
they say it takes a village.
In this case, we wanna see that village.
That's right,
we want a Christmas village cake.
Dustin and Tyler,
you banked 32 minutes and 56 seconds.
We're gonna add three hours to that,
giving you a total of three hours,
32 minutes and 56 seconds.
Alex and Maddie,
you banked 23 minutes and 38 seconds.
We're gonna add three hours to that,
giving you a total of three hours,
23 minutes and 38 seconds.
Dustin and Tyler, since you banked
the most time, you're gonna start first.
-Are you ready?
-We're ready.
All right, bakers.
-[bleeping]
-Your time starts in three, two, one, go!
All right.
This'll be
the longest nine minutes of my life.
Let's just do four tiers,
different size houses
all the way around it.
And we can do sugar cookie cut-outs.
People love our sugar cookie.
A true Wisconsin Christmas.
This village is gonna look
like Wisconsin in winter.
For the cake, we'll have four tiers.
The houses are frosted sugar cookies.
We will pipe some trees on those layers,
and on the top tier, pipe a Christmas tree
and do a gradient frosting effect
to kind of make it look like the sky.
Quintessential winter wonderland.
Just give it a little mash,
-then just let it cook down.
-[Tyler] Okay.
For our Christmas village cake,
we are going to make
our chocolate cake that has coffee in it,
fill it with raspberries,
vanilla buttercream,
and plenty of sugar cookies
around the outside.
We've got the mayo going in.
Super secret trick
for very moist chocolate cake.
Our secret ingredient
in our chocolate cake,
we throw in olive oil mayo.
The mayo makes the cake very moist
without changing the texture of it.
I think we need one more.
Looks like they're making
chocolate mayonnaise cake.
I'm very confused by chocolate mayonnaise.
What is this?
It is an old favorite of mine...
which sounds weird,
but if you think about it, mayonnaise is
just eggs and oil emulsified.
I feel like I've tried so many cakes,
but I've never heard of this.
-You'll love it.
-We're excited.
Adriano, what do you think?
I love it. My business had chocolate
mayonnaise cake in the shop.
-[Candace] Really?
-He likes Vegemite. Don't worry about him.
I love Vegemite.
-You love it?
-You do?
I actually love Vegemite.
-Oh, nice!
-You're the first American to say that.
We're on your tail.
We're comin' up... soon.
Hope you guys are ready.
All right, Maddie and Alex,
your time starts in three, two, one...
-[chimes]
-I want a mountainside.
-Done. Okay, so...
-How many tiers do you want?
We'll do four. Decorating the outside,
what'll we make houses out of?
Gingerbread houses.
For the design of our cake,
we want to do a snowy mountain.
We are going to stack four tiers of cake,
cover parts of it with coconut,
and then gingerbread houses
just wrapped around the entire cake.
For the trees, we use candied rosemary
and our snowman on top,
because every village needs a snowman.
Get the pans floured and stuff.
I'll start scaling.
-Okay.
-All right.
We're going to make a coconut rum cake
with a vanilla cream cheese buttercream
and gingerbread houses.
The flavor of the cake itself
is a nod to Christmas,
but when you add
the boozy rum syrup on top of it,
-it's Christmas.
-It's like the perfect touch.
Let's get the cakes in the oven
as soon as possible.
I got the pans working.
We need to treat this
like it's a wedding that we forgot.
We had someone call us
four hours before we're supposed
to be there with a wedding cake,
and we have nothing done.
[Alex] The spiced rum'll
be really good, Maddie.
Gotta make it boozy.
You gotta taste the rum.
[Maddie] The 12-inch pans
are goin' in the oven.
[Alex] Let me taste it, Mad. Hold on.
-Oh, she's good. Yep.
-Good? Okay.
Whew!
When it comes to this final cake round,
Adriano, what would you do?
I'd probably do more of an actual village.
I'd make it realistic, like people
actually living in the village.
-And they'd move.
-[Hunter] Aah, got...
[Adriano] Know what I mean?
I hope that's a gif
that they turn it into, you doing that.
-[Tyler] Gotta get the cakes in the oven.
-[Dustin] I know.
Got the raspberry filling going.
-We're gonna need this to start boiling.
-[Tyler] Okay. I got it.
Right. I'm workin' on the buttercream.
Our frosting is like
an American buttercream.
Instead of using all butter,
we do use part shortening.
It might sound weird,
just like the mayo in our cake,
but it makes it less sweet.
All right, bakers,
you have two hours left
before Santy Claus comes
and wants a bite of your cake.
[laughter]
I want you to take your time
and focus on detail.
-These babies will have so many patterns.
-I will start getting into logistics.
The cake itself is a very simple design,
so the detail work
that's going into those gingerbread houses
has to be perfect.
Oop.
Not today.
I want them to have
variety in height, variety in width.
I want them to have
all different kinds of texture.
Oh, shut up.
-[Maddie] I know, right? I'm just...
-[Alex] Shut up.
-Who do you think you are right now?
-I don't know!
Maddie jokes that she has little
raccoon hands that can do the little...
The little details that I can't do.
Cakes are done. We're doin' good, Mad.
We have to cut the roof line on 'em.
-Yep.
-Okay.
These cookies are going to be
the key to our village
and make it look like Christmas time.
How steep do you want the roof line?
[Dustin] How about a 90-degree angle?
And not one degree more.
No, I'll be over
with a protractor shortly.
Christmas in Wisconsin is pretty ideal.
[Dustin] With a few exceptions.
Beaver, our cat,
she doesn't really care for the holidays
other than all the treats that it brings.
-She loves to play with the ornaments.
-She sure does.
-[Maddie] They good?
-[Alex] Yep. You killed it.
[Maddie] When you rub it,
it makes all the details come out.
[Alex] Snowy mountain.
They'll make a bold statement.
Yeah. They're gonna be the centerpiece.
[Alex] Gentle. There we go.
All right, bakers,
one hour 30 minutes remaining.
Judges, what are our thoughts
on our teams' cakes so far?
We're seeing the makings of some cakes,
but I have yet to see
the villages really coming together.
I'm a little concerned
about their progress right now.
[Dustin] Candace is concerned. So am I.
-Time is going by very quickly.
-So are we.
We've gotta get this cake constructed.
We've gotta get
the royal icing on the cookie.
How are we going to get this done in time?
Just gonna hope that they're done.
[Alex] Smells so good.
For the trees, I'm going to let
my rosemary sit in some simple syrup,
and then I'm gonna tumble
all that rosemary into some sugar.
Mad, these are perfect.
They look like little snowy trees.
-Hey, Mad, candy corn? Nose?
-Yeah, for the nose.
And then for the hat, do you wanna grab
Pringles and a marshmallow?
Instead of a regular top hat,
our snowman is gonna have
a little cowboy hat
made with Pringles and then
a chocolate marshmallow on top.
Howdy, ma'am.
-[laughs]
-Yee-haw.
[both laughing]
[Dustin] It's the buttercream we like.
So, what I'm thinking...
We can't do the full top
because there's gonna be no time.
We could put a house on top of the cake.
[Dustin] I can see that we're not gonna
have enough time to do all four tiers.
We're gonna have to cut it down
to three tiers.
Just trying to pretend like this isn't
happening so I don't cry or anything.
I hate changing plans.
This is ridiculous.
It stinks, but we don't have anything
else we can do about it right now.
Insanity.
I'm just concerned with
how insanely heavy it's going to be.
I gotta put supports in here.
Okay, bakers,
you have one hour remaining.
One hour, Mad.
We gotta stack and decorate.
I love this.
It's gonna look perfectly imperfect.
[laughs]
[Alex] We want to incorporate
something that looks like snow,
and immediately, our minds go to coconut.
Shredded coconut.
The cake is squishing in on itself.
Hurry.
Okay, that's fine. Guide it.
Oh, whoa. Maddie, look at their cake.
That is similar.
It's comin' down to flavor.
All right, bakers,
you have 20 minutes left!
-[Tyler] How is this for the houses?
-[Dustin] That's good.
'Cause we just wanna keep 'em thin iced
so that they dry in time.
Otherwise,
the houses will be melting a little bit.
Now all of the detail work has to happen,
and that clock is ticking.
Oh, time goes so fast.
For the cookies,
we decided to go with royal icing.
It looks really clean.
We really don't have time right now
to provide all the details on the cookies
that we wanted.
Just flood it.
-'Cause then I'll have to pop 'em in.
-Okay.
So, we sacrifice
another part of the cake design.
[Dustin] We can put
little green wreaths on.
Okay.
We've gotta get the trees piped,
cookies on the cake,
-we've gotta get the snow drifts.
-We've got everything to do.
The frosting is just so warm that
this Christmas tree looks a little janky.
[Hunter] Bakers,
you have ten minutes remaining.
Mad, bring the cookies here,
I'll start putting them on.
-Yee-haw.
-[chuckles] Yee-haw is right.
We need to get
all the final details on this cake.
We're hopin' to blow their minds.
Oh, my God, I'm gonna have
glitter coming out of my nose for weeks.
Two minutes, bakers. Two minutes left.
[Dustin] Hopefully everything stays.
-All right, just gotta move her.
-Okay.
[Dustin] Holy Moses.
Thirty seconds, bakers.
There he is. My guy.
[all] Five, four, three, two, one!
All right!
Don't touch your cakes!
It's time to see some villages.
Judges, let's head on over.
Hello, Dustin. Hello, Tyler.
-[Tyler] Hello.
-Hi.
-Look at this.
-Hello.
Go ahead and walk us through your cake.
We have some Christmas trees,
a different motif on the house,
just kind of like a sloppy shingle.
The design modified heavily
throughout the three hours. [laughs]
-We're known for meticulous work.
-Mmm.
And this is not our meticulous work.
I couldn't even probably put a star on it.
I'm not good at anything like that.
I was expecting it
to be a little bit more "village-y."
Your design's obviously modified
to be a more simplistic sort of...
you know, a clean look.
But I'm really interested
to taste the flavors.
-There you go.
-[Tyler] Just fell.
That's a natural thing
with hillside homes.
-[Candace] Mudslide.
-[Tyler] Erosion.
I think what you put up is really lovely,
it's just very simple.
I would've loved to have seen
a bit more of the hustle and bustle
of, like, a holiday village scene.
As you said, you know, the cake didn't
fully come together as you had hoped,
but, uh, very excited
to taste your flavors.
Thank you.
Why don't you cut us four slices,
give us four cookies?
Adriano can have the one that fell,
and, uh...
Judges, we are heading
over to Alex and Maddie's station.
[all] Thank you.
Alex and Maddie.
-[both] Hello.
-[Candace] Hi, there.
Fantastic little village.
[Alex] The cake is a gingerbread village.
We made little trees and shrubs
out of candied rosemary.
The coconut is the snow.
We named our snowman Herschel.
He's our little cowboy snowman on top.
Herschel.
-Whole lotta yee-haw.
-Very country.
It does feel very artisanal
and hand-crafted
and, like, kind of like
an old European town...
-Yeah.
-...during the holidays.
And you've given each house
its own personality.
And that's so much fun.
It's definitely not super colorful,
but it doesn't lack color
because it has so much vibrancy to it.
I like the look of it, the gingerbread
and how you've carved it
and put powdered sugar all over it,
it has a great effect.
-It has a lot of character...
-[Candace] Mm-hm.
...and it almost reminds me
of an advent calendar.
-Mmm!
-You know what I mean?
-Yeah.
-With the little doors.
It's just so intricately designed.
-Thanks.
-Thanks very much.
It's not just design, it's also taste,
so cut us four slices, make sure
to include a cookie with each of those.
-Absolutely.
-We'll see you at the judges' table.
-You got it.
-Thank you.
Let's go ahead and start
with Alex and Maddie's cake.
[Alex] We've got a coconut and nutmeg cake
with a rum simple syrup,
a vanilla cream cheese buttercream
and shredded coconut,
and then a gingerbread cookie
on the outside.
Maddie and Alex,
I really enjoyed your cake.
Thought it was very moist,
and that rum syrup, like, packs a punch.
Coconut on the frosting,
and the little bit of spice
you have in there, it's delicious.
The design, from a distance
it doesn't look like a lot,
and then when you get up close, you see
the detail and artistic, old-school feel.
I love the snowman on top. You know,
it gives a bit of a presence to your cake.
I just would've loved to have seen
a bit more color and movement.
I agree. There could've been
a little bit more color, maybe,
but I loved the gingerbread cookie.
Seeing it up front, it's so...
-Thank you.
-...intricate and really beautiful.
And really like the...
the cream cheese frosting.
Helped make the rum not so intense.
[Candace] Maddie and Alex...
um... yum!
[laughs]
This cake is so buttery, and toasty,
and rummy, and coconutty, and delicious.
And your gingerbread cookie
is so crisp and full of spices.
My only note would be, I would've loved
a little fruit or something
to brighten everything up.
But... well done.
-Thank you.
-Thank you.
Okay, let's move on
to Dustin and Tyler's cake.
We have a coffee-infused chocolate cake
with mayo added in.
Some fresh raspberries
and vanilla buttercream.
An iced sugar cookie for you as well.
Dustin and Tyler,
I would've loved to have seen, of course,
a little bit more detail
in the decoration of your cake.
I was hoping for
a more sort of bustling Christmas scene.
It just felt a little sleepy
and not as festive as I would've liked
for a Christmas village cake.
Having said that,
this is a very moist chocolate cake.
That mayonnaise
is definitely doing its job.
And such a nice tartness
to the raspberries,
and overall, a really delicious cake.
It's a juicy chocolate cake, you know?
Obviously, that mayonnaise pays off.
The raspberry is a nice little zing,
a nice little hit.
I just didn't find any whole raspberries.
Design-wise, you obviously made do with
what you had in the end with the time,
and put up a clean, white cake
with those nice sugar cookie cut-outs.
The sugar cookie was delicious.
I think you did a good job.
Thank you.
So, I really didn't know that I was gonna
love mayonnaise in a chocolate cake,
but it actually tastes really good.
I did kind of want a bit more raspberry,
because I am a huge raspberry fan,
but your sugar cookie
was really, really good.
So it's a shame
that you guys ran out of time.
You guys did a really good job.
Thank you.
Thank you both for competing so hard
in the Sugar Rush Christmaskitchen.
You were both incredible,
but unfortunately, only one team is
going home with the $10,000 prize.
Abigail, we'll start with you.
Well... [sighs]
Maddie and Alex, I love the design of
your cake, the handwork on the cookies.
And Dustin and Tyler, I love chocolate
and raspberry, it's such an amazing combo,
and I now know that
mayonnaise tastes really good in cake,
so you guys did great.
I'd have to say
my favorite cake today is...
Maddie and Alex's.
[both] Thank you.
Maddie and Alex, that's one vote for you,
meaning if you get one more vote,
you're stuffing your stockings
with $10,000.
Oh! [laughing]
Candace, who had your favorite cake?
Dustin and Tyler, you gave us
an incredibly moist
chocolate mayonnaise cake,
and then you gave us a really
deliciously tender sugar cookie.
Your design was beautiful snowy white
with pops of color. Well done.
Maddie and Alex,
you gave us a snowy, wintery scene,
just really warm, spiced holiday flavors,
and of course, that addictively crisp
and delicious gingerbread cookie.
My favorite cake today belongs to...
Alex and Maddie.
[Hunter] Congratulations, Maddie and Alex!
You have just won $10,000
in the Sugar Rush Christmaskitchen.
[Alex] Oh, my God.
Adriano, how would you vote?
I would've voted Alex and Maddie as well.
Amazing. All right, let's go ahead
and congratulate our bakers.
[muffled talking and laughter]
I'm still super happy that
we got to do this, got to do it together.
I'm sure that
we'll keep growing our business.
They deserved that win.
And we plan to go visit their bakery
in a couple months
and see what they're using
our $10,000 for.
-Congrats!
-Thank you, Candace.
-Doesn't feel real.
-I cannot believe we won.
[Alex] I don't have
the words to describe it.
[Maddie] It's meaningful,
and it's just one of the best things.
I have nothing else to say except wow,
and I am unbelievably grateful.
-[Maddie] Christmas queens.
-I'll take my crown now.
Thank you for watching
this episode of Sugar Rush Christmas.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays.
the baking competition where
time is the most important ingredient.
Four teams of brilliant bakers
battle it out
for sugary success
over three rounds of competition,
-racing against each other and the clock.
-[chimes]
The faster they work, the better, because
any time saved in round one, cupcakes,
and round two, confections,
will be banked and added
to their third and final round,
cakes.
I'm your host, Hunter March,
and determining which of these teams
is putting $10,000
into their stocking this year
is our panel of judges.
She gave us the gift that keeps on giving
when she created
the world's first cupcake-only bakery.
It's Candace Nelson.
And he's the true meaning of Christmas.
It's celebrated Australian pastry chef
Adriano Zumbo.
We're deckin' the halls
in the Sugar Rushkitchen,
as our bakers are competing
in three rounds of
Christmas decor-themed challenges.
And finally, our guest judge,
actor and musician Abigail Breslin.
Candace and Adriano are inside
presenting the first two rounds
-of our Christmas decor-themed challenges...
-[chime]
...and that sound means
that competition has just begun.
Let's check it out.
Alex and Maddie,
feel free to mingle all the way.
Dustin, Tyler, happy holly-days.
It's not my best,
but I love you nonetheless.
-[laughter]
-Hi, judges.
-Hi, Hunter.
-Hello.
It's so festive. Merry Christmas to
Candace, Adriano, and Abigail Breslin.
Happy holidays.
Everyone looks so festive right now.
-You look like a Christmas angel.
-Thank you.
-And it's snowing.
-Indoors.
All right, Candace, what are
our bakers working on right now?
Well, Hunter, today our bakers
are focused on Christmas decor.
And what's more holiday
-than a Christmas ornament?
-Ooh!
So, our bakers are making cupcakes
inspired by a holiday ornament.
Are you a big
"ornament on the tree every year" person?
Oh, yes. And I like a themed tree.
-Do you do a themed tree?
-I'm single right now.
-There's not even a tree in the house.
-[laughter]
Ornament cupcake.
Our ornament can be a melted
chocolate dome with some marbling.
Everybody loves our hot chocolate.
-Why not do chocolate?
-Okay. Like a chocolate mug?
-What kind of ornament?
-Something from when I was a kid.
Let's do something with peppermint.
Brown butter will make it taste
-nice and warm.
-Okay.
My name is Alex,
I'm from Sherwood, Oregon,
and I am the owner and pastry chef
of the Hungry Hero Dessert Company.
My name is Maddie, and I'm a baker
at the Hungry Hero Dessert Company.
How long are you thinking for the round?
I wanna get this whole thing done
in an hour.
Okay.
[Alex] Thinking of the ornament challenge,
I have a flashback to childhood
and I think to myself,
"What can I make that is going to be
cute and not overly fussy?"
Candy canes.
We can do that thing
where we take the cookie cutter,
and let's melt down
some of the peppermints.
[Alex] For our ornament cupcakes,
we are making
a brown butter vanilla cupcake,
but we're gonna fold in
some crumbled peppermint candies,
make a brown butter vanilla buttercream
frosting with a little bit of peppermint,
and then we'll put our candy cane on top.
Gonna put them in
for probably, like, six minutes?
That should be good.
Brown butter is going in.
-[Maddie] It's like a mint sugar cookie.
-[Alex] Perfect.
All right, cupcakes goin' in.
-You wanna do a chocolate cupcake?
-Yeah.
-Okay.
-Then, maybe...
-we should fill it with mousse.
-Okay.
-And then...
-Oh, you know what?
It's Christmas, let's do some peppermint.
My name is Darlene.
I'm owner of the Best Goodie Bag
in Queens, New York.
My name's Eleesa.
I'm a owner of the Goodie Bag as well.
And I'm her daughter.
-[Eleesa] I'm starting on the cake.
-Okay.
I was a police officer
for close to 25 years.
Once I retired,
I went from being a police officer to...
-A baker.
-A baker! [laughs]
Okay.
[Eleesa] For our Christmas
ornament cupcakes,
we're gonna make a chocolate cupcake
with chocolate mousse,
and a peppermint whipped cream.
We also decided to do a hot chocolate,
which is something that we're known for.
[Darlene] How you doin'
over there with that stuff?
Using paramount crystals
so the chocolate won't burn.
We're gonna make
a chocolate cup and saucer
out of candy melts,
to make it look like an ornament.
-[Eleesa] I'm putting it in the oven.
-[Darlene] Okay.
-Darlene, how are you guys doin'?
-We're hangin' in there.
-[laughs]
-You got it, girl. Don't stress it.
-I see sweat.
-It's hot in here.
[laughing]
-[man 1] Let's do a spice cake.
-[man 2] Okay.
The ornament topper
-has to be one they can eat.
-Let's...
-I don't wanna use fondant.
-Right.
I'm Dustin. I'm from Madison, Wisconsin,
and I own D Bar Bakery.
This is Tyler, and he is my partner
in the bakery and in life.
[Tyler] We get asked the question
frequently
if we're twins or if we're brothers.
-We're not.
-He's very good-looking.
So they're saying I'm good-looking.
I'll take it.
[Tyler] Is that cupcake batter
comin' along?
[laughs] It will be.
[Dustin] For our Christmas
ornament cupcake,
we are gonna do a spice cake
filled with some pecans
and toasted coconut,
cream cheese frosting,
and a chocolate ornament
with red candy melts.
And make it look like
the shiny ornament that would hang
on an actual Christmas tree.
Did we put everything in there?
I'mma taste it.
Mostly because I'm really hungry.
[Dustin] The spice cake
and toasted pecans and coconut
just reminds us of the holidays.
-Very Wisconsin.
-It's just cozy.
[Dustin] Okay.
-[Tyler] Cupcakes in?
-Yep.
Perfect.
So, what I was thinking
was a green pistachio cupcake
with a nice strawberry buttercream,
and we'll cover it with a dome
that's nice and marbled.
My name is Laura. I'm from San Diego,
and I am a home-based baker.
My name is Eddie,
and she's my ride-or-die...
-Aww!
-...in life.
-[chuckles]
-And I'm here to help out my partner.
What do you want me to start with?
-Start with the strawberry purée.
-Okay.
-And I'll start on the cupcake batter.
-Okay.
-All right. Sounds good.
-Let's do this.
Holidays in our house are really festive.
I like to go all out.
[Eddie] How much time
on this round?
-Let's do at least 45 minutes? An hour?
-[Eddie] 45 minutes?
I want the flavor of the cupcakes
to be really bold,
so we're making a pistachio cupcake,
strawberry Swiss meringue buttercream,
with a marbled chocolate dome ornament
covering the entire cupcake.
[Laura] Looks really good like that.
Good things come to those who wait.
[laughs]
We're making our ornaments
out of, uh, white chocolate.
I gotta put some food coloring
to give this cool marble look to it.
[Eddie] Say a prayer.
Hopefully this works.
I've been prayin'.
[Eddie] And then dip 'em,
let 'em cool, pop 'em out.
Hopefully they don't break.
-Boom. Out of chaos... somethin'.
-[Laura] Yeah! Okay.
-How's it goin' over there?
-[Laura groans]
-Good?
-Time is running out already.
I feel more relaxed. Thank you, guys.
[Laura] Okay.
Cupcakes are finally going into the oven.
-[Alex] How are they lookin'?
-[Maddie] They're perfect.
Adriano, are you a big, uh...
-"ornaments on the tree" guy?
-Uh, not really, no.
-See pictures of it and I'm happy.
-This is the holiday episode.
-[Abigail] Seriously!
-Bring the spirit. Abigail, save us.
-Your Christmas traditions.
-Well, I'm a very big, uh, believer
-on having a real tree.
-Thank you.
I have sentimental meaning to,
like, every ornament,
-so, you know...
-Aww, that's sweet.
-Come on.
-[Maddie] I know some of 'em will break.
[Alex] Don't have that attitude.
I'm just nervous 'cause
they're, like, a little bit thin. Okay.
[Alex] I'm gonna check these cupcakes
real quick.
They are still really soft.
[Maddie] Oh, my God.
They do not look like our normal cupcake!
Sour cream, canola,
we got everything in there?
-Sour cream. I didn't do that. I didn't.
-Start over quick.
-Oh, my God! I'm so sorry, Alex.
-Start over quick. Hurry.
It's gonna be all right.
It's not a big deal.
We'll start over and get this done.
-[Maddie] All right.
-We got it.
All right, Mad, these are goin' in.
Two and a half hours, bakers.
Two and a half hours remaining.
[Dustin] We're just a skosh
behind schedule.
The buttercream's almost done,
and we'll be almost done.
[laughs]
I feel like the cupcake needed some more
fresh ingredients, so I figured
I could get this banana, slice it,
and get a strawberry and slice that,
and make a Santa-looking hat
and throw that
on top of the buttercream.
[Laura gasps] Those look really nice.
Beautiful.
-I hope they don't beat us.
-Don't look over there. Look over here.
I'm putting everything together and
makin' it look like a hot chocolate mug
while she's makin' a chocolate mousse.
Let me see.
[Darlene] Oh! Mm-mm.
It need more sugar.
-[Eleesa] Why?
-[Darlene] It's not sweet enough.
-Well, what do you normally use?
-Sugar.
-Sugar? And they don't have sugar?
-[gasps]
Leave me alone. Finish what you doing.
-I sometimes have to wrangle her.
-[laughs]
Put the sugar in here.
She keeps tryin' to tell me what to do.
Maybe more heavy cream
or something?
Mm-mm. You can't keep whippin' it,
it's gonna turn to butter.
-I am her mother. I know what I'm doing.
-Okay.
[Darlene] Taste this.
-Say, "It's yummy."
-Mmm.
No, it's good. It's, like, really good.
[humming] That should be good.
The frosting will have
Kringle Cream liqueur,
-which is like boozy butter.
-An almond Danish.
Yeah. It's real good.
Do you think we can recreate these
for the annual Christmas party?
I think our friends would be a little
surprised we went that boozy for 'em.
-[Dustin] What you got goin' on?
-[Tyler] I got goin' the ornament toppers.
[Tyler] I need to make sure
that I'm brushing that chocolate evenly
so when we go to pop them out,
there's not any breaking on the edges.
If these ornament toppers don't come out,
-I might end up on someone's naughty list.
-Mm-hm.
We're doin' fine on time.
Those are comin' together nicely.
[Laura] So, now I need
the little cinnamon hats inside.
A little bit of pistachios.
-Hit the buzzer, hit the buzzer!
-All right. Go for it. Do it. You do it.
-[chimes]
-[bells jingle]
-Oh, man.
-First bakers done.
Let's go check out
Laura and Eddie's ornament cupcake.
Look what they did,
the little ornaments.
-Those are really cute.
-[gasps] Precious!
Laura, Eddie, first ones done.
Why don't you pass out your cupcakes
and tell us what your flavors are?
We've got a pistachio cupcake
with strawberry buttercream.
A little bit of almond extract,
topped with a little surprise.
So, if you lift your ornament,
you'll get a surprise inside.
-[Candace] A Santa hat!
-A Santa hat.
-[Candace] Oh! A strawberry Santa hat.
-[Abigail laughs]
I like your idea. It's a beautiful cupcake
with a little Santa hat underneath.
The textures of your cupcake
are delicious.
I mean, the cupcake's nice and moist.
Only thing for me is that almond extract.
I can't get pistachio.
All that extract that's in there
overpowers it.
I love the beautiful marbling
you guys did on your holiday ornament
that was also edible.
That was really just attacking
the challenge, so well done on that.
The texture of your buttercream
was really silky and lovely,
but my one note would be that
the strawberry and banana
weren't reading that "holiday" to me.
-Okay.
-[Hunter] Okay. Abigail?
I like the taste of almond, but, um...
my only thing is
that I'm a super-messy eater,
and it was
a little bit hard for me to eat.
But I really liked it. I thought it was
pretty, and I love strawberry.
-Thank you.
-Thank you.
Ooh, these are gonna be so yummy.
It's just difficult to fill them.
[Tyler] Those look good.
-[Dustin] Let's do it.
-[Tyler] All right. Ready?
-[chimes]
-[bells jingle]
[Hunter] Oh. All right.
Dustin and Tyler just finished.
We'll be there in one second.
Bakers, you did an incredible job.
You were the first ones done.
-How do you feel on time right now?
-It's a little tight, but we can do it.
Adriano, remind them
what they have to do in round two.
For round two, we wanna see
a wreath-inspired confection.
-Sounds good. We'll make it happen.
-[Hunter] Thanks.
And judges, we are turning
right around to Dustin and Tyler.
Maybe we do something really traditional.
A Mexican tradition, which is a... a tamal,
but instead we're gonna just
create it into a holiday wreath.
You're makin' it easy for us, in terms
of movin' around the kitchen right now.
-We do what we can.
-Pass out your cupcakes,
-tell us what you made?
-Sure.
So, we have a spice cake
that is filled with pecans and coconut,
cooked down in some brown sugar.
And Kringle Cream liqueur,
which is like buttery cinnamon liqueur,
topped with a cream cheese frosting
and an ornament for you.
That's so good.
-I'm not a judge, but... yummy.
-[laughter]
We'll take what we can get.
I love the direction you took
with your ornament, making it edible.
It just feels like
Christmas holiday to me.
-Thank you.
-Thank you.
I love the cake. Moist and delicious.
I like the Kringle Cream in the middle.
Only thing I'm gonna complain is
I found the frosting a bit grainy.
-[both] Okay.
-I love this.
I would eat this whole thing right now.
And I... I love Kringle Cream now.
-[Dustin] Yes!
-Perfect.
-Really turned me into a fan.
-Made some new...
If you make it past the elimination,
we wanna to see confections
inspired by holiday wreaths.
-Excellent. Thank you.
-Okay.
We have two more cupcakes to try, you have
an hour 40 for your confection.
-Good luck, bakers.
-[all] Thank you.
-Just modern circle wreath?
-[Dustin] Yep.
We'll do it like a fruit pizza style.
If you wanna start with the fruit
-and chop up the rosemary...
-Chop fruit...
-Rosemary...
-...while I get the cookie batter going.
Come on, Eleesa. We can do it.
-We're almost there.
-Aah!
-[Darlene] Need more peppermint?
-[Eleesa] No.
Aah! This one cracked.
These ones are not set.
The red chocolate cups
are taking forever to set.
[sighs]
But sometimes,
-slow and steady wins the race.
-Mm-hm.
[Darlene] Are they comin' out better?
[Eleesa] No. [laughs]
-Chilled and ready for decorating.
-Okay.
The cupcakes come out of the oven
and they're perfect.
-Exactly as we want them.
-They smell amazing.
They smell like a warm,
pepperminty sugar cookie.
[Alex] Well, if that's not
the cutest thing I've ever seen.
Guys, we might have
another set of cupcakes to try.
-You ready? Go!
-Ready?
-[chimes]
-[bells jingle]
Maddie and Alex are done.
Judges, let's head on down.
[Darlene] Oh, my God.
[sighs]
[Hunter] Alex, Maddie.
-[Alex] Hello.
-Pass out your cupcake.
-All right.
-Tell us what you made.
We've got a vanilla, peppermint crunch
and brown butter cupcake.
-Mmm!
-And we made you guys an ornament
like something I would do
from my childhood.
-Super cute, right? Yep.
-Super cute!
-[Hunter] That is...
-[Alex] It's nice you can't eat it all,
so when you're done,
you have a snack for afterwards.
The frosting is a cream cheese buttercream
with a little bit of brown butter,
a smidge of peppermint,
and then more peppermint candy
rolled on the outside.
I really, really love this ornament.
I think it's so cute. And I love
that you used, like, an actual string.
I really like the frosting a lot.
-It's a little nutty. Is there something...
-Brown butter.
-The brown butter.
-Oh. Okay.
We did that to cut through the frosting
so that it didn't taste like toothpaste.
Great presentation, I like the look of it.
It's nice and pastel-y and subtle.
Like that beautiful candy cane on top.
Love the brown butter cake.
It's so ingenious how you melted down
peppermint candies into this shape,
and I also love anything brown butter.
Only note I would say is that
with peppermint,
-it can tend to go really sweet...
-Mm-hm.
...and your frosting didn't do much
to temper that sweetness.
-But otherwise a wonderful cupcake. Yeah.
-Thank you very much.
How do you feel about time?
Um, I'd like to get started.
-[laughter]
-Well, get goin', bakers.
-See you soon. Thank you.
-Thank you.
-What are you thinking?
-I'm thinking we need to do something
different than peppermint,
so let's go chocolate caramel-y salty.
-Sound good?
-[Maddie] Peanut butter?
-With chocolate, nostalgia.
-A bit of peanut butter'd be good.
-I need the cupcakes so I can pipe 'em.
-Okay, here.
[Hunter] We still have one more cupcake
to try. Darlene and Eleesa.
We're an hour and a half in,
and they're still not done.
I'll be interested to hear
what dragged them down.
Hurry up.
[Darlene] Let me taste this hot chocolate.
Mm!
[Hunter] Oh, the hot chocolate accessory.
[Adriano] They have to know
it doesn't count.
It's nice,
but doesn't give you any points.
-[Darlene] You ready?
-Guys, time's runnin' out! Let's go!
-Okay!
-[Hunter] All right!
-Hi, guys!
-Final team buzzed in.
-Judges, let's go to this final cupcake.
-Yay!
Darlene, Eleesa, final ones done.
-Aah! Final.
-We're here, though.
Pass your cupcake,
tell us what you made.
-Hurry, so you can get to your confection.
-Okay.
We made chocolate cupcakes
filled with chocolate mousse
and a peppermint whipped cream.
At our shop,
people love our hot chocolate,
so we wanted to have you
taste some of our hot chocolate
as well as our hot chocolate cupcake.
-It's a very yummy hot chocolate.
-[Candace laughs] Yeah.
Oh, my gosh.
I can see why you guys are known
for your hot chocolate.
I mean, this is like a chocolaty,
creamy, dreamy experience.
It's just light and luscious
and packed with chocolaty flavor.
-Thank you.
-I love that cake, it's moist.
There was just enough peppermint,
the surprise of chocolate mousse
in the middle gave a good balance,
and with that whipped cream,
it was really pleasant, you know.
-[both] Thank you.
-It was just like eating air, really,
-Chocolaty, with a slight minty taste.
-Wow.
I really, really liked the chocolate cake.
I felt like that was really good,
'cause I love chocolate, and
it's really, like, deep, dark chocolate.
The hot chocolate, though,
I'm gonna definitely finish.
Speaking of that hot chocolate,
how do you make it so good?
It's a secret.
-[Hunter] A secret?
-Yes.
All right.
We won't take too much of your time.
-Good luck. An hour 13 remaining.
-[both] Thank you.
[Hunter] And judges,
we have a decision to make.
How about, like, a deconstructed wreath?
-Somethin' like that?
-[Darlene] Okay. Yes.
All right, judges, we have tried
all four cupcakes, but unfortunately,
only three teams can make it
on to the confection round.
So, before we make an elimination,
let's talk about who had
our top two favorite cupcakes.
Dustin and Tyler gave us a really fun,
punchy ornament, really cheerful,
and then the flavors of their cake
were so satisfying.
That Kringle Cream center,
I thought it was great texture.
Great presentation, beautiful colors.
Really fitted with the Christmas theme.
I loved the cinnamon-y spiciness of it.
And then I really liked
Darlene and Eleesa's,
but it was disappointing that it didn't
have that ornament feeling to me.
I have to agree. They definitely took some
creative license with the ornament theme,
but what they actually presented to us
was beautiful, and was it ever tasty.
That chocolate flavor, and then to have
that filling with the chocolate mousse,
and then on top of it,
that lightly-scented whipped cream.
It was just such an experience.
I thought it was well-balanced. I think
it had great flavor, great texture.
That little hot chocolate,
even though I said doesn't count,
-it did go well with it in the end.
-[laughs]
Now it begs the question,
why were the other two teams
your least favorite cupcakes?
With Laura and Eddie,
it didn't feel like Christmas to me,
with the pistachio and the strawberry.
Yeah. But altogether,
with all that almond extract,
I didn't feel one bit of the pistachio.
[Candace] I was a little confused by that
strawberry-banana Santa hat.
Didn't think it was as sophisticated
as the rest of their presentation.
I really, really liked the presentation
with Maddie and Alex.
I just really liked the fact that
they actually used an ornament.
-[Candace] Mm.
-I felt like that was the challenge.
The cupcake was so buttery and tender,
but the frosting was too sweet.
You know, I think, for me,
it was quite a simple design.
I just found their icing a bit sweet,
and unfortunately it was a tough round.
Okay, judges,
sounds like you have made a decision.
I will go and let our bakers know.
All right, bakers,
can I have your attention, please?
Our judges have made their first decision.
The team with
our judges' favorite cupcake is...
Darlene and Eleesa.
-You're lying.
-[Hunter] Very well done!
-[Darlene] Wow!
-Sometimes time does pay off.
You guys did an incredible job.
You guys are safe from elimination,
and because it's the Christmas season,
we're gonna send you home
with two brand-new stand mixers.
-Oh! Thank you!
-Thank you.
But you have to make us
that hot chocolate all day every day,
-and it's gotta be free.
-I promise.
-[Hunter] Get back to work. Go ahead.
-Thank you.
So, unfortunately,
one team has to go home.
And I'm sorry to say this,
but the team
with our judges'
least favorite cupcake this round is...
Laura and Eddie.
-[laughs]
-Oh, man.
We're so sorry.
Today was such a stiff competition.
You did incredibly well,
but your time in the Sugar Rushkitchen
has run out.
-All right, Thank you.
-Thank you. Good luck, everyone.
-Good luck!
-Have fun! [laughs]
I'm bummed,
but it's been a whole rainbow of emotions.
-[Hunter] You did great.
-[both] Thank you.
[Eddie] It was such an awesome experience,
just to show our kids that...
find something you love and keep doing it.
I'm proud to have the opportunity
to let Laura shine.
It was fun. It was a lot of fun.
[Hunter] Alex and Maddie, Dustin
and Tyler, you are safe from elimination.
You're now on the confection round.
You have 55 minutes remaining.
Get back to work.
Let's do it.
How about a deconstructed wreath?
I don't wanna be like everybody else.
[Eleesa] I don't wanna do a wreath
on each individual plate,
so I'm thinkin' a deconstructed wreath.
Everybody loves our ice cream.
-Okay.
-So let's do a ice-cream...
-[Eleesa] Oh, what about ginger?
-Oh! Yes, yes.
For our wreath confection,
we plan on making a ricotta,
candied orange, cranberry,
and pistachio ice cream
with cranberry mousse
on top of a ginger cookie.
[Eleesa] 350 is fine?
-[Darlene] Yeah.
-Okay.
[Tyler] All right, so...
[Dustin] Wreath.
Let's do, like, a fruit pizza style.
Fruit pizza is something we have
in the summers in Wisconsin.
Usually it's sugar cookie dough,
but we are going to make a lemon rosemary
shortbread cookie for the wreath,
with some vanilla cream cheese frosting,
and then we'll just shingle
some different fruit around the top.
I think wreaths scream the holidays.
And we usually have one that is
extremely oversized for our front door,
which makes the door hard to close,
but you gotta have that holiday cheer.
-[Tyler] Goin' in?
-[Dustin] Yep.
Mad, I'm thinking
we can get this done in about an hour.
Get all that ground up really well, like...
-Really well.
-Yeah.
Immediately, when I hear "wreath,"
I'm thinking of something
that makes you feel nostalgic.
When you bite it, you'll feel like
a kid on Christmas morning.
All right, Mad,
I'm gettin' started on the shells.
[Maddie] Okay.
For our wreath confection,
we are making a tart
with a peanut butter mousse
that we're gonna tint green,
salted caramel, and a chocolate ganache,
and then butter cracker,
graham cracker, brown butter crust.
-It's like grown up PB and J.
-Yeah.
[Alex] I'll start getting
the tart shells in the oven.
I feel like we got our stride now.
[Darlene] I'll make the ice cream.
I'll whip this up
and put it in that chill blaster.
-Blast chiller.
-Oh!
[both laugh]
We don't have any time to waste,
'cause the ice cream has to set.
-[Eleesa] Enough? Okay.
-[Darlene] Fine. More than enough.
I'mma put that stuff in here right now.
[Darlene] We already lost a lot of time
in the first round,
so it's gonna be a challenge.
I'mma put this whole thing
in the blast chiller right now.
Just want this to be smooth.
I don't know if it is yet.
[Dustin] For our wreath confection,
we're making cream cheese frosting again,
but the frosting was grainy,
so we just have to sift
all the powdered sugar.
-No problem, we've got all day.
-[chuckles]
Those getting golden brown at all
-around the edges yet?
-Oh.
[Dustin] Yeah.
They need a little bit more time.
[Alex] Maddie, caramel is almost done.
What are you workin' on?
I'm gonna start making
the peanut butter mousse.
-How are the tarts going?
-Tart shells are out of the oven.
We've got the caramel ready,
the ganache is nice and thin.
We're gonna give these
a good ten minutes in the blast chiller.
All right, this mousse is good.
Let's get some green in it.
[Alex] To make our confection
look like a wreath,
we're gonna tint
our peanut butter mousse a green color
and then pipe it on top.
-[laughs]
-"Time to dye"!
[both laughing]
[Eleesa] It's startin' to whip.
Is this fine, or should I stop it?
-Stop it. Let me see? Yeah, stop it.
-Okay.
[Darlene] 'Cause I'm gonna put
the cranberries in there.
For our wreath confection,
we'll have something festive and pretty,
so we plan on making a cranberry mousse.
Get the ice cream.
We want the judges to love our flavors...
Scoop.
...so we're gonna layer ice cream
with the mousse and then the cookie.
Gives it a nice little crunch.
All right.
Gotta hurry up.
Oh! That's yummy.
[Tyler] The cookies look great.
They are cooked perfectly.
Now we have to make sure
that they look like wreaths.
[Dustin] I kind of like them without it,
but too late, I've already put 'em in.
As soon as I put the kiwi on,
I realized that it's not gonna look great.
It's better without. It looks neater.
And it's not really the green...
-That we want.
-Yeah.
There's not gonna be green, I guess.
So, hopefully
the judges can tell that it's a wreath.
[Tyler] There you go.
-[Dustin] A blizzard! We're good to go.
-[Tyler] Ready?
Looks like they're about to...
Dustin and Tyler!
-[bells jingle]
-Dustin and Tyler buzzed in first
with their confection.
-Judges, let's go try it.
-[Alex sighs]
-Those guys.
-Them guys.
[Hunter] Dustin and Tyler.
That is so cute.
Why don't you pass them out
and tell us what you made?
[Dustin] All right.
So, this is our signature cookie.
It is a shortbread cookie
with lemon and rosemary,
shaped into a wreath,
so it's a little sweet, a little savory,
and then it's our take on fruit pizza.
I love this. Like, I could
eat the rest of this right now.
[laughter]
It looks it'll be really sweet,
but it's really light.
The only thing that I'd say is
I wish there was some green
to make it a little bit more wreath-y.
-[Dustin] Sure.
-[Adriano] You nailed the flavor.
I think they're really tasty flavors,
they're really well-balanced.
And it's so crumbly and short,
you know, which is what you want.
Well, I can see why
this is your signature cookie.
It's got such a great buttery texture,
and I love the rosemary,
it adds that savory element.
I would've loved to have seen you
push the decorations just a bit more,
but otherwise, nice job.
All right. Well, thank you, bakers.
-[all] Thank you.
-[Tyler] Thanks a lot.
[Hunter] judges, it looks like
no one else is quite ready yet,
so let's head back to the judges' table.
[Alex] Hello.
-[Maddie] Okay.
-[Alex] It's gorgeous. Okay.
That one's broken. So, she gone.
Okay. At least we did extra.
[Alex] Start garnishing with raspberries.
Let it snow.
-[Maddie] Just go hit it.
-[grunts]
-[bells jingle]
-Another team is done. Alex and Maddie.
-[Maddie] Yay!
-[Alex] I cannot believe we got that done.
We're always last.
[Hunter] Okay, Alex and Maddie,
second ones done.
Tell us about your confection
and your wreath design.
All right, well,
we brought the brown butter back.
-[laughter]
-We did a brown butter,
graham cracker, and butter cracker crust
with a little bit of brown sugar,
a salty caramel for in the center,
a chocolate ganache,
and peanut butter cream cheese mousse
with fresh raspberries, mint,
and then we made little bows
out of licorice candy.
And then we added gold leaf and
some sparkle because it's the holidays.
-[laughs]
-For us, a little bit of a adult PB and J.
Whoa! That is good.
-[laughs]
-Yes!
I love you brought the greenery here
with the wreath.
Really tender graham cracker crust
with the richness
of that chocolate ganache,
and then the freshness of the raspberry
and the beautiful piping on top.
-I think you guys just nailed it.
-Yes!
Merry Christmas!
-Thank you!
-Thank you! You too.
Yeah, you guys
smashed that one out of the park.
-Oh, God.
-It's super delicious.
-Like, the flavors...
-Thank God.
You picked great flavors,
and you executed it really well.
But also you nailed the presentation.
-It looks like a wreath.
-[Alex] Thanks.
Yeah, it looks gorgeous.
I didn't even wanna touch it at first.
-[laughs]
-But the crust is delicious,
and I think I'm just gonna compare
every PB and J to this.
We've ruined her for life.
-Thanks for your delicious confection.
-[both] Thank you.
Judges, we have a bit of time
until our last team is done.
Let's head back to the judges' table.
I'm gonna go throw up now.
There's a trash can right there! [laughs]
No surprise,
Darlene and Eleesa have not
finished their confection yet.
But if it's like round one,
we have
a very delicious confection to try.
[Darlene] Mmm.
-[Eleesa] Want me to put the crust on?
-You could drizzle the cranberry on top.
[Eleesa] That one is not ready.
It's too soft.
I don't know
what you want me to do. It didn't set.
One of the ice cream is not setting,
and we really don't have time
to keep it in the blast chiller.
Are we the last ones again?
-Oh, my goodness. Oh. [laughs]
-[Eleesa] Yes! Where have you been?
I don't even know we're the last.
I look up and I'm like,
"Why are these people looking at us?"
These things gotta go in.
[Eleesa] No, but it's too much.
-[Darlene] Is that everything?
-Yeah.
-All right, here we go.
-[bells jingle]
-Darlene and Eleesa, finally done.
-[Darlene] Oh, Lord!
Judges, let's head on down
and try our final confection.
-Finally. Yet again, last ones done.
-Oh, my God.
Is that whole thing the wreath there?
-The whole five of 'em?
-[both] Yes.
-Six of 'em?
-A deconstructed wreath.
-[Abigail] That's cute. I like that.
-[Adriano] Got it.
Deconstructed wreath. Right.
[Hunter] All right,
walk us through your confection.
I love ginger,
so on the bottom we did a ginger cookie
with some candied gingers inside.
The ice cream on top is ricotta,
pistachio, orange, cranberry ice cream,
and in the middle is
a cranberry mousse-y whipped cream.
It's Christmas season, so we put
a little bit of cranberry sauce on top
just to give it a little bit more flavor.
Darlene and Eleesa, I always feel like,
"What's goin' on in there?"
-"Like, what's happening?"
-[laughing]
I'm worried for you two,
and then you always pull it out
with the most incredible flavors.
I love your candied ginger cookie,
love your delicious mousse-y ice cream
with cranberries.
I think you guys are
really masters of flavor.
A little greenery would've been nice,
but as you did in the first round,
you took some creative license,
and I think that was a really nice job.
[both] Thank you.
You nailed the flavors. Only thing was,
I would really want a bit more cranberry.
Also, I wanted to see more wreath.
I wanted to, like, be able to look at it
and understand it was a wreath.
-Okay.
-I'm not super into cranberry,
but I actually really liked it
in this ice cream,
and I liked the mousse inside of it.
And I've never seen
that done with ice cream.
-Oh, thank you.
-Oh, wow. Thank you.
Well, you guys banked six minutes,
44 seconds.
Not bad, considering
how long your first round was.
-We'll do whatever we have to do.
-I'm shocked.
I like the confidence.
Well, we have a decision to make, judges,
so let's go ahead,
-head to the judges' table to deliberate.
-Thank you.
-Now what do we do? Clean this mess up?
-[sighs]
All right.
All three confections have been tried,
but only two teams can make it
on to the final cake round, so,
who had your favorite confection?
I would have to say Alex and Maddie.
It was so different and unique.
The peanut butter...
They were right when they said it's like
an adult peanut butter and jelly, almost.
They worked with
totally untraditional flavors,
they worked so masterfully
with those flavors,
and their decoration was just beautiful.
It was just a home run for me.
It was kind of a surreal confection,
'cause it looked like a wreath,
but yeah, it tasted
like a PB and J sandwich.
Well, looks like we have
a clear winner of the second round.
Why were the other two teams
in your bottom two?
I knew this was gonna be a tough round.
I mean, Dustin and Tyler
gave us a really delicious cookie,
but it just didn't feel like
a Christmas wreath to me.
I was missing some greenery.
Something was missing
in their presentation.
Great flavors, great textures,
but we're just missing
that extra pop of color and detail
in making it look like a wreath.
I actually really loved
Dustin and Tyler's cookie,
and I actually could eat that
almost every day 'cause it's really light,
and it was really nice, again,
after the first round,
to have something a little bit lighter.
Darlene and Eleesa, once again,
bringing those amazing flavors.
They gave us a deconstructed wreath,
so all of our confections together
look like a wreath,
but when they stand alone,
it didn't look much like a wreath.
For me, Darlene and Eleesa completely
missed the mark, for me. It was a dome.
For me, it had no representation
of being a wreath.
But the flavors were amazing.
They're really good.
Darlene and Eleesa, I loved their flavors.
I liked the cranberry,
I liked the ginger cookie,
but the presentation
didn't look at all like a wreath to me.
Okay.
Well, judges, it seems like
a decision has been made.
I will go ahead and let our bakers know.
Okay, bakers,
can I have your attention, please?
So, our judges have made
their second decision.
And the team who really strung it together
to become the winners of this round are...
Maddie and Alex.
-Oh!
-[Darlene] Wow!
[Hunter] You had the winning confection,
so you are safe from elimination.
-And because it's the Christmas season...
-[Alex] I told you!
...you're getting to "wreath" the benefits.
Uh, we're gonna give you
two brand-new food processors!
-Oh! We need that! [laughs]
-Yes!
Thank you.
-[Maddie] Thank you.
-Whoo!
Congratulations, Alex and Maddie,
you are safe and
moving on to the final cake round.
Unfortunately, that means that
one of our two remaining teams
will not be moving forward.
And the team with our judges'
least favorite confection this round is...
Darlene and Eleesa.
Your time in the Sugar Rush Christmas
kitchen has run out.
Unfortunately, they wanted
to see more wreath element
incorporated into your confection.
-Incredible job. You guys did so good.
-Thank you.
-[applause]
-[Hunter] Thank you, bakers.
You know, I'm disappointed,
because I wanted to go to that last round.
I want y'all to see my daughter shine.
-Really.
-Aww.
Bye. Good luck, guys.
Good luck.
[Eleesa] I'm proud of my mom.
She taught me how to take a chance.
-I do that?
-Yeah.
[laughs]
Okay, Alex and Maddie, Tyler and Dustin,
congratulations, you have earned
your spots in the final cake round.
For our final round,
they say it takes a village.
In this case, we wanna see that village.
That's right,
we want a Christmas village cake.
Dustin and Tyler,
you banked 32 minutes and 56 seconds.
We're gonna add three hours to that,
giving you a total of three hours,
32 minutes and 56 seconds.
Alex and Maddie,
you banked 23 minutes and 38 seconds.
We're gonna add three hours to that,
giving you a total of three hours,
23 minutes and 38 seconds.
Dustin and Tyler, since you banked
the most time, you're gonna start first.
-Are you ready?
-We're ready.
All right, bakers.
-[bleeping]
-Your time starts in three, two, one, go!
All right.
This'll be
the longest nine minutes of my life.
Let's just do four tiers,
different size houses
all the way around it.
And we can do sugar cookie cut-outs.
People love our sugar cookie.
A true Wisconsin Christmas.
This village is gonna look
like Wisconsin in winter.
For the cake, we'll have four tiers.
The houses are frosted sugar cookies.
We will pipe some trees on those layers,
and on the top tier, pipe a Christmas tree
and do a gradient frosting effect
to kind of make it look like the sky.
Quintessential winter wonderland.
Just give it a little mash,
-then just let it cook down.
-[Tyler] Okay.
For our Christmas village cake,
we are going to make
our chocolate cake that has coffee in it,
fill it with raspberries,
vanilla buttercream,
and plenty of sugar cookies
around the outside.
We've got the mayo going in.
Super secret trick
for very moist chocolate cake.
Our secret ingredient
in our chocolate cake,
we throw in olive oil mayo.
The mayo makes the cake very moist
without changing the texture of it.
I think we need one more.
Looks like they're making
chocolate mayonnaise cake.
I'm very confused by chocolate mayonnaise.
What is this?
It is an old favorite of mine...
which sounds weird,
but if you think about it, mayonnaise is
just eggs and oil emulsified.
I feel like I've tried so many cakes,
but I've never heard of this.
-You'll love it.
-We're excited.
Adriano, what do you think?
I love it. My business had chocolate
mayonnaise cake in the shop.
-[Candace] Really?
-He likes Vegemite. Don't worry about him.
I love Vegemite.
-You love it?
-You do?
I actually love Vegemite.
-Oh, nice!
-You're the first American to say that.
We're on your tail.
We're comin' up... soon.
Hope you guys are ready.
All right, Maddie and Alex,
your time starts in three, two, one...
-[chimes]
-I want a mountainside.
-Done. Okay, so...
-How many tiers do you want?
We'll do four. Decorating the outside,
what'll we make houses out of?
Gingerbread houses.
For the design of our cake,
we want to do a snowy mountain.
We are going to stack four tiers of cake,
cover parts of it with coconut,
and then gingerbread houses
just wrapped around the entire cake.
For the trees, we use candied rosemary
and our snowman on top,
because every village needs a snowman.
Get the pans floured and stuff.
I'll start scaling.
-Okay.
-All right.
We're going to make a coconut rum cake
with a vanilla cream cheese buttercream
and gingerbread houses.
The flavor of the cake itself
is a nod to Christmas,
but when you add
the boozy rum syrup on top of it,
-it's Christmas.
-It's like the perfect touch.
Let's get the cakes in the oven
as soon as possible.
I got the pans working.
We need to treat this
like it's a wedding that we forgot.
We had someone call us
four hours before we're supposed
to be there with a wedding cake,
and we have nothing done.
[Alex] The spiced rum'll
be really good, Maddie.
Gotta make it boozy.
You gotta taste the rum.
[Maddie] The 12-inch pans
are goin' in the oven.
[Alex] Let me taste it, Mad. Hold on.
-Oh, she's good. Yep.
-Good? Okay.
Whew!
When it comes to this final cake round,
Adriano, what would you do?
I'd probably do more of an actual village.
I'd make it realistic, like people
actually living in the village.
-And they'd move.
-[Hunter] Aah, got...
[Adriano] Know what I mean?
I hope that's a gif
that they turn it into, you doing that.
-[Tyler] Gotta get the cakes in the oven.
-[Dustin] I know.
Got the raspberry filling going.
-We're gonna need this to start boiling.
-[Tyler] Okay. I got it.
Right. I'm workin' on the buttercream.
Our frosting is like
an American buttercream.
Instead of using all butter,
we do use part shortening.
It might sound weird,
just like the mayo in our cake,
but it makes it less sweet.
All right, bakers,
you have two hours left
before Santy Claus comes
and wants a bite of your cake.
[laughter]
I want you to take your time
and focus on detail.
-These babies will have so many patterns.
-I will start getting into logistics.
The cake itself is a very simple design,
so the detail work
that's going into those gingerbread houses
has to be perfect.
Oop.
Not today.
I want them to have
variety in height, variety in width.
I want them to have
all different kinds of texture.
Oh, shut up.
-[Maddie] I know, right? I'm just...
-[Alex] Shut up.
-Who do you think you are right now?
-I don't know!
Maddie jokes that she has little
raccoon hands that can do the little...
The little details that I can't do.
Cakes are done. We're doin' good, Mad.
We have to cut the roof line on 'em.
-Yep.
-Okay.
These cookies are going to be
the key to our village
and make it look like Christmas time.
How steep do you want the roof line?
[Dustin] How about a 90-degree angle?
And not one degree more.
No, I'll be over
with a protractor shortly.
Christmas in Wisconsin is pretty ideal.
[Dustin] With a few exceptions.
Beaver, our cat,
she doesn't really care for the holidays
other than all the treats that it brings.
-She loves to play with the ornaments.
-She sure does.
-[Maddie] They good?
-[Alex] Yep. You killed it.
[Maddie] When you rub it,
it makes all the details come out.
[Alex] Snowy mountain.
They'll make a bold statement.
Yeah. They're gonna be the centerpiece.
[Alex] Gentle. There we go.
All right, bakers,
one hour 30 minutes remaining.
Judges, what are our thoughts
on our teams' cakes so far?
We're seeing the makings of some cakes,
but I have yet to see
the villages really coming together.
I'm a little concerned
about their progress right now.
[Dustin] Candace is concerned. So am I.
-Time is going by very quickly.
-So are we.
We've gotta get this cake constructed.
We've gotta get
the royal icing on the cookie.
How are we going to get this done in time?
Just gonna hope that they're done.
[Alex] Smells so good.
For the trees, I'm going to let
my rosemary sit in some simple syrup,
and then I'm gonna tumble
all that rosemary into some sugar.
Mad, these are perfect.
They look like little snowy trees.
-Hey, Mad, candy corn? Nose?
-Yeah, for the nose.
And then for the hat, do you wanna grab
Pringles and a marshmallow?
Instead of a regular top hat,
our snowman is gonna have
a little cowboy hat
made with Pringles and then
a chocolate marshmallow on top.
Howdy, ma'am.
-[laughs]
-Yee-haw.
[both laughing]
[Dustin] It's the buttercream we like.
So, what I'm thinking...
We can't do the full top
because there's gonna be no time.
We could put a house on top of the cake.
[Dustin] I can see that we're not gonna
have enough time to do all four tiers.
We're gonna have to cut it down
to three tiers.
Just trying to pretend like this isn't
happening so I don't cry or anything.
I hate changing plans.
This is ridiculous.
It stinks, but we don't have anything
else we can do about it right now.
Insanity.
I'm just concerned with
how insanely heavy it's going to be.
I gotta put supports in here.
Okay, bakers,
you have one hour remaining.
One hour, Mad.
We gotta stack and decorate.
I love this.
It's gonna look perfectly imperfect.
[laughs]
[Alex] We want to incorporate
something that looks like snow,
and immediately, our minds go to coconut.
Shredded coconut.
The cake is squishing in on itself.
Hurry.
Okay, that's fine. Guide it.
Oh, whoa. Maddie, look at their cake.
That is similar.
It's comin' down to flavor.
All right, bakers,
you have 20 minutes left!
-[Tyler] How is this for the houses?
-[Dustin] That's good.
'Cause we just wanna keep 'em thin iced
so that they dry in time.
Otherwise,
the houses will be melting a little bit.
Now all of the detail work has to happen,
and that clock is ticking.
Oh, time goes so fast.
For the cookies,
we decided to go with royal icing.
It looks really clean.
We really don't have time right now
to provide all the details on the cookies
that we wanted.
Just flood it.
-'Cause then I'll have to pop 'em in.
-Okay.
So, we sacrifice
another part of the cake design.
[Dustin] We can put
little green wreaths on.
Okay.
We've gotta get the trees piped,
cookies on the cake,
-we've gotta get the snow drifts.
-We've got everything to do.
The frosting is just so warm that
this Christmas tree looks a little janky.
[Hunter] Bakers,
you have ten minutes remaining.
Mad, bring the cookies here,
I'll start putting them on.
-Yee-haw.
-[chuckles] Yee-haw is right.
We need to get
all the final details on this cake.
We're hopin' to blow their minds.
Oh, my God, I'm gonna have
glitter coming out of my nose for weeks.
Two minutes, bakers. Two minutes left.
[Dustin] Hopefully everything stays.
-All right, just gotta move her.
-Okay.
[Dustin] Holy Moses.
Thirty seconds, bakers.
There he is. My guy.
[all] Five, four, three, two, one!
All right!
Don't touch your cakes!
It's time to see some villages.
Judges, let's head on over.
Hello, Dustin. Hello, Tyler.
-[Tyler] Hello.
-Hi.
-Look at this.
-Hello.
Go ahead and walk us through your cake.
We have some Christmas trees,
a different motif on the house,
just kind of like a sloppy shingle.
The design modified heavily
throughout the three hours. [laughs]
-We're known for meticulous work.
-Mmm.
And this is not our meticulous work.
I couldn't even probably put a star on it.
I'm not good at anything like that.
I was expecting it
to be a little bit more "village-y."
Your design's obviously modified
to be a more simplistic sort of...
you know, a clean look.
But I'm really interested
to taste the flavors.
-There you go.
-[Tyler] Just fell.
That's a natural thing
with hillside homes.
-[Candace] Mudslide.
-[Tyler] Erosion.
I think what you put up is really lovely,
it's just very simple.
I would've loved to have seen
a bit more of the hustle and bustle
of, like, a holiday village scene.
As you said, you know, the cake didn't
fully come together as you had hoped,
but, uh, very excited
to taste your flavors.
Thank you.
Why don't you cut us four slices,
give us four cookies?
Adriano can have the one that fell,
and, uh...
Judges, we are heading
over to Alex and Maddie's station.
[all] Thank you.
Alex and Maddie.
-[both] Hello.
-[Candace] Hi, there.
Fantastic little village.
[Alex] The cake is a gingerbread village.
We made little trees and shrubs
out of candied rosemary.
The coconut is the snow.
We named our snowman Herschel.
He's our little cowboy snowman on top.
Herschel.
-Whole lotta yee-haw.
-Very country.
It does feel very artisanal
and hand-crafted
and, like, kind of like
an old European town...
-Yeah.
-...during the holidays.
And you've given each house
its own personality.
And that's so much fun.
It's definitely not super colorful,
but it doesn't lack color
because it has so much vibrancy to it.
I like the look of it, the gingerbread
and how you've carved it
and put powdered sugar all over it,
it has a great effect.
-It has a lot of character...
-[Candace] Mm-hm.
...and it almost reminds me
of an advent calendar.
-Mmm!
-You know what I mean?
-Yeah.
-With the little doors.
It's just so intricately designed.
-Thanks.
-Thanks very much.
It's not just design, it's also taste,
so cut us four slices, make sure
to include a cookie with each of those.
-Absolutely.
-We'll see you at the judges' table.
-You got it.
-Thank you.
Let's go ahead and start
with Alex and Maddie's cake.
[Alex] We've got a coconut and nutmeg cake
with a rum simple syrup,
a vanilla cream cheese buttercream
and shredded coconut,
and then a gingerbread cookie
on the outside.
Maddie and Alex,
I really enjoyed your cake.
Thought it was very moist,
and that rum syrup, like, packs a punch.
Coconut on the frosting,
and the little bit of spice
you have in there, it's delicious.
The design, from a distance
it doesn't look like a lot,
and then when you get up close, you see
the detail and artistic, old-school feel.
I love the snowman on top. You know,
it gives a bit of a presence to your cake.
I just would've loved to have seen
a bit more color and movement.
I agree. There could've been
a little bit more color, maybe,
but I loved the gingerbread cookie.
Seeing it up front, it's so...
-Thank you.
-...intricate and really beautiful.
And really like the...
the cream cheese frosting.
Helped make the rum not so intense.
[Candace] Maddie and Alex...
um... yum!
[laughs]
This cake is so buttery, and toasty,
and rummy, and coconutty, and delicious.
And your gingerbread cookie
is so crisp and full of spices.
My only note would be, I would've loved
a little fruit or something
to brighten everything up.
But... well done.
-Thank you.
-Thank you.
Okay, let's move on
to Dustin and Tyler's cake.
We have a coffee-infused chocolate cake
with mayo added in.
Some fresh raspberries
and vanilla buttercream.
An iced sugar cookie for you as well.
Dustin and Tyler,
I would've loved to have seen, of course,
a little bit more detail
in the decoration of your cake.
I was hoping for
a more sort of bustling Christmas scene.
It just felt a little sleepy
and not as festive as I would've liked
for a Christmas village cake.
Having said that,
this is a very moist chocolate cake.
That mayonnaise
is definitely doing its job.
And such a nice tartness
to the raspberries,
and overall, a really delicious cake.
It's a juicy chocolate cake, you know?
Obviously, that mayonnaise pays off.
The raspberry is a nice little zing,
a nice little hit.
I just didn't find any whole raspberries.
Design-wise, you obviously made do with
what you had in the end with the time,
and put up a clean, white cake
with those nice sugar cookie cut-outs.
The sugar cookie was delicious.
I think you did a good job.
Thank you.
So, I really didn't know that I was gonna
love mayonnaise in a chocolate cake,
but it actually tastes really good.
I did kind of want a bit more raspberry,
because I am a huge raspberry fan,
but your sugar cookie
was really, really good.
So it's a shame
that you guys ran out of time.
You guys did a really good job.
Thank you.
Thank you both for competing so hard
in the Sugar Rush Christmaskitchen.
You were both incredible,
but unfortunately, only one team is
going home with the $10,000 prize.
Abigail, we'll start with you.
Well... [sighs]
Maddie and Alex, I love the design of
your cake, the handwork on the cookies.
And Dustin and Tyler, I love chocolate
and raspberry, it's such an amazing combo,
and I now know that
mayonnaise tastes really good in cake,
so you guys did great.
I'd have to say
my favorite cake today is...
Maddie and Alex's.
[both] Thank you.
Maddie and Alex, that's one vote for you,
meaning if you get one more vote,
you're stuffing your stockings
with $10,000.
Oh! [laughing]
Candace, who had your favorite cake?
Dustin and Tyler, you gave us
an incredibly moist
chocolate mayonnaise cake,
and then you gave us a really
deliciously tender sugar cookie.
Your design was beautiful snowy white
with pops of color. Well done.
Maddie and Alex,
you gave us a snowy, wintery scene,
just really warm, spiced holiday flavors,
and of course, that addictively crisp
and delicious gingerbread cookie.
My favorite cake today belongs to...
Alex and Maddie.
[Hunter] Congratulations, Maddie and Alex!
You have just won $10,000
in the Sugar Rush Christmaskitchen.
[Alex] Oh, my God.
Adriano, how would you vote?
I would've voted Alex and Maddie as well.
Amazing. All right, let's go ahead
and congratulate our bakers.
[muffled talking and laughter]
I'm still super happy that
we got to do this, got to do it together.
I'm sure that
we'll keep growing our business.
They deserved that win.
And we plan to go visit their bakery
in a couple months
and see what they're using
our $10,000 for.
-Congrats!
-Thank you, Candace.
-Doesn't feel real.
-I cannot believe we won.
[Alex] I don't have
the words to describe it.
[Maddie] It's meaningful,
and it's just one of the best things.
I have nothing else to say except wow,
and I am unbelievably grateful.
-[Maddie] Christmas queens.
-I'll take my crown now.
Thank you for watching
this episode of Sugar Rush Christmas.
Merry Christmas and happy holidays.