Episode Report Card Mr. Sobell: C+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Go Fish
By Mr. Sobell | Season 1 | Episode 6 | Aired on 08.25.2010
As the contestants scramble to pick out their ingredients, the pleasant female narrator reminds us that it's a challenge for anyone to make a perfect cupcake. "But to bake it and decorate in 45 minutes is almost impossible," she adds. Well, good thing we've tasked these rank amateurs with doing it, then. Jake quite correctly points out that baking is very different from cooking, as the former involves science and mathematics and whatnot. And I am not disputing him -- I am a horrible baker, precisely because I am incapable of measuring things precisely. I once tried to make some fluffy southern-style biscuits that wound up resembling something Wayne Gretzky should be firing past a goaltender. But I digress -- the baking, she is hard.
Sharone agrees with me, as he is struggling with the baking portion of the cupcake-making process. ("My wife is the dessert queen," he tells Gordon.) Nevertheless, he's going to try to ape his wife's cream cheese frosting, while whipping in some crushed hazelnut and Nutella. Whitney -- who I hasten to remind you is so very, very young -- is going to try her hand at coconut and lemon curd flavors. Lee is making Irish coffee cupcakes. More importantly, Graham notes, he is working with the Breville stand-mixer. "That scrapper beater means better mixing," Graham says. Yes, yes, the check from the good folks at Breville is in the mail. Meanwhile, Tracy -- who is quite keen on her chances, I should remind you -- is working on a carrot cake-style cupcake. "This is a slam dunk," she says. We shall see what we shall see. Jake is going with some sort of unholy union of chocolate and fruit. "It's going to be like a party in your mouth," he promises.
Judges huddle: Everyone seems quite keen to try what Whitney and Tracy are whipping up. They are also intrigued by the thought of Sharone's nuts. Yes, I deliberately typed that sentence that way. You care to make something of it?
There are now 20 minutes left. Gordon points out that if your cupcakes aren't in the oven at this point, you are going to have a very difficult time serving the judges something that isn't an unappetizing pile of goo. Faruq is only now getting his cupcake into the oven. And Tracy -- previously so confident -- seems to realize that she has frittered away a lot of time. That could prove costly, as the narrator informs us, that the prize at stake is the chance to jump immediately into the final four without passing Go and without collecting $200. Geez, that's a much better prize than telling everyone they've got to cook something involving mandarin oranges, isn't it?