24 fondant icing pre-cut Crime Scene, Murder Mystery themed round pre-cut edible cup cake topper decorations

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This week, The Merge happened, so we, for the very first time, saw both the self-taught bakers and the professional bakers baking all at once at a chance for the grand prize! So what is the mystery dessert for the second round? This time, we have an Upside Down Cake with Blood Oranges, Oranges, and Caramel.

For him, based on the clues, he admitted that he never would have made a wreath. “It wasn’t a traditional dessert we learned in school and the flavors weren’t traditional for a wreath either.” The flavors could be molded in a variety of ways and each of the finale cakes took the flavors in different directions. Two teams had three very different layers and Thomas and Cathy offered variation on chocolate. In many ways, that knowledge helped them not just solve the clues, but also execute the dessert. Given that the various challenges had limited time, the baking team could start on certain tasks while they finalized their plan. Natalie shared how “we could get a few things done while we figured out what we didn’t know. That was a huge advantage for us because we could multitask and save a lot of time.” Throughout the season, the baking teams adapted to solving the clues. While some teams were more successful than others, this baking competition is unlike other food television shows. Combining execution, knowledge and skill are the keys to earning the victory. Cathy & Thomas won the round, garnering an advantage in the main round with Jay & Thuy-Linh also making a Boston Cream Pie, albeit one that was decidedly more rustic looking. Other teams guessed the dessert as a bakewell tart (Nathan & Anthony), lemon chiffon pie (Erinn & Amanda), almond dacquoise (Caroline & Carolyn), and a Sacher torte (Luis & Natalie).

Once I’d grasped the basics (and tried just about every recipe in “Southern Cakes”), I moved on to Rose Levy Beranbaum’s “The Cake Bible,” and “The Art of the Cake” by her mentors Bruce Healy and Paul Bugat. Both books are crammed with sophisticated techniques, and I now follow Beranbaum’s foolproof method of making butter cream frosting. Her discussion of the chemistry and physics behind her recipes is invaluable. For the showpiece round, bakers were given a lot of clues for a cake with many components – marzipan, royal icing and a template, whipped cream and gelatin, cake batter, and raspberries. Together, they are the ingredients of a traditional Swedish princess cake, or Prinsesstårta: a sponge cake filled with raspberry jam and pastry cream, stabilized whipped cream on top, and all covered in thin pale green marzipan with royal icing piping and a rose on top. But many of the cakes in Beranbaum’s book don’t tempt me, and none of those in Healy and Bugat’s do. Namely, the classic French bakery cakes. The baking team eliminated was Emma and Leslie. The uneven layers were their downfall. After all the tears in last week’s challenge, just making the finale was a positive. Unfortunately, the execution let them down. Did the Crime Scene Kitchen winner cake it to the limit with their showpiece? Since it is the Crime Scene Kitchen finale, the reality is that the dessert round was going to be difficult. As Yolanda Gampp said, “expectations are high and there is no tomorrow.” These bakers need to bring the boldness.

With Natalie and Luis, they brought their Vegas flare to the cake. It was very, very clear that this cake was Yolanda’s birthday cake. From the decorative slice as a cake topper to sprinkles reveal in the top layer, everything about this cake said it was a celebratory cake. Recently, FoodSided spoke to the pair about their Crime Scene Kitchen win, how they put their pastry training to work and how their Crime Scene Kitchen showpiece wowed the judges. While the FOX baking competition focused on solving the sweet clues, a few elements helped Natalie and Luis rise to the top. Their classically trained pastry skills gave them an advantage from the start.When Yolanda Gampp revealed that the final Crime Scene Kitchen showpiece would allow the baking teams to interpret the flavors in any way that they wanted. Natalie admitted that she had to ask over and over if she had free reign. It was finally her moment to “let that flare out of the box” and put it to good use.