Spring Baking Championship just ended and now Summer Baking Championship is here! Jesse Palmer is the host, of course, and a new set of ten bakers is ready to bake their hearts out to win 25,000 dollars. And the judges included Carla Hall, Duff Goldman, and Damaris Phillips.
In the premiere, we actually got two episodes back to back, but in the first episode, it was all about the water. In the first Pre=Heat, the bakers had to make donuts that looked like different animal floaties. They could pick any animal they wanted but the flavor of their donut was random.
The choices were lemon, pineapple, mango, blueberry, cherry, orange, lime, and raspberry.
Sadly, most of the donuts were underwhelming and some of the bakers clearly did not understand the floatie. You can’t just place an edible animal on top of the donut.
Summer Baking Championship premieres on Food Network
But there were some good ones too including the winner of this challenge, Yohann! He made a gorgeous swan floatie donut. There was also a cute AF duck donut and a crab one that made my Cancer soul so happy.
On to the Main Heat! In this challenge, the bakers had to make a cake with a gelatin water feature. They clearly stole this from the amazingness that was Christian’s cake from Spring Baking Championship. But it was still fun to watch. And quite a few of the bakers did…not so great.
Many of the cakes were messy and not very polished. But one definitely stood out and that was Alyssa. Her pool cake was colorful and fun!
But who went home in this first episode? That was Lisa. She really struggled with both challenges so this wasn’t really a surprise.
Ok, on to episode 2! This episode, much to the bakers’ dismay, was all about ice cream. In the first Pre-Heat, the bakers had to make ice cream sandwiches with a creative inlay. I don’t know what happened, but the bakers really showed their skills in episode 2.
The inlays in the cookies they used included tie-dye, seashells, palm trees, and lemons.
The problems came when the judges tasted the cookies. Some had more flavor than others and some of the cookies were not easy to bite into. Yikes!
But it was Kyle who came out on top. His lemon inlay ice cream sandwich was so freaking cute!
Next was the Main Heat of episode 2. The bakers had to make ice cream desserts based on popular ice cream truck treats. The ice cream treats they had to choose from included chocolate caramel ice cream bars, raspberry ice cream bars, chocolate-dipped vanilla cones, cherry pineapple swirl pops, and chocolate vanilla almond bars.
They could also pick from the strawberry shortcake crunch bar, orange cream bar, chocolate peanut butter pretzel bar (where was this when I was growing up?!), and the chocolate mint ice cream bar.
Oh and there was a twist! The bakers had to include SnoCone syrup in their desserts. I felt very bad for the people who got cotton candy and sour green apple!
The bakers were none too happy to be making ice cream again, but some of them created delicious and gorgeous desserts. There were some issues that came along in the baking process and the judges definitely notice those, but there were certainly some stand-outs as well.
Who won the main heat? Again, it was Kyle! He made an extraordinary raspberry Swiss roll with a green outside that looked like a long watermelon. It was delightful!
But who went home? It was Kristina. Her ice cream was running out of her cake and her soda caramel was chewy.
Next week, the remaining bakers will have to make unique s’mores desserts and Paris-Brests that include different juices.
What did you think of the premiere of Summer Baking Championship? Let us know in the comments below!