Spring Baking Championship season 10 episode 9 recap: A cliffhanger!

This week's episode of Spring Baking Championship was like no other. There was a cliffhanger! But before we get to that, let's talk about the challenges. It was all about succulent crowns (to go with the music festival theme) and big bands. Clearly, the producers had trouble coming up with ideas -- or at least keeping them consistent.

For the Preheat, the remaining bakers had to make cupcakes using desert (not dessert) ingredients and decorate them with a succulent (cactus) crown. The desert-y flavors they had to choose from included dates, mesquite flower, prickly pear, and chile powder.

Alex chose dates, Nickey picked mesquite flour, Robert got prickly pear, and Steven chose chile powder. None of these cupcakes were bad, but there was quite a surprise when the judges did not like Alex's cupcakes. Granted, he's not a cupcake guy, but they were not in love with his mango and date cupcakes.

But who took the advantage this week and won the Preheat? That was Nickey! The judges loved how she used the smokey flavor of mesquite flour in her cupcakes. Her decorations were gorgeous as well.

The Main Heat was Big Band themed... And left off on that cliffhanger

On to the Main Heat! The bakers were tasked with using snowball-flavored (like a sno-cone) entremets that needed to be decorated in a New Orleans/big-band theme. They only had two hours for this challenge, which is almost nothing to make entremets.

The snowball flavors they had to choose from included coffee, strawberry, wild cherry, and mandarin orange. Since Nickey won the preheat, she was able to choose her flavor first, and she got to start ten minutes early. She chose coffee.

After ten minutes, Robert picked mandarin orange, Alex chose strawberry, and that left Steven with wild cherry.

These desserts all looked spectacular, which left the taste for the judges to critique. Once again, it was surprising to see Alex getting the brunt of the negative critique. The judges thought his entremet was lacking any sugar and that's never good in a baking competition. He was in the bottom two.

Nickey was also in the bottom two because the judges thought her cake needed a soak (it was tiramisu, after all), and her snowball decoration didn't make much sense to them.

But who won this challenge? It was Robert with his gorgeous mandarin orange entremet! This wasn't a huge surprise, but Steven was right up there for the top spot too.

So, who went home? No one. That was the cliffhanger. Host Jesse Palmer literally said "No one," and then the episode ended. No explanation. Nothing. This either means they all go to the finale or we're getting an extra episode this season. We'll all have to wait until next week to see. Although, based on Food Network's website, we might be in store for a two-hour finale.

Speaking of next week, the bakers will have to bake recipes that are borrowed from other contestants (insane!) to make a wedding dessert and then will have to make "something old" for the final challenge of the episode.