Sugar Rush

This is Sugar Rush.

The baking competition where time...

is the most important ingredient.

Four teams of brilliant bakers competing against each other...

and the clock.

The teams will take one common theme as their inspiration

to create an array of mouth-watering treats

over three rounds of competition.

-The first round... -

...cupcakes.

Second round: confections.

The quicker a team completes their cupcakes and confections,

-the better... -

...because any time saved during the first two rounds of competition

will be carried over and added to the final round...

cakes.

Who will impress our judges, Cupcake Queen Candace Nelson

and pastry master Adriano Zumbo,

to take home the $10,000 prize?

Follow me.

I'm your host, Hunter March,

and today there will be a few surprises in the Sugar Rush kitchen.

Let's go ahead and meet our bakers.

We have husband and wife, Mo and Marvin.

-Hey. -Hi.

We're high-school sweethearts, and we have a business called Eat Mo Cakes.

I always tell customers...

-eat no cake if it ain't Mo Cake. -No cake if it ain't Mo Cake.

Baking buddies, Lisa and Sonia.

We are from Sacramento, California,

and we have a home-based baking business baking sugar cookies.

Best friends, Breanna and Bonnie.

We're moms. We're business owners.

We teamed up and created Inspired Sugar.

We're going to win because we have great flavors, style and...

Magic. We definitely have magic.

We have colleagues and friends, Vivian and Samantha.

Sam and I met nine years ago.

She was my boss.

I was, but in this competition,

-she is. -I let her.

I own Studio Sweets, a custom cake bakery.

Sam's the best.

-Bakers, you ready to meet your judges? - Yeah.

Standing closest to me physically and emotionally,

Candace Nelson. As the founder of Sprinkles Cupcakes,

she is credited with sparking the global cupcake craze.

Hi, bakers. We're expecting big things from you today. Don't disappoint us.

Next up, we have Adriano Zumbo,

aka the Sweet Assassin.

Is it 'cause he once killed a man with licorice?

His patisseries can be found all over Australia,

and he's one of the country's most celebrated pastry chefs.

Good day, bakers. Super pumped to be here.

Looking forward to tasting your creations.

And finally, our guest judge, Nancy Silverton.

She's a James Beard award-winning pastry chef and author.

Well, hello, bakers. Best of luck.

Work creatively, but have fun.

Your theme for today's episode is going to be surprise.

Sounds simple.

Bakers, for this first round,

we want cupcakes that surprise us with unexpected flavors.

One team will be cut after this round.

The three best teams will go through to the second round

and create a confection

that looks like one thing, but tastes like another.

Only the best two teams will move on to the final round.

You'll have three hours for the first two rounds,

but go as quickly as you dare

because any time saved during those first two rounds

will be banked and added

to the three hours allotted for the final cake round.

Now, three hours is barely enough time to make a cake,

so I would work fast if I were you.

The faster you finish, the more time you take with you

if you make the cut.

-Bakers, are you ready? - Yeah.

All right, your time starts in three, two, one.

Bake.

All right. Okay, surprise.

Combine, like, some Asian flavor...

What if we do, like, a savory element?

Bacon. Some maple...

-Ginger. Ginger cake. -Yeah.

We are going to do a fresh ginger cake

with a green tea buttercream.

We had sushi last night. Let's do that.

Let's do... wasabi.

Wasabi for the center would be a great surprise.

Nobody'd know that.

This is a brand new flavor combination, even for me,

but these are all flavors that we know work well together.

They did last night at dinner.

-I'm going to start on the ganache first. -Okay.

We're going to be incorporating the wasabi into a white chocolate ganache.

Ganache is a lot like a really thick and dense whipped cream.

This is wasabi in white chocolate.

It made like a greeny color.

I have to make sure the wasabi's balanced enough.

I give them a nice kick, but not knock them over.

-It's smelling really strong. -Yeah?

We're hoping to finish our round one cupcakes

in about 30 minutes

and then in the confections challenge, no more than an hour.

We'll have an hour and a half to bank for round three.

Argh!

I'm the first to go.

For our cupcakes, we're using lychee in sparkling wine.

And then in the buttercream, we're also going to do

a little bit of lychee and sparkling wine.

We wanted to take something that was common from our ethnic backgrounds

and kind of bring it together with something in the Western background,

sparkling wine.

Time is passing so fast.

Cinnamon, yes. Vanilla, we'll need.

We are making a red wine chocolate cupcake

with a hint of cinnamon,

a prosciutto-infused salted caramel,

and a mascarpone cream cheese frosting.

This flavor is so delicious.

I'm going to just put in a couple slices just to give my cream a little smokiness.

I am adding prosciutto to heavy cream

because all I'm looking for is that flavor and that smokiness from the meat

to infuse itself so that then I can add it to the rest of my caramel ingredients.

I added the cream. Can you smell it?

We are really nervous about the prosciutto

because I don't think that's something that people put in a cupcake very often.

Do you smell it? Do you smell the prosciutto?

You start the cake.

Three hours for two different items?

I think it's a big project to take on, but I'm quick with thinking on my feet.

I'm pretty quick with thinking for him on his feet, too.

One cup of butter. Grab the sugar.

We're trying to do something different, and I like to stand outside the box.

It's a maple-flavor cupcake.

I need some maple.

Strawberry filling and some crispy and caramelized bacon on the top.

We call it the Saturday Morning cupcake.

You can never have too much bacon.

Once I pan up the bacon,

I'm going to throw some brown sugar on it and put it in the oven.

It's so good.

How's the cupcakes going? We gotta get those suckers in the oven.

The caramel's almost done.

We're hoping to finish in 45 minutes, saving a good bit of time,

but that's not far from now.

Our goal is to have these cupcakes done in 45 minutes.

And then we want to make our round two confection in 45 minutes,

which is an hour and a half total

and leaves us an hour and a half to use in our cake round.

I think they have four, maybe five minutes left.

We are actually putting some sparkling wine flavoring into our batter.

I'm going to put some in the microwave right now for flavor.

So, a little trick we developed to make sure that our batter tastes good

is to take a scoop of it, stick it in the microwave,

and then it's kind of fluffy cake.

You can taste it and get a good feeling of what the flavor's going to be like.

It's good, but I think it needs more of both.

Finish up the buttercream.

The challenging thing about timing for the first two rounds is

doing a good enough job, but also to save enough time for the cake round.

It's like a balance of trying to save enough time, but also doing a good job.

Do you want to try it again in the microwave?

-Yeah, just go. -Just go.

We put the cupcakes in the oven 'cause we don't have time.

You got to get that milk in there. We gotta get this in the oven.

Monica is very bossy in the kitchen.

She wants everything to go her way.

Move out of the way. Let me put some "ugh" on here.

I just sit back here and just take notes

and just do it her way to make her satisfied and get the job done so--

You don't have to tell my business. You don't have to.

We should do another set just in case,

'cause we don't want no accidents.

See, that's an accident.

That bacon is smelling up the place.

Ooh! Y'all smell that bacon?

Is that why my stomach is rumbling?

Have a taste.

Good.

Culinary school is going to set our team apart from the other teams

because we've acquired technical skills.

My superpower is time management,

and I entrust Sam with all the creativity.

-Viv, time on cake in the oven? -Five minutes.

I was always an artist. I get really excited about decorating.

Baking is just the thing that happens before I get to decorate.

All right, flowers done.

We're down almost 32 minutes, but we'll make it up in the next round.

We need to bank more time for round three.

Minutes are ticking by, and we have no more to waste.

-Buttercream's ready. -Okay.

All right, so I'm starting on the cake truffles.

We're going to actually finish off our cupcake

with a white chocolate cake truffle

that will be filled with a sparkling wine cake

and a piece of actual lychee.

I'm painting the tops of the cake truffles.

The vodka we use to mix with an edible gold paint.