Bake Squad - Second Season

I'm Christina Tosi,

the founder of Milk Bar.

I built a baking empire on sweet, delicious cookie dough,

and now I've built a squad to make people's dessert dreams come true.

Christophe,

a pastry illusionist.

Maya-Camille,

a flavor fanatic.

Gonzo,

a champion of chocolate.

And Ashley,

the queen of cakes.

Individually, four brilliant bakers.

Oh my God!

But I brought them together to battle it out

and see whose dessert will be chosen for someone's big day.

This is Bake Squad.

- Morning. - Good morning, Chef.

- Hello, how are you? - Hi.

- Fired up. - Excited.

All right.

Bake Squad, meet Jennifer. Jennifer, meet the Bake Squad.

- Hi, Jennifer. - Hi.

Squad,

this is a coming-of-age celebration.

Bakers, this party is for my son, Josh.

He will be 13.

Oh my God.

That's my guy. It's his bar mitzvah.

Wow, big celebration.

This is the party where Josh becomes a man.

Is there a dessert in particular that is traditional to have at a bar mitzvah?

It's not traditional to have cake.

He, of course, is not traditional, and he wanted a cake.

Nice.

Tell us about Josh.

He is full of personality,

a true performer, singing, dancing, entertaining.

So the life and soul of any party.

- Any party. - Aw.

But the one thing about him that you just gravitate to is his kindness.

He is just one of the most caring and generous kids that you will ever meet.

- That smile. - So cute.

Josh has a couple of different hobbies.

Sports cars. Likes video games.

He's into space, anything that flies.

- Okay. - I love that Josh loves cars.

What are his favorite treats to get while he's on the road?

Chocolate milk, chocolate ice cream,

black-and-white cookies, marshmallows.

A lot of iterations of chocolate.

Gonzo.

- He shoots, he scores. - Chocolate is a must.

When we go to a theme park, he must get the churro.

The event is truly Josh.

Big, bold, black-and-white themed, classy.

- That's what Josh likes. - Awesome.

Fancy.

- How many people are coming? - Over 100 people are coming.

Wow, that's a big one.

This has been in the works for almost two years.

Almost two years?

- Two years? - Two years.

- And we have seven hours to make a cake? - Yes.

You're complaining already? We haven't even started, dude!

He only gets one bar mitzvah. Pressure's on, my friends.

- You're ready? - I'm ready.

- All right. Jennifer, we'll see you soon. - Thank you so much.

- Ovens on. Start ideating. It's go time. - Good luck, guys.

- Woo! - Ow!

- Good luck. - Let's do this.

We are finally back!

I think it'd be cool to do a centerpiece.

- I missed you guys so much. - I missed you so much.

Where do I start?

But this season, the pressure is higher.

Who do you think is gonna make it to the finish line first?

We need to bring the wow factor, for sure.

I need to go big. Bring it on.

- All right, Ash. - Hey, Chef.

So bar mitzvah, what did you sort of latch onto in terms of inspiration?

So, the event is at this grand ballroom.

Black-and-white theme.

So I wanna give him a beautiful, stunning black-and-white cake.

I mean, visually it's compelling,

but don't want it to feel like a wedding cake, right?

I think that the challenge is,

how do you find the balance of the kind of class Josh is looking for,

but also the kind of fun that he's looking for too.

One thing I love about being on the squad and working with Chef

is she always comes in and encourages us to go bigger,

do better, and push ourselves a bit harder.

Why don't we double it? Shall we do six?

Four, five, six.

Now that feels like a 13-year-old's black-and-white cake.

He likes anything related to flying, and rockets, airplanes, engines,

so yeah, I'm thinking about a giant chocolate rocket.

- Something big, like five feet tall. - I'm 5'6", so...

- This is gonna be about your height. - Oh.

Tell me, what are you thinking about making?

So I think I wanna stick to the theme of cars.

- There's a bunch of kids there, right? - Yeah.

You know, the kids are dancing.

- And they're burning calories. - Yeah.

You need something like a refueling station.

You know, where the kids just run there and refuel their bodies with sugar.

Like a quick pit stop during the party.

Fast rocket, fast cars. Who do you think is going to win this race?

I have a hunch this rocket is gonna make it pretty quick.

I don't know.

- I move pretty fast. - I'm looking out for you.

Centerpiece de résistance.

What in the world is centerpiece de résistance ?

The goal is to create another illusion.

My illusionist.

I'm an illusionniste.

It's a thing for a bar mitzvah to have a centerpiece in the middle of the table.

So I am going to create an edible centerpiece

for every single table,

and at the end, we will announce to the guests

that the dessert is in front of them since the beginning.

I love the concept of it.

But what is it made of? How does it all work and come together?

Well, I'm not sure yet, but...

Lord. Christophe, you got less than seven hours.

I love the ambition, but you have a lot to figure out. I'm gonna leave you to it.

- Thank you. - Go for it.

Let's do it!

Oh, sh...

My chocolate egg is the body of my rocket.

Jennifer has been planning Josh's bar mitzvah for over two years.

So, my rocket needs to be something that Josh will always remember.

So it's gonna look like it's launching, taking off,

with hundreds and hundreds of spheres creating smoke and bubbles.

And the main dessert on the bottom

is going to be a delicious chocolate mousse cake.

I'm about to start flipping this mold.

To have an even distribution of chocolate around the whole shell,

I need to actually turn this giant chocolate egg

every other two minutes for at least 40 minutes,

just to make sure that everything gets covered evenly.

If it's not perfectly even, the whole thing could break.

Gonzo, how do you already have chocolate in a mold?

That's... That's what I do.

The moment I realized I wanted to become a chocolatier

was when I was 19 years old in Patagonia.

I met this lovely lady,

and she explained to me, inside of her shop,

how chocolate worked.

She showed me how to temper chocolate properly,

and that was the first time I was actually exposed to chocolate.

The main thing that she taught me

was that chocolate is a tool to give happiness to people.

We're gonna go right here.

Today, I am going to create an edible centerpiece.

It's going to have a chocolate balloon,

sugar tubing.

The base of the centerpiece will be my version of s'mores.

But first thing, it's figuring out how to make this chocolate balloon.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

Once I have those balloons all blown,

I need to dip them into chocolate to make a beautiful chocolate balloon.

This is not that easy.

Ah!

Pah!

Explosion.

As I go, I'm trying to figure it out. It's something I've never done before.

Christophe, what... What is going on?

I put too much pressure on it, and the entire thing just exploded.

So you're thinking about taking these balloons

and making a chocolate shell around them, using a real balloon as a mold?

- Yeah. - Should we try again?

- Let's do it. - Okay. You're using your hands?

- Let's just go freestyle. - Oh, okay.

Perfect, perfect, perfect, perfect.

Okay, I think we're good.

You gotta start turning these out.

- It's go big or go home. Get to it. - I'll try.

Chocolate.

Maya-Camille, what are you making?

I know that dessert bars are really popular at bar mitzvahs.

- Yes. What's on this dessert bar? - Okay. Hear me out.

Josh is obsessed with cars,

so I want to make a refueling station

with a Funfetti cake that resembles a life-sized tire,

as well as chocolate cupcakes with a chocolate ganache,

sour cream donuts with lemon zest,

churros, black-and-white cookies, chocolate bars,

and candy wrenches

flavored in watermelon, blue raspberry, and passion fruit.

I do need some place for it to be housed.

Is that your polite way of saying "Find me a fueling station"?

Yes.

Okay. This is the biggest prep list I've ever seen from you.

Second, you're going after every single person here.

You're baking,

you're working with chocolate, you're dealing with sugar.

Sugar on the stove.

You are encroaching on their territory every step of the way here.