Salt Lake pastry chef Adalberto Diaz won both challenges on the Dec. 13 episode of season two of Food Network’s “Holiday Baking Championship” and is one of three chefs competing for the $50,000 prize in next Sunday’s finale.
Sunday’s episode featured a regifting theme for the challenges.
The first challenge, or preheat challenge, was to repurpose a candied apple into a different dessert. Each of the four contestants picked a wrapped box with a candied apple.
Diaz, owner of the bakery Fillings and Emulsions, unwrapped his box to find an apple dipped in white chocolate with dried cherries. He made an Apple Frangipane Tart flavored with white chocolate and cherries with a Green Apple Sorbet and served it with a cherry dipped in white chocolate.
Diaz told the judges that when he first moved to Salt Lake City, he was working for a hotel and that when the holidays hit, the pastry chef had him make a thousand Apple Frangipane Tarts.
“It’s the reminder of the hustle and bustle in the kitchen during the holidays,” Diaz said.
The judges praised his presentation and the flavors.
“I have one word to say about the flavors in this dish, and that is ‘flawless,’” said judge Lorraine Pascale.
Judge Duff Goldman commented that the texture of the sorbet was a little off.
The main challenge was to take three items from a typical Christmas gift basket — pretzels, pears and chocolate-covered caramels — and make them into a dessert.
Diaz made a Flourless Chocolate Cake — which he said didn't come off as well as he would have liked when he made it for the first challenge — with a pretzel crust and a pear compote. He also made a phyllo basket with pears and goat cheese.
Diaz said pears are his mother’s favorite, and that when she came to the U.S. and they went to the grocery store, “she was so excited to see pears everywhere of different flavors and colors.”
Partway through the main challenge, host Bobby Dean brought out different flavored liqueurs for the chefs to incorporate, and Diaz’s advantage was to assign who received which flavor.
The judges liked the cake but were divided about the baskets. Ultimately, Diaz won the round, beating the other three contestants.
Also advancing to the finale is Steve Konopelski, pastry chef and owner of Turnbridge Point Bed and Breakfast in Denton, Maryland. Konopelski is a Brigham Young University graduate and former Broadway dancer and performer.
His Coconut Financier with Apple Compote in the preheat challenge, made from an apple dipped in milk chocolate and toasted coconut, and his Pear and Chocolate Caramel Cake, which he makes for his mother at Christmas and for his husband's birthday, were enough to get him to the finale.
Both Goldman and Nancy Fuller said his cake was unintentionally hollow, and Pascale praised the complex flavors, including the pretzel crumble and a goat cheese cream.
Bakery owner Maeve Rochford of San Diego is also in the final three. Haley Miller of Beaver Dam, Kentucky, was eliminated Sunday.
Melody Larsen of Mesa, Arizona, who met her husband while living in Provo, was eliminated during the Dec. 6 episode when the contestants were tasked with making a holiday croquembouche.
The final round of "Holiday Baking Championship" airs Sunday evening on Food Network.
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