With eight out of a dozen bakers remaining on “Kids Baking Championship” Season 13, the competition is intensifying.
During Monday’s episode, which featured a theme inspired by Animal Planet’s “Puppy Bowl,” the judges revealed that the group of eight would be dividing into pairs and going head-to-head for the first time this season.
The stakes were fairly high: The winner of each face-off would have a guaranteed spot in the competition next week, while the loser could potentially face elimination.
At the start, it seemed like it would be smooth sailing for Utah baker Arielle Yang, who has been a standout contestant all season — and been named a top baker for three out of four episodes.
But the face-off ended up being one of Arielle’s biggest challenges (so far) in the competition. Here’s a look at how the 11-year-old baker from Sandy fared.
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At the start of the episode, all of the bakers rushed to pick up footballs that had their assignments attached. Arielle and 11-year-old Aria Karayil of California became direct competitors as they both selected mini-layer cakes.
The two bakers had 2 hours and 30 minutes to make a dozen mini-layer cakes decorated with paw prints — all while real dogs played football in the background.
Arielle seemed visibly relieved to have selected mini-layer cakes for her assignment — “Cakes are my specialty, so I think I’ll be OK,” she said.
Aria, on the other hand, seemed concerned for a few reasons: Arielle was one of the toughest competitors, she’d never made mini-layer cakes before, and there were cute puppies running around and distracting her.
“She’s been in the top a lot of times, and I’ve never been,” Aria said. “I’m going to have to step up my game.”
Arielle chose to make a strawberry mini-layer cake with vanilla buttercream and a yuzu pastry cream (yuzu is a citrus plant of Chinese origin). Aria opted for a vanilla mini-layer cake with a passion fruit curd and raspberry buttercream.
Aria seemed to struggle throughout the two and a half hours — at one point, she couldn’t get her curd to thicken, and near the end, she was having a hard time icing her cakes and was concerned she wouldn’t get them all done in time.
Timing was not even close to being an issue for Arielle. In fact, the only hurdle Arielle seemed to face came when the judges announced partway through the challenge that the bakers would also have to create a dessert bark from scratch.
Arielle quickly decided she wanted to swirl chocolate and white chocolate together and mix in pretzels for her bark — but then judge Kardea Brown walked by and hinted that her competitor was also using pretzels and that she might want to consider a different add-in to stand out (she went with graham crackers and marshmallows).
And then it came time for the taste test.
Aria was up first. While she was able to finish icing all of her cakes, the judges noted that they were a bit messy. That ended up being the main criticism.
The judges then turned to Arielle’s cakes. Duff Goldman praised the definition of Arielle’s paw prints, and Brown said she liked the rustic appearance of the cakes — though she also noted that the cakes weren’t iced consistently.
Both judges praised Arielle’s balance of flavors, but her cakes came with one significant issue: They were too soft — more like “cake pie,” the judges said.
While the judges said it was a tough decision, they ultimately ended up sending Arielle’s competitor, Aria, through to the next round.
That meant Arielle could potentially be eliminated. But at the end of the episode, as the bottom four bakers awaited their fate, the judges revealed that 10-year-old Ella Hayek of Ann Arbor, Michigan, would be going home.
So Arielle is still in the running for the $25,000 prize.
Next week’s episode, airing Feb. 10, will challenge the seven remaining bakers to create “Smurf”-themed dome cakes.
‘I think I worked well under pressure’
Arielle, who is a sixth grade student at the Waterford School in Sandy, previously told the Deseret News that while the time limits proved to be a challenge throughout the show, it generally ended up working in her favor.
“I think I worked well under pressure,” she said.
Baking has always been an activity that calms her down, so even amid the stress of it all, Arielle said she felt fairly relaxed. And under the pressure of the judges and the cameras and the time limits, Arielle said she was proud of herself for being able to bake new things and try out new techniques in the kitchen.
“At first I was really nervous, but I was also really excited, too, because my brain was like, ‘I’m on TV!’” she told the Deseret News. “And it was also really surreal, because I saw the show on TV before. But to see it in real life was really cool.”
Episodes of “Kids Baking Championship” air Mondays through March 3, culminating in a season finale that features the final three contestants baking zoo-inspired cakes for a shot at the $25,000 prize.