Last night saw another Masterchef contestant departed the show here’s how it went down.
Last night’s elimination challenge was between Emelia, Sarah and Tracy. But recognising the strength of her fellow cooks, Tracy chose to use her immunity pin to save herself, a decision that placed Renae automatically into the elimination challenge.
The trio were asked to recreate a choc top from famous gelato bar Messina. It seemed like a straightforward challenge. But with multiple elements and just two hours to cook, this choc top – consisting of salted caramel soft serve gelato, Italian meringue with a ganache, amaretti biscuits and a sugar cone – was far from simple.
Sarah’s first mistake was over-blitzing almonds for the amaretti biscuits, which turned them into almond paste not almond meal. She had to use her ingenuity to dry the mixture out into the oven.
Emelia and Sarah chose to forgo some cooking time on the salted caramel for the gelato, in a bid to press on through the lengthy recipe.
With just 20 minutes left in the cook, it looked like Sarah would fail to plate sugar cones, but in the final seconds she rolled them into shape straight out of the oven.
Delivering high praise for Renae’s salted caramel gelato, the judges set the benchmark for the remaining desserts. Having struggled through the entire cook, Sarah’s mistakes were obvious. Her ice cream tasted like salty milk and, missing a caramel hit, the whole dessert was out of kilter.
The judges enjoyed the flavour of Emelia’s sugar cones, but like Sarah’s ice cream, it lacked punch.
With similar mistakes from Emelia and Sarah, the judges had a tough decision to make. Emelia scraped through with just slightly more caramel flavour and Sarah was eliminated from the MasterChef Australia kitchen for a second time.
Sarah is now focusing on her future in food and is working as a junior chef at the highly rated Saint Crispin restaurant in Collingwood, Melbourne. She is creating recipes for her new website and will shortly release an e-cookbook called Sugar & Spice.
Masterchef Airs 7:30 Sunday – Thursday on Ten
