Top Chef Masters, Season 4, Ep 2 Taking the Cake

19 Comments

1. 1
   awfuleyebrow
   Posted August 4, 2012 at 10:18 am

   I have always liked Art, but that was a huge failure. They had plenty of budget to get a ready-made support system for that cake, and really all you need are some drinking straws and cardboard boxes to make it work if you can’t buy one. If you do it right the texture of your frosting won’t affect the stability, only the appearance.

   I’m big fan of Chris Cosentino’s food. He’s also a cooking competition veteran. I’m picking him for the win.

2. 2
   Leto
   Posted August 4, 2012 at 1:49 pm

   Dunno about the cake. It angers me each time I see a competition with bullshit like that. “Hey guys, a wedding cake takes normally 3 days to prep by a professionnal baker, but YOU have 6 hours”. And they fail everytime. Who wouldn’t? The guys who volunteer for wedding cakes in that kind of competitions are just masochists.

3. 3
   featherhead
   Posted August 4, 2012 at 1:50 pm

   Once Art put the cakes back in the oven to “warm ” them to get them out of the pans, I knew he was going to have trouble. Plus it didn’t look like he put any support system in there. Why the hell did he use beige icing for a wedding cake? That looked horrid, I felt badly for the bride.

4. 4
   wasabipeas
   Posted August 4, 2012 at 6:32 pm

   Art seems grumpier since he lost the weight. Maybe he’s hungry!!!

5. 5
   sagittariuskim
   Posted August 4, 2012 at 6:43 pm

   I really don’t understand how chefs figure out portions for 200 people.

   I know the Pisa thing was a joke, but you’re actually right. It was stabilized not too long ago because it was literally on the verge of falling over. Just some random trivia.

   I know nothing about baking cakes, but my mom bakes them all the time. She never reheats a cake that’s already been cooled. If she’s planning on icing it the next day, she cools the layers, takes them out the pan and then loosely wraps them in plastic wrap. And of course you never icing a warm cake because surprise it melts.

6. 6
   sagittariuskim
   Posted August 4, 2012 at 6:46 pm

   Ugh, I hit submit before I was finished.

   So while Art didn’t have a lot time, he made a lot of mistakes that should have been avoided.

   And I remember Gordan Ramsey tearing apart a chef on Kitchen Nightmares for grilling lettuce.

7. 7
   awfuleyebrow
   Posted August 4, 2012 at 7:54 pm

   I am forever grateful that I no longer work as a pastry chef. It is a tough career. However I can say from experience that a wedding cake can be made in 6 hours. Granted I had lots of daily practice and a fully stocked, climate controlled pastry do help me out.

   He should not have volunteered to make that cake if he had never made a tiered cake before. Most of these chefs went to culinary school, some of them at least must have taken a pastry coarse. Proper cake assembly is the second thing you learn after pate a choux.

   I think he probably should have gone home for that. His “I made cakes for Gaga and Oprah” arrogance ruined a customary focal point of most weddings.

   Aside from the bride and groom naturally. And the drunken bridesmaid.

8. 8
   Andyourlittledogtoo
   Posted August 4, 2012 at 10:36 pm

   I accidentally posted this in the episode one thread and it bugs me so I am re-posting it in the proper thread:

   I honestly think that it would be unfair to eliminate someone based on a wedding cake they had to pull out of their ass in a short period of time with no warning. Unless they made it out of gum drops or poisoned it or it was raw or something, I think they should simply get a disappointed lecture and a slap on the wrist. The challenge itself of making a wedding cake under those circumstances is almost guaranteed to result in failure and the judges know that going in. It’s kind of sadistic. Now, if they chef was given complete leeway in what kind of wedding cake to make but they never are, they are supposed to please the demands of the wedding couple who always wants lot of layers etc. A simple oldfashioned cake is never in the cards in these challenges. So I always give the wedding cake chump a pass in these things. But charred lettuce girl needed to go home immediately.

   I understand what you’re saying about ‘they should be able to do it in six hours’ but I think if you are not a pastry chef then that is still a tall order. That said, the LAST thing I would have expected from a wedding cake is some weird pineapple upside down situation going on in there. That particular cake type seems to full of fruit and potential gaps and wetness to lend itself to stacking. But I don’t make wedding cakes so what do I know?

9. 9
   Leto
   Posted August 5, 2012 at 1:53 am

   @awfuleyebrow : You made a wedding cake alone in 6 hours? Wow I’m impressed. I’m in training to be a baker, and we made a wedding cake last month. We were 3 and it took us 11 hours.
   But I have to agree that I don’t know why he waited the next day to turn the cakes out of the tins, and so had to reheat them. That said the cake didn’t seem to be dry, just damn ugly ^^.

   I still call bullshit on making people who aren’t bakers or pastry chefs make wedding cakes in so short of time.

10. 10
    lindaw205
    Posted August 5, 2012 at 5:00 am

    Holy crap, I forgot this was back on!

11. 11
    Another World
    Posted August 5, 2012 at 7:35 am

    Yay! MisRed recapping another show!

    I’m seriously crushing on Chris.

    Art’s cake was awful looking, but I now have a serious craving for pineapple upside down cake. One of the judges said it was missing that “carameled texture” or something like that and since then, I can’t get it out of my tastebuds.

    Looking forward to reading your chef’s view on this season, Red!

12. 12
    MisRed
    Posted August 5, 2012 at 7:37 am

    Ugh. I’m sorry guys, I just noticed the world’s worst spelling gaff- I wrote DESSERT instead of DESERT. Sorry. I foolishly relied on spell-check and didn’t proof-read my work properly. Unfortunately, I had a ton of problems being able to get pictures from these episodes (Bravo makes it impossible and iTunes makes it ALMOST impossible) so that, also, explains why these were posted so late. So… I promise I will try to do better.

    BTW, the bloom is rapidly coming off the rose for me w/ Art. I now know why I liked him so much before… I had limited exposure. I didn’t care for him in this episode. Not sure if it was editing, but I didn’t see him put any supports in that cake.

    Chris is growing on me as is Patricia and her mole.

    Thanks for reading!!

13. 13
    crankyguy
    Posted August 5, 2012 at 9:31 am

    We all know that you aren’t confused by the difference between dessert and desert, so don’t sweat it. I’ll bet even the president of Harvard makes an uncaught typo every now and then. On the other hand, if a pageant mom typed in one when she really meant the other, then we would think she is just undereducated and we would probably be right.

14. 14
    timgunnssister
    Posted August 6, 2012 at 7:17 am

    Curtis is my secret husband. I am glad I’m not alone in his adoration.

    I, too, am slowly not liking Art so much. If he said Lady Gaga’s birthday cake one more time, I was gonna throw the remote at the tv. My only consolation was knowing the repeated clips meant he would absolutely screw up the cake. Pineapple upside wedding cake? Really? And it didn’t occur to you that all that moisture just might be a problem? Even I know better than that.

    I <3 Curtis.

15. 15
    Mummy Butterfly
    Posted August 6, 2012 at 1:28 pm

    @crankyguy – I’m a pregnant Mum and if I type in Dessert instead of Desert, that just means I am SO FREAKING HUNGRY for chocolate that I’m going to eat my children’s stash if I don’t get to the store ASAP.

16. 16
    WaffleBoy
    Posted August 6, 2012 at 3:25 pm

    I’ve got admit that whenever they have to do a wedding cake on Top Chef I always wonder why they don’t do a small multi-layer display cake for the bride and groom to cut and pass out a few pieces from and do the rest of the cakes either off of sheet cakes or in this case single layer cakes back in the kitchen. That’s the standard practice at most large weddings where the bride and groom aren’t shelling out five grand for a cake. It’s a lot easier to bring out a small four layer display cake then to stack 25 pounds of cake into a big pile and hope it doesn’t tip over.
    Aside from that Art Smith has always struck me as a name dropping asshole of almost biblical proportions. And I’ve got no use for any former fattie who makes people run to his damn wedding. Are he and Paula Deen the same person? Has anyone seen them both in the same room together before?

17. 17
    Hol
    Posted August 6, 2012 at 5:27 pm

    Hmm….we I think seeing someone running through the dessert would have been much more fun to see.

18. 18
    vallegirl
    Posted August 6, 2012 at 6:59 pm

    Aside from that Art Smith has always struck me as a name dropping asshole of almost biblical proportions. And I’ve got no use for any former fattie who makes people run to his damn wedding.

    First Idiocracy and now this. It’s like you live in my brain. Because I’m not only not going to any wedding where I’m required to run through DC heat and humidity I’m reconsidering my relationship with someone who’s such a massive asshole that he’d ask me to do that?

    And is the Lincoln Memorial really that romantic a location?

19. 19
    timgunnssister
    Posted August 9, 2012 at 11:42 am

    Didn’t Lincoln free the gays? Or am I confused?