It’s MasterChef Australia 2023 episode 17 and last night’s Mystery Box challenge sent three cooks into the kitchen to battle it out in a Pressure Test.
The stakes were high because either Declan, Alice, or Grace was being sent packing from the competition.
The three cooks are greeted by judges Melissa Leong, Jock Zonrillo, and Andy Allen and are introduced to the legendary chef behind the beloved gelato brand Messina, Donato Toce.
In a nod towards Nostalgia Week, the cooks were tasked with creating a Vienetta-looking ice cream cake called Messinetta, which looked surprisingly simple.
However, the catch was revealed when Donato cut into the ice cream cake and revealed the complicated internal structure.
Inside the dessert was a strawberry gel that was set inside a vanilla gelato square, which was inside a chocolate gelato square and covered in vanilla crème chantilly waves with multiple tempered chocolate layers for the classic Viennetta crunch.
Declan, Alice, and Grace all looked slightly overwhelmed by the task at hand; however, were ready to fight for their lives place in the competition.
The Cook
The entire cook section of the Pressure Test was nothing short of shambles and all three contestants had problems throughout the elimination round. This made for great viewing, but it was a bit of a rough trot for Declan, Alice, and Grace.
When the task was revealed, Alice started with a not-so-quiet confidence.
“I love science, and I love baking. So, I’m excited about this,” she said with a smile.
However, moments after saying she felt “pretty organised” her upbeat mood quickly shift as she made her first blunder, forgetting to clean out her ice-cream churner between making her vanilla and chocolate gelato.
The lapse had devastating consequences and left some of the vanilla gelato frozen to the base of the machine.
As a result, she had to chip away the leftover frozen vanilla gelato, which cost her valuable time and seemingly left her feeling frazzled. She faced more problems down the track when she discovered that both her vanilla and chocolate gelato was overset.
Meanwhile, Declan started the competition off very strong and quickly took the lead; something he said he wasn’t paying too much attention to.
“Hopefully I’m going at a good steady pace, but I’m not turning around and looking where the girls are up to,” he admitted.
Despite having his Immunity Pin proudly gleaming on his chest, he decided early on that he wouldn’t be using it in the challenge.
“Game plan for my pin today is to not use it, I’d love to take it with me in the competition for when numbers get a bit smaller,” he said.
However, like Alice, he hit a speedbump when he misread an element of his recipe and his tempered chocolate ended up bowed, which risked the entire structure of the Messinetta.
The mistake meant that he had to go back and re-do the element, which deducted a large chunk of time for him at the assembly stage.
While Alice and Declan certainly faced some obstacles, it was Grace who struggled throughout the entire cook. She fell behind when she was unable to get the brix levels right in her first component, the strawberry gel element.
After she completed the first step, Grace’s stress levels peaked when Andy tasted her vanilla ice cream and suggested that something had gone wrong. She made the ballsy move of tasting Alice’s gelato for guidance.
“I’m tasting it, and it’s not as sweet as Alice’s gelato. So, all I can do at this point is bring some more sugar into this gelato to hopefully save it,” she explained.
The Judging
Declan was first up to the judge’s bench, and Andy questioned why he decided not to use his Immunity Pin in the Pressure Test challenge.
“There are two ways it’s going to go. One, we taste the dish, it’s epic, you keep the pin on your apron. The second is, we cut this open, something’s wrong with it [and] you get sent home,” the Judge warned.
“It looks a little rough around the edges,” he added after Declan left the room.
However, it seems Andy’s worries were unfounded, as all three judges raved about Messinetta and Jock said he “can’t pick holes in it”.
Alice was next and her earlier confidence had all but disappeared.
“My main concerns are the form, it doesn’t look exactly like the original, and then that gelato that melted on the counter,” she said.
Alice was right, her overset – and consequently melted – gelato was her undoing. The judges found that the issue caused Messinetta’s texture to be icy and dense which widened the gap between her version and Donato’s original.
At this point, it looked like Alice’s only saving grace was the fact that Grace was up next. The 24-year-old was feeling very nervous about her final dish but said she “didn’t want to give up”.
Jock had similar doubts, saying that he didn’t “think this was going to be great”. Fortunately for Grace, her spontaneous choices through the challenge managed to save her dish.
“The strawberry in the centre is delicious, the gelato is beautiful, it’s creamy,” Jock said with surprise.
The Verdict
Declan won the best Messinetta of the day, and Jock declared that it was “so similar to Donato’s in taste”.
The judges said that the texture of Alice’s gelato was a “little bit off”, and she was eliminated from the competition.
MasterChef Australia continues at 7.30 pm on Wednesday, May 31 on 10 and 10Play.
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