A successful business often captures the public's attention with a unique product or a new spin on familiar things. Duff Goldman and Valerie Bertinelli challenge the biz bakers to tantalize their customers by combining two sweet treats into one dessert mash-up, such as Cheesecake and Eclairs, Pecan Pie and Donuts, Brownies and Tiramisu, and more. In the end, one baker is eliminated.
What's the tastiest fundraiser at school? A bake sale! For this challenge, hosts Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman are the customers as the kid bakers work in teams to decorate their own bake sale booth and stock it full of their assigned sweets. The baker with the least successful desserts will have to pack up their booth and go home.
To earn a spot in the finale, Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman ask four kid bakers to impress them with a two-flavor sheet pan pie. Then the three final bakers must make a cake that reflects one of Earth's biomes: desert, rainforest or coral reef.
Smurfs are taking over the kitchen! Inspired by the movie "Smurfs," Duff Goldman and Kardea Brown ask the remaining seven bakers to create a Smurf dome cake that illustrates what kind of Smurf they would be! Then, since the Smurfs travel to Australia in the movie, the young bakers must make a cookie decorated to look like an animal found in Australia.
Duff Goldman and Valerie Bertinelli know that in business sometimes you need to go to a fancy restaurant and sit down over a nice meal to seal a deal. To honor this tradition, the bakers must create power lunch imposter desserts, like crab cakes with wedge salad, steak with fries and even escargot! When the check arrives, one baker is sent home.
Duff Goldman and Valerie Bertinelli bring the galaxy into the kitchen by asking the five kid bakers to make colorful and imaginative intergalactic desserts. And because astronauts in space eat freeze-dried foods, the bakers must also use freeze-dried ingredients in their out-of-this-world creations.
For this challenge, Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman are honoring the school library by asking the young bakers to create book desserts. They can make any dessert, as long as it's decorated to look like a book! Sadly, on the last page, one baker's story comes to an end.
Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman know that sometimes you can make something extraordinary out of ingredients you have at home. They challenge the six young bakers to turn packaged biscuit dough into dramatic and delicious monkey bread volcanoes.
Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman bring the fun and stakes of a spelling bee into the kitchen by asking the kid bakers to make spelling bee word tarts with assigned words on top. When the spelling bee ends, the baker that didn't use spell-check will take a bow and leave the competition.
Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman put the eight young bakers in teams and challenge them to each make half a cake that combines with their teammate's half-cake to make a whole cake representing an opposites theme like fire and ice, night and day, land and sea or big and small.