Duff Goldman and Kardea Brown are embracing bugs and the soil they call home when they challenge the five remaining bakers to make edible terrariums featuring assigned insects. Plus, since bugs love flowers, the bakers must create an edible flower to feature in their terrarium.
Everyone needs a place to call home -- especially farm animals! Duff Goldman and Kardea Brown test the bakers' skills by asking them to build yummy cookie animal houses. The choice of cookie and flavor is up to the bakers, but Duff demonstrates the best ways to glue together cookie panels before the challenge. For a twist, the competitors must also whip up haystack cookies and a water trough of dipping sauce for the hungry animals.
Twelve young sibling teams step into the pastry school style kitchen and learn that they must try out for their spot in the competition. Hosts and judges Duff Goldman and Kardea Brown put the teams through two rounds of skills challenges to assess which 10 teams will move on and which two teams will be eliminated before the competition even starts! In the first skills test, the nervous teams put up their best cupcake. For the second skills test, the teams must create a pie from scratch that's good enough to prove they have what it takes to compete. First impressions are everything, and in the end, two teams do not make it through the tryouts.
Why have one kind of pie when you can have two? Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman task the four young bakers with creating a two-flavor sheet pan pie. Successfully making two different delicious pie fillings and a tasty crust plus great decorations will land three bakers in the finale.
In the cookie face challenge, Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman challenge each of the five bakers to create a giant cookie face with 3-D features that communicate an assigned expression like happy, sad, angry, surprised or excited.
Desserts get a balanced hit of sweet, savory, bitter and sour from Chinese five-spice powder, which is a mix of star anise, Szechuan peppercorns, fennel, cinnamon and clove. For this challenge, Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman ask the seven young bakers to create Chinese five-spice desserts to stay in the game.
In the grand tradition of dessert rivalries, hosts and judges Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman divide the 10 kid bakers into two teams for a good old-fashioned chocolate vs. peanut butter throwdown. To up the stakes, the winner of the challenge will earn immunity from elimination for their entire team! After the dust settles, one baker from the losing team is eliminated.
To celebrate candy in all its glory, the five remaining kid bakers must use three types of candy in a dessert but also keep it balanced, because it's a fine line between candymonium and candy overload!