Four unforgettable kid bakers head to the North Pole to show some appreciation for its wintry residents. While Santa soaks up all the credit during the holidays, the elves, snowmen, gingerbread men and penguins need love too! Hosts Duff Goldman and Kardea Brown challenge the kids to bake up handmade gifts of appreciation for these "North Polers," as they like to be called, and the kid who bakes the best gift will go home with a $10,000 prize package of seasonal baking tools and equipment.
Fruit is an important element of baking, so Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman challenge the final three bakers to make fruit cakes, but not the holiday kind. Instead, they have to make cakes that look like actual fruit! One baker will walk away with the title of Kids Baking Champion.
For this Italian-bakery themed challenge, hosts Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman task the remaining six bakers with creating Italian rainbow cookies featuring classic flavors like apricot, cherry, almond, lemon, hazelnut or espresso.
As a bakery owner, Duff Goldman receives some VERY unusual requests from customers, and he's using them as the inspiration for a "Make It Work" desserts challenge. In this test, Duff and Valerie will ask the bakers to make a delicious dessert using an unexpected flavor combination, like strawberry and balsamic or banana and grapefruit. The kid bakers who can go with the flow move on, while the least successful dessert maker goes home.
Hosts and judges Duff Goldman and Kardea Brown have noticed that a particular dessert can be easily shaped into animals like a turtle, a panda or a frog ... but the dessert itself can be tricky. So, for the macaron animals challenge, Duff shows the kid bakers how to create a silky smooth macaron batter before baking time starts. Then, since the animal macarons need a place to rest, the bakers must give their animals an edible habitat to hang out in.
Say "cheese" -- it's picture day! Hosts and judges Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman meet the 12 kid bakers through picture-day portrait cakes. Each cake must have an edible photo on top and custom emojis that show off each baker's hobbies and interests. And don't blink, because in the end, the least successful baker goes home.
There is one event that is the staple of any baking business, and it keeps Duff busy all year round -- birthdays! In order to find out which flavor they’ll be making, the kid bakers must record a commercial for their baking business and sell Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman on why they'd make a great birthday cake. The top commercial maker will assign the flavors, and the best young baker wins $25,000 and the title of Kids Baking Champion!
It's school spirit day, and the theme is tie-dye! Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman challenge the kid bakers to make tie-dyed doughnuts and ice cream with two different flavored swirls. It's a lot of color, a lot of flavors and a lot of fun as the four remaining bakers compete for the three spots in the finale. When the day is done, one baker will go home.
All businesses need a logo, so Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman task the biz bakers with putting their own design on a logo cake. The kids will go head-to-head in a team challenge that finally decides which cake flavor is better, chocolate or vanilla. The winning cake earns immunity for their whole team, and one baker from the losing team is sent home.
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.