Top Moments of Chopped After Hours: Hot Stuff

The judges are challenged with the dessert basket from the Hot Stuff episode, which includes chile pepper honey, devil's food tres leches cake, pink lemons and canary melon. Alex loves the ingredients, saying, "I love when there are sort of savory components in a dessert-related basket. I'm super excited about the spice and making that work."

Maneet cuts no corners with her dessert, making intricate tuiles with the chile pepper honey and lemon curd with the pink lemons. As Marc comes over to steal some of her honey, Ted asks, "Marc's pilfering through your ingredients already?" Maneet responds, "It's alright — we are a family."

In the last three minutes of cooking, Marc attempts to make a roulade out of cake and the lemon dressing he made. It starts falling apart, so he changes his plan. "I've got another plan," Marc says. "It's called plan B — it's my transformation."

Alex shares with Ted the secret to good cookies, which is creaming the butter and the sugar. Her advice for Chopped contestants: "I know it's hard when you're nervous to take the time to do stuff like this, then when the judges eat it and it's delicious, it's pretty exciting."

"It's really a high-wire act with you chefs. You cook everything so hot," Ted says as the clock runs down. Alex responds confidently, "We are hot, Ted." Everything gets on the plate in time; as they taste, Maneet reveals to Marc that she had tasted his ice cream while he was cooking. Ted commends them all: "Three super-delicious, spicy desserts whipped up in just half an hour. Anybody ever tell you guys you're kind of good at this?"