I Tried A "MasterChef" Dessert Challenge And Here's What Happened

TL;DR: Read the instructions on your ice cream maker first.

Hello, my name is Dean, and I'm a fan of MasterChef Australia. In fact, here's how I constantly picture myself in the opening credits:

Tj Edwards

Imagine it. Me, rockin' them Katy Perry beats.

I also consider myself a pretty decent home cook, so when I saw Eloise from the current season win the immunity challenge for her dessert, I thought, Whateva mate, I got this. I get passionate about food.

Network Ten

For those playing at home, the immunity challenge requires one of the contestants to pick a bunch of ingredients and go up against a professional in order to win an “immunity pin”. The pin is kept in a glass case buried deep beneath the MasterChef kitchen and can only be opened by George shouting “Boom boom, shake the room.”

That last part may or may not be entirely factual.

Eloise's dish got a grand total of 28/30. She won immunity thanks to her creation, peanut butter chocolate. Here's the breakdown:

Channel 10 / Dean Nye

A colleague of mine said that it looked like "something I would throw together while on my period". Nevertheless...

So, the rules: I had to follow the recipe and use only the ingredients Eloise used*. I also gave myself 75 minutes to complete all the elements. Seems easy enough.

Dean Nye

*Shit hit the fan when Eloise realised she had no eggs for her chocolate mousse. So she had to improvise using thickened cream as a stabiliser – something you normally wouldn't do.

The first step was the peanut butter ice cream, which basically involved mixing cream, condensed milk, and peanut butter in a bowl. So, pretty easy. Until the instructions said "Pour mixture into prechilled ice cream machine." My first error, LOL.

Tj Edwards

We'll get to this a little later, but basically when I watch MasterChef I assume they use ice cream makers that also chill the ingredients. I assumed this piece-of-shit one I had did the same. The box it came in had no instructions, so I simply poured the ingredients in and turned it on.

Ohhh, how disappointed I was about to be.

Second step was the biscuit crumb. Like me, this was very basic.

Dean Nye / Via Nailed it.

Combine butter, crushed macadamia nuts, brown sugar, and flour in a bowl. Pour onto a baking tray and bake for 10 minutes! In the words of my idol, Ina Garten, "How easy is that?!"

Next, the chocolate mousse. OK, there was a flaw in my plan. You see, in the MasterChef kitchen they have access to all this fancy equipment including gas-charged cream whippers. LOL, righto, when they retail for $150-plus you can fuck right off. It's tough enough feeding my avocado addiction.

Network Ten / Dean Nye

You should have heard the laughs I got on the phone ringing around kitchen supply stores asking for anything in the range of $25 to $50.

I resorted to doing it the way my ancestors taught me – with a state-of-the-art ELECTRIC beater.

Dean Nye

Thick as in stupid. 😏😏😏😏😏

Before I cracked the final element, I checked how the peanut butter ice cream was coming along. I reached in and had a feel, but the machine wasn't cold. Hey, I trust technology: I've seen Terminator!

Dean Nye

Then it was time for the last part of the dish – the whiskey caramel sauce (now you're speaking my language). Can I also add: I still had about 30 minutes to go. LOL. *searches for the challenge*

Dean Nye

Note: I'm actually doing "Dry May". That's a working title, but you get the idea.

Let me point out that the contestants on MasterChef have the luxury of not having to do the washing up. Ugh, GOALS. I, on the other hand, had two bowls I had to constantly rinse, one whisk, and a tiny-ass sink.

Tj Edwards

At this stage I was pretty cocky. I mean, I was following a recipe so it was definitely easier than coming up with the concept on the fly, but I couldn't possibly see how you couldn't do this in 75 minutes! And that includes having to whip by hand the chocolate mousse AND wash up.

With about 20 minutes to go, it hit me! The ice cream maker was not cold, because I didn't freeze the container prior to using it. Feeling like an A-grade dickhead I quickly took the still-at-room-temperature ingredients out of the machine and whacked it into the freezer faster than you could say "me on a plate".

Dean Nye

I suddenly felt the need to go into a studio somewhere, look off camera, and tell the world that the ice cream was the hero of my dish – and without it, I was probably going to go home.

With 10 minutes to go in my challenge I checked my ice cream, if you could call it that. It was runny AF. There was no way I was serving this to the judges, aka my mouth.

Tj Edwards

I decided to up the ante and hit the "power freeze" button on my freezer (just like my ancestors did).

Now I was thinking the ice cream would be ready in another 30 minutes.

FOUR HOURS LATER I was able to plate up. So yeah, I failed at the whole time-challenge thing and I felt like an ass, because I was so cocky about it from the start. Don't @ me. I've never used an ice cream maker in my life. It's the sort of thing you buy an old relative at Christmas, and they use it once before it's boxed away and used as a footrest.

Dean Nye

So here we are. I'm not gonna lie: I think I did a pretty good job of re-creating what was labeled at the time as the "dessert of the season". My crumb was spot-on, my whiskey sauce* was dark and fragrant, and my ice cream was set.

Network Ten / Dean Nye

The only thing that I was worried about was that chocolate mousse. While Eloise's was soft and aerated, mine kinda looked like I should be scooping it up with a plastic bag over my hand.

*Whiskey sauce is there – I promise I didn't skol it.

Final thoughts: This dish was way too rich and heavy. Not having the cream whipper to make the mousse light and fluffy ruined it IMO. The cold ice cream on top solidified the mousse, turning it back into a thick ganache by the time I ate it. Also, the whiskey caramel is quite strong, so I would recommend less is more.

Dean Nye

Overall I was proud of myself for getting a dish on the plate, but not proud that in 2017 I didn't have the proactivity to Google "ice cream maker instructions", and actually get the dish done in 75 minutes.

Also, add this to "stuff I wish I had known earlier".

Eloise Praino @Eloise_Praino

@Dean_Nye Bugger. The one I made was really light and served warm - probably can't replicate that properly without the gun but ah well!

Sat May 20 12:28:37 UTC+0000 2017

Served warm? You lied to me, MasterChef, you lied to me.