[Jonathan] It's the scariest time of the year!
-[all screaming] -[Titus] Welcome to the jungle.
[Jonathan] Two teams have already gone home.
You're done in this Halloween Wars.
[Jonathan] Tonight, it's the final qualifying round.
Don't touch it, don't touch it!
[Jonathan] Two more teams will move on to the main competition,
for a chance to win the $25,000 grand prize!
-[gasps] -[screams]
[Jonathan] Halloween Wars starts right now!
[spooky music]
[werewolf howling]
Welcome to Halloween Wars!
It's our final qualifying round.
Four teams have already moved on to the main competition.
And only two teams here tonight can join them.
But first, you'll have to impress our judges.
Aarti Sequeira, and Shinmin Li!
Now, let's see what our haunted house has in mind
for our first round, the Small Scare!
[thunder clap]
A premonition is telling me to check the mailbox...
Oh!
And here's two messages.
One is nice,
And one is...
...not so nice.
Good and evil.
Two sides to every...
-...cake. -[all laugh]
[Jonathan] And for the first round,
using the power of cake, sugar and pumpkin,
that is exactly what you will have to show.
Two distinct faces in conflict.
One good, and one...
[laughs maniacally]...evil.
-[all chuckling] -[Jonathan] And speaking of evil,
you only have 45 minutes to do it.
-[all groan] -You got it!
The winning team will get first pick
of the pumpkin patch in the next round.
All you pumpkin artists know exactly
what an advantage that can be.
Your 45 minutes start...
-...now! -Come on, come on!
[Teresa] Okay, here we go, here we go.
[Titus] What are we thinking?
[Kristina] It has to be scary. It has to be something creepy.
[Aaron] What if we just take the most
pure of the good and the evil?
It's like, light versus dark.
Our team is Sweet Screams.
My name is Yaya Graham, and I am a cake artist.
Our sugar artist is Amy,
and our pumpkin carver is Aaron Reimschiissel.
What about, like, a cherub?
Getting taken over by a devil, maybe?
[Aaron] So, like, half-devil,
half-cherub?
[Yaya] For our Small Scare,
we decided to do a cherub angel baby,
being possessed by the devil.
And those are the two conflicting forces that we have.
What if we did, like, a creepy teddy bear?
-Ooh! -Ooh, that would be good.
We're the Spice Ghouls! [laughs]
My name is Kristina Marie Patenaude,
I'm a pumpkin carver.
Our cake artist is Elan Parker,
our sugar artist is Teresa Shurilla.
So let's split this bear literally down the middle.
-[Kristina] Straight down the middle? Okay. -[Elan] Yeah.
[Kristina] We decided to go with a teddy bear,
because it's something that's typically known
as being very cute and cuddly,
but what if the teddy bear was a little bit evil?
That would be terrifying.
-Gnomes? -Yeah, like gnomes or elves?
I'm Vikki Peña, and I'm a sugar artist.
We are the Sugar Spirits.
Our pumpkin carver is Titus.
Our cake artist is Maythe, or May.
We've got a set of twin gnomes,
one of them is very in love with holidays,
however, his twin starts smashing all the decorations
and that's definitely very sad for the first one.
-I'm gonna go grab the pumpkins I need, guys. -Okay!
[Kristina] Hustle, baby, hustle!
I need a small one.
[Aaron] I found it! Right under your nose.
[Kristina] Halloween Wars.
This is one of the most incredible
places to show your art,
especially if you're a pumpkin carver, so I can't wait!
Hopefully it'll be enough thickness for both of the faces on there.
[Yaya] Forty-five minutes is not a long time
at all to complete this challenge.
[Aaron] If I can get the cherub nose right,
I think it'll give it a nice look.
[Yaya] Because of that, we decide to have him
do two faces on one pumpkin,
and let that be the focal point of our piece.
So we make, like, a little neck for the baby.
[Yaya] I'm gonna be doing the shoulder portion of the cake.
I'll also be doing the wings
for the baby out of wafer paper.
See, and then we have a whole bunch of feathers.
Just getting some gold isomalt going for the halo.
[Yaya] Amy will do the pitchfork,
the horns and the halo, out of isomalt.
[Amy] I'm just cooling it down,
and making it pliable to shape.
-[Aaron] What do you guys think? -[Yaya] Oh, wow!
-Ooh, I like it. It's looking really good. -Sweet.
What would you guys be emphasizing
to really highlight in a piece like this?
[Shinmin] I would love to see them really focus
on the stark difference between the good and the evil.
I don't even care if they have just one body with two faces,
I think that would be the best way to do this so quickly.
[Amy] My sugar's coming along, I have the red going,
so I can make the pitchfork and the horns.
-[Aarti] I would say keep it as simple as possible. -[Jonathan] Yes!
Give us good, give us evil, nothing else! I don't care.
-[thunder clap] -Thirty minutes left!
[groans]
[Vikki] Third of the way there, guys!
[Titus] Look at the body on this guy.
[Vikki] He's gonna be real cute.
[Titus] Trying to create elbows,
so my arms will pop out of the body.
Bow-chika-wow-wow.
[Vikki] Titus is gonna be doing the good gnome,
from a couple of different pumpkins.
[sighs] Stabbing this cake.
This baby's not going anywhere.
[Vikki] May is doing the evil gnome,
made out of rice cereal,
covered with modeling chocolate.
[May] I'm gonna start covering the hat.
[Vikki] It's finally starting to stick to itself,
so it looks like I should be able to pull it,
now that it's cooled down a little bit.
[Vikki] I'm gonna be responsible for the blown sugar pumpkin.
Almost there. It's getting nice, it's almost like Play-Doh.
It's kinda nice.
Yeah, look at that, guys. Coming together.
Ooh. be careful. That's a big torch.
Talk about, uh, spirits!
[May chuckles]
Okay, I'm building the face,
-with molding chocolate eyes, okay? -[Titus] Yeah.
[Kristina] Go, go, go, go!
[Kristina] All three of us are very ambitious.
I will be carving the pumpkin head of our killer teddy bear.
I'm almost finished,
ganaching all my extremities.
Just trying to make them smooth.
[Kristina] Elan will be constructing
the teddy bear's body and limbs,
made out of rice cereal treats, and cake.
All righty, I got some good black. There we go.
Hot sugar on the table, be careful.
[Kristina] Teresa will be creating the sugar eyes,
the knife, and the claws.
[Elan] Rounding out this belly...
Girls, where we at so far?
I gotta pull the stuffing.
I'm doing the stuff for the claws, and whatnot.
For me, I just finished the legs and arms.
I'm working on this body.
And once I get this done and the ganache sets,
I'm gonna start covering in fondant.
-Twenty minutes left! -Oh, no!
Crap. Okay.
Are you kidding me?
I feel like it's only been, like, five minutes.
[Aaron] It's a short amount of time.
I just need to get this white on.
I like what Aaron has done so far in this short amount of time.
There's so much detail in that face.
-[Aaron] There we go! -[Yaya] it looks good to me.
[Aaron] It's getting the job done.
[Amy] So I'm just mixing a little bit of yellow
and red and doing some flames,
to kind of put around the bottom of the pitchfork.
I don't wanna put the pitchfork on until the end,
so we need to get the head on.
How you doing over there, Titus?
I'm doing okay. I don't know about coloring this guy.
[Aarti] I'm hoping to see this come together,
especially with such little time left.
I can just get this stem to pop on there,
and then the pumpkin will be done,
and I can probably start helping you
-get colored out, Titus. -That would be huge.
[Teresa] Stuffing coming.
[Shinmin] So Teresa's spinning the sugar right there, it's like this comb,
-basically, with lots of metal teeth. -Uh-huh.
[Shinmin] and it drips onto the sugar,
and when you whisk it like that,
you get fine, fine threads of sugar.
On the fly, it's a little tricky.
Because it's hot!
Ten minutes!
-[Yaya] Oh, man. -[Elan] Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh...
The time goes by so quick.
All right, now, on time, I'm feeling the crunch.
I'll do what I gotta do.
I can just try to cover,
as much as humanly possible, in fondant.
I can't do any type of detail work.
[Kristina] There's 10 minutes left,
and we do not have a complete character on the board yet.
This is larger than I thought.
I'm gonna have to cut this down.
[Kristina] We might be in trouble.
Oh my god, this is not even funny.
Oh my gosh.
-Kristina, I'm gonna need you to put that head on. -[Kristina] Right here?
Elan looked like she was struggling,
with the sizing of the arms and the legs of the bear.
That bear only has one arm and one leg.
And we've got 10 minutes.
[Kristina] We're beginning to realize that this piece
is not gonna be completed the way that we had hoped.
At this point, we just need it to be assembled.
All right, dagger, dagger, dagger.
-Is that a good dagger? -Okay. Yeah!
[Elan] Oh my god. We need to hurry.
[Vikki] Titus, we're definitely gonna have to move
-a little bit faster if we're gonna get finished on time. -[Titus] All right...
[Aarti] Sugar Spirits, a little while ago,
-their creation looked pretty Christmas-y, to me. -[Jonathan] Mm-hmm.
But now...[chuckles]
It's funny what a little eyeshadow can do, people!
-[Jonathan] Oh, honey, tell me about it! -[judges laughing]
It is definitely looking like an evil gnome!
[May] How you think about this?
I think it's coming out terrifying.
-Definitely. -[laughs] Well, that's what we need!
Five minutes! You have five minutes left!
Guys, five minutes!
[both] Oh my god!
Everyone just put their foot on the accelerator.
It's going to go right in the center in between these two things.
Right here? Okay.
[speaking indistinctly]
[Aaron] Just shove it in.
[Yaya] Wait, but don't put too much pressure on.
[Aaron] I do have a hammer.
Put it on.
Hand me the pitchfork.
One minute. You have one minute.
Oh.
Come on, we got this.
I think we're ready to break him. Can I use that?
Yes.
Yes!
It's looking good. It's looking good.
We just have to put the halo on.
Where's the halo?
Oh, shoot. Oh, shoot.
Get that head on there, guys.
Oh my gosh, okay.
For Spice Ghouls, this is, like, a Hail Mary.
[Jonathan] I mean, they have a few seconds left
and they still have to get this whole thing put together.
I can't.
It's okay. Go.
[Jonathan] Ten!
-I don't have time. I have to use my... -Yeah, just...
[Jonathan] Seven!
Six!
Five!
Four!
Three!
Two!
One!
Hands off your displays.
Oh, my.
This is not good.
It's not.
[Kristina] Without the knife in place,
I think it's going to be difficult for the judge to see
that we have two separate entities, here,
which was a major part of the challenge.
All right, Sugar Spirits. Tell us about your two-faced creation.
Uh, so the good gnome is made out of, uh, carved pumpkin and butternut squash
and then we've got, uh, the evil gnome,
that's made out of modelling chocolate, crispy cereals and, uh, cake.
Your two gnomes have so much personality.
Your good gnome,
the way that his little hands are right in front of his face, he's shocked.
He's in horror.
How could you kill the pumpkin?
There's just so much storytelling going on
just by the way that you positioned hands
and you used color and texture in their faces.
I love that you have two very, very strong characters.
You got that sugar so paper thin.
If you had made that sugar just a little bit thicker,
you would get more texture in the actual shell of the pumpkin.
-Thank you, Sugar Spirits. -Thank you, thank you.
We decided to do a cherub angel baby
being overtaken by the devil,
kind of possessed and turning into an evil version of the cherub.
[Aarti] It's so clear what your story is.
If you didn't explain, I would know exactly what's happening here.
The sugar work is impeccable.
The super straight line in the fork is actually not easy to do.
It's like you guys mind melded before you came up with this.
It's seamless.
I will say, you put all your characters in that pumpkin.
I want to see the other mediums really come through.
Thank you, Sweet Screams.
Thank you.
[Elan] Little Timmy's teddy bear ended up getting ripped by his dog.
His mom decided to go to the antique store
to find a new bear to sew it up with.
Little did she know, the other bear was actually an evil, possessed bear.
So with each stitch that she took,
the evilness started to take over the entire bear.
Really going for that story, aren't we? I like it.
You had such a strong strategy here
and I really commend you for it.
With 45 minutes, you said, I'm just going to make the one person
with two different sides of the face.
The disappointment here is just with the pumpkin,
not really being able to see a strong difference between the two characters.
I definitely noticed you guys had trouble with structure.
You were using a lot of time to fix that arm, right?
I think you could have left it off and added some of the stuffing there
and it would have completely just sold the story even more.
-Yeah. -Yep.
Thank you very much.
[all] Thank you.
[Jonathan] Teams.
You were asked to give us displays that were split in personality.
But the judges weren't split about which team did the best job.
The winning team will get first pick of the pumpkin patch
in the next round.
And the winning team is...
And the winning team is
Sweet Screams.
Congratulations, you've earned first pick of the pumpkins.
Yes.
We feel great that we won the small scare
even though we knew we would win.
It's like this great boost of confidence, you know?
Teams. It's time for our second round.
The spine-chiller.
For this spine-chiller challenge,
we want you to take two of the scariest monsters imaginable
and then combine them into one maniacal mega monster.
Okay.
And it's not just monsters we're mashing up.
It's flavors, too.
You must combine two seemingly different flavors
into one perfect-tasting element.
We've assigned these ingredients randomly to each team.
Sweet screams.
You will work with strawberry and tomato.
-Hmm. -Okay.
Spice ghouls.
-Coffee and avocado. -Oh.
Sugar Spirits.
-Sriracha and peanut butter. -What?
In the end, only two teams will survive
and move forward into the carnage of the main competition.
That means for one team,
your hopes of winning
will have to rest in peace.
You've got just five hours.
And your time starts
now.
All right, guys. Redemption tour.
What about, like, a zombie?
I love zombies, but I think they're done quite a bit.
Yeah, they're kind of overdone.
Everyone does zombies. Yeah.
Medusa.
I love Medusa. It will be tricky.
-With the snakes. -Lots of snakes, yeah.
Grim reaper with Medusa mash up?
Turns people to their gravestone.
[laughing]
[Yaya] Our piece is the grim reaper bringing us death
and Medusa turning you to your tombstone.
We have to do strawberry and tomato.
Oh, strawberry and tomato.
Maybe if we make them into, like, a little, like, bonbon or candy.
For our tasting element, we're going to make a strawberry tomato bonbon
topped with balsamic almonds.
We plan on hiding the tasting element
inside the flowers that we're going to have.
I think that sounds like a solid plan.
-I think so. -Yeah.
Okay, so two monsters.
What if we did, like, a demon?
Like, a demon Frankenstein?
Demonstein.
-[laughing] -Demonstein.
Man or woman?
-Woman, come on. -Yep. Let's do a woman.
Our Demonstein comes from the underworld to terrorize this land.
The little, magical mushroom characters try to kill the demon
but they fail.
The demon takes their magic
and uses it to repair its body parts with the nature around it.
Avocado and coffee. Are we, like, embracing this issue?
Yeah.
I'm thinking, why don't I just do, like, these egg-shaped chocolate, uh, cups?
'Cause they'll look like the avocado, right?
And I could fill that, put a little crumble in there.
Incorporating this tasting element into our display
I think is going to be one of the most fun parts for us, artistically.
I'm going to start on the skull right now, let's do it, guys.
There's definitely a monster that I was hoping that we were going to get to pick.
Do you know what a wendigo is?
-No. -A what?
Okay. So a wendigo is a greed-based creature.
It's basically like a living tree.
Not an actual tree? Not an actual tree?
No, he just has, like, branches and stuff growing out of his body.
Okay.
[Maythe] This part is like a genie.
Obviously coming out from, like, a lamp.
Yeah.
-And then like, whoa, it's a monster. -Yeah.
We're choosing to mash up the wendigo and the jinn,
that's basically an evil version of a genie.
This farmer comes across this lamp.
The last thing that this creature wants is to be bound to a human,
so he comes to reclaim his lamp.
Honestly, sriracha is, urgh.
Yeah, at least spice and peanuts can kind of go together.
-I'm a big fan of peanut brittle. -That's quick and easy.
For the tasting element we're making a sriracha peanut brittle
that's going to be broken up as armor pieces on our creature.
Just make sure to put, like, enough heat from the sriracha
but not that they need...
-That could be tricky. -You don't want to burn their face off.
A good balance, yeah.
First choice of the pumpkin.
Which one did you want, Titus?
-I'll take this one. -Not that one.
Okay, all right.
Winning the small scare and getting that advantage of choosing the pumpkins first
is so important.
Playing with the big boys now.
Aaron needs to have pumpkins
that have enough flesh for him to carve and really add the detail work
to bring us this win.
Big slices.
So I got this pumpkin because it's really thick.
It's super heavy for its size.
I've got to make the tombstones and faces.
Get a good, flat cut.
Tombstone. What do you guys think? That's the shape.
-Oh, that's so cute. I love it, I love it. -Yeah, it's cute.
Go, go, go.
Our goal with this challenge is to not make the same mistakes twice.
We want to put a complete image out there
for the judges to really see all of our different skill sets.
This pumpkin is for the vines
that are going to be coming up around her,
infecting this cursed land, attacking the creatures.
I'm going to do a bunch of different sizes.
We'll see what we can get out of this pumpkin.
That'll be a nice vine reaching out.
I'm just, uh, going to be filling up this chocolate mold with some coating chocolate,
so I can basically use it as a template
to start building off my base.
Like, it'll help me to keep the facial features symmetrical
and try to look as realistic as possible.
I'm just going to snap this together very quickly,
bam, and I'm going to pop this in the fridge.
Yes, we got this.
Oh.
-Look at that. -This is the perfect size.
I'm going to need that big boy.
You know, I think in the first round,
we really wanted two distinct characters,
but in this round, I want to see how they pull them together.
It's about the melding and the fusion.
It's melding, but I'm also looking for tension.
I think that would be the key for me.
I would love to see, like, this Jekyll and Hyde action
where it's fighting against the other character.
You kind of need to choose one monster that has a very distinctive face
and then one monster that I think has a very distinctive body.
Ho, ho, ho. I'm throwing guts everywhere.
-Do it. Put 'em on. That's gonna be the body, right? -Yeah.
For the creature, we're going to have the head and skeletal torso
that's going to be made out of pumpkin.
I'm going to start carving the cake and the rice cereal.
Okay. One more.
Maythe is moving so fast when it comes to cakes.
She's Lightning Hands McGee.
She's got to make the tail portion
that's going to be made out of rice cereal and cake
covered with white ganache and fondant.
Yeah, it's looking good. Girl, you're burning through that cake.
One hour down, four hours to go.
Here we go, guys.
Is that chocolate mixed?
-Yeah, mixed with the rice. -Oh, cool.
Our small scare was mostly pumpkin
so I want to represent all three of our strengths.
I'll be making the grim reaper's body
out of rice cereal treats.
Getting kind of heavy.
You can see, like, where the sickle is. The scythe.
Amy is going to be making the grim reaper's scythe out of isomalt
as well as the full moon in the background.
What do you guys think?
That's perfect. I like the size of it.
I am just mixing up the edible fabric.
Instead of using fondant or marbling chocolate for the grim reaper's robe,
we decide to make it out of edible fabric, which is much thinner.
I mean, it's a little risky doing sheets that big,
but we'll see if we can get it figured out.
It's going to cook fast and it will just have that wavy, clothing look
and we can make it look tattered
like he's really from the underworld.
-Oh, [bleep]. -Oh my gosh.
Oh my gosh.
So the arm part kind of fell off.
Yeah.
[Shinmin] They need to pay attention to the structure.
I saw pieces of that cake fall from their armature, there.
I'll just add a skewer.
Hey, Yaya. When you're creating a cake this size,
you have to make sure the structure is the most important thing.
So have you thought about using a ganache to go over that?
Sometimes a ganache will firm up harder.
And if that fails, do chicken wire, do dowels,
do everything you can to make sure this is secure
-before you put anything else on there. -Okay. I will.
-Okay? -Thank you.
All right.
-Think structure, structure, structure. -Right. Structure.
All right. I'm going to ahead and start, um, the brittle.
Awesome.
I was getting a little hungry.
How much sriracha do you think I should put in?
You're talking with a Mexican girl.
I know. It's too spicy for me.
I'm going to start the base for the brittle.
[Jonathan] When you're working with something like sriracha and peanut butter,
what's the trick to making it all work and come together?
You have the heat,
but you also have that really rounded fat flavor
-from the peanut butter that's so nutty. -Mmm-hmm.
To me, that really works.
Seven tablespoons sriracha.
Spicy.
Oh, God. That's sriracha.
Don't burn it. Don't burn it, baby.
I am learning that whenever you heat sriracha,
it basically turns into napalm.
-Oh, watch out. -Whoo.
Do you smell that?
-Oh, boy. -Smells like burned.
I don't think that's going to be edible.
You're gonna be good in time?
We're going to be cutting it close.
Oh, man. [bleep]
Okay, so Sugar Spirits has burnt their peanut brittle.
[Maythe] It smells like burned.
They need to start from scratch.
Yeah, I mean, that's the problem here with the peanut brittle
-is there's no rescuing it. -No.
It just goes in the trash and you start again,
-which means it eats up more time. -Right.
[Maythe] So how are you going to fix that?
I think I'm going to have to try a different kind of pan.
Let's try sugar on this one.
Give me a little bit of oil.
Or maybe not.
I can't give the judges burnt sugar.
I'm a sugar artist.
I can't be like, here, here you go, have some burnt sugar.
[Maythe] Oh yeah. Look at that.
I'm going add a little bit of baking soda
to make it a little bit lighter, a little bit more airy,
-so it's not quite as hard. -Okay.
It's going to make it a softer texture for the mouth,
instead of being so crazy hard like a hard caramel.
We're on such a time crunch at this point.
The worst part is I'm not going to know if it works.
Actually have to hope that later when we pull it out and it's fully cooled
that it shatters.
[Maythe] Oh, beautiful.
Three hours left, teams. Three hours.
Double time, double time, guys.
[Aaron] See what we've got.
Aaron has it going.
I have a little butternut. I'm going to try and do a face
coming out of this tombstone.
I'm trying to move fast.
We really wanted to showcase Aaron's specific skills
of carving faces into pumpkins.
Making sure we have all the details in the tombstones
is going to be really important.
I'm going to have this kind of sideways.
Do you like the head straight up
or should I have it going a different direction?
-Yeah, sideways. -Okay.
I wanted to blanche and remove the skins off the tomatoes
just because it's a texture thing.
You know, you don't want to, like, bite into a really good compote
and have skin.
Right.
Our plan for our tasting element
is to create a strawberry tomato bonbon
filled with mascarpone cheese and cased in white chocolate.
And topped with balsamic glazed almonds.
-Balsamic gives it a little bit of, like, a tang. -Tang.
Guys, how are you doing over there?
This is going to be the horns that's going to go on Elan's skull.
You have to have a good set of horns if you're going to be a demon,
let's be honest.
You smell the coffee?
-Ooh, is that what that is? -That's what that is.
I'm making a crémeux, which means creamy in French.
I'm going to make the pit.
[Kristina] For our tasting element,
Teresa is going to make an amazing, milk chocolate coffee crémeux
and an avocado mousse
in these really cute little avocado-shaped cups.
You be good.
And a cocoa nib streusel.
All right. I think that's a good color for the bones.
This is a very forest-based creature.
Really nice, elaborate antlers.
A lot of fantastic texture.
The antlers is really going to be the showpiece.
It's going to be a big presence.
I have to be very careful of the weight,
because the head is a soft pumpkin.
And the antlers are pretty large.
The horns are done and ready to go.
The lamp is going to be blown sugar.
This is basically going to be the vessel for the entire story.
How's that for size?
Perfect. Perfect. I love it. Yeah.
Elan, that is shaping up, girl.
-She's got hips. -She's got hips, man. She's a curvy girl.
Elan has a very tall order with this challenge.
You know, she has the entire Demonstein.
The face, creating the entire body,
dressing the body, creating the limbs.
There's so much to do.
Are you going to sculpt her from there?
-Yeah. -Okay.
I am aerating or satinizing the sugar.
Whoa, that is so yellow. It's so pretty.
I want to make kind of stylized little flowers for the back
because it is a fantasy.
We don't want to just slap Frankenstein pieces onto this character, you know?
We don't want to take it too literally.
Leaves take me, this is the most time-consuming of anything.
So if I get this done, I won't be nervous.
So we're using nature to reanimate this demon's body parts.
Okay. One down, three to go.
The good thing is, this guy's going to be, like,
kind of like an old kind of farmer.
This guy's going to have a nice booty booty.
[laughing]
The little farmer that Maythe is making
is going to be modeling chocolate.
Okay. It's time for the shirt.
I can't wait till you put his face on.
Maythe is a wizard when it comes to faces.
It looks like it's coming together.
I want to put a beard so it's going to look like you.
Why does that little guy look like Titus?
That's a good scared face, for sure.
-Wow. That's amazing. -That's exactly what I would look like.
I think this guy can be right here.
I'm going to shatter the brittle.
I'm just praying that this is not going to be sticky, it's not going to be gooey
and that it's going to crack.
It's breaking up perfectly.
It's like someone took the most fantastic crystal vase
and just dropped it onto the hardest concrete
and it shatters into a million pieces.
That's the spicy one.
I love it. I love the texture.
When we put this head on,
that's a pretty good size.
Yes? No?
Yeah, 'cause we'll have the things coming out.
[Aaron] The snakes.
All right. Now that they've firmed up a little bit.
While I'm making the skeleton snakes,
Aaron will be making the skull for our grim reaper,
which is really important because a skeleton is so memorable.
We know exactly how it's supposed to look.
Cut the sockets out. I'll crank this out.
So he has to get all those little details.
All the, like, little teeth.
The sockets for the eyes.
The nose, so he really has his work cut out for him.
All right. I need some toothpicks.
This is when everything comes together.
I'm going to hide the strawberry tomato jam bonbon
inside some modeling chocolate roses
and the judges will peel the petals back
and be able to actually take the bonbon out and enjoy it.
I'm going for, like, wilted, kind of dead flowers.
I'm just going to make it look a little bit more creepy and dead looking
so I'm just adding some brown.
Failing is not an option, guys.
How are you doing?
[Titus] Oh, I'm piecing together this skull.
It's coming together.
It comes down to a horn.
My head's got to hold them.
But what do you think?
I mean, they might have to be smaller.
-'Cause we need them to hold. -Yeah. Okay.
What do we think of sugar spirits?
They are having some really big issues right now with sizing.
The sad thing is all the separate elements
are all so beautifully executed.
-[Titus] This is a cantaloup. -I don't know what that means.
Like, it's all going to fall down if you go back.
Yeah, these are definitely going to have to go in last.
[Shinmin] The sugar horns are not going to be able to go on until the final moments
and that scares me so much because these are really heavy sugar pieces
and a wendigo without the horns,
it's just going to be like roadkill, basically.
Oh my gosh.
Come on.
Yaya, damn things are sticking.
It's not coming out.
[Yaya] Amy made these delicious bonbons
and they are not coming out of the mold.
Time is running away from us.
We have to pivot.
I was already making petals for the flowers.
I'm going to just use one of those petals as a cup
to actually put the jam into.
So to do that, we have to just get rid of the white chocolate,
the balsamic glazed nuts, and the mascarpone
and just focus on the tasting elements that the judges requested.
You'd better move double time. Only 30 minutes left.
Oh my gosh. I'm going to need you to hold the backboard.
Okay.
I'm happy if you're happy.
Crumble goes in.
And then this goes on.
Now for the pièce de résistance.
All right.
Does that look like an avocado?
It does, 100%. It looks so good.
This dowel's pretty small, but...
-Is it leaning back a little bit? -Yeah.
We tightened that up.
I do feel like there's a lot of elements
that still have to transfer over there.
I'm still worried about that structure.
It looks like it's, I don't know. It might be leaning more, now.
I feel like it might be leaning more, now.
I think the only thing that's holding it
is the tape right now.
-So, that's... -[Yaya] Oh, wait. Wait.
[thunder rumbling]
Maybe we can lean it forward a little bit.
No, no. No, I don't think that's a good idea.
They are scrambling.
It's been one thing after another.
This challenge is always going to tell us
whether or not they understand gravity and structure.
[Jonathan] And if they can follow direction after they've--
-they've been given notes. -Yep.
That's perfect.
Let's do that.
[whirring]
-Psychologically, in the final half hour... -[groans]
[Aarti] ...that's-- that's a really hard thing to get through.
This is eating up time.
Okay. Problem solved.
[Kristina] Just add a little girth.
Totally cool.
Love it. That's perfect.
[Jonathan] Let's talk about the Spice Ghouls.
I can't believe this is the same team that did that teddy bear.
-[Aarti] I know. -[Shinmin] Right?
This really shows you what they're capable of with more time.
I ended up pulverizing some graham crackers.
A little teal, a little yellow,
a slight touch of brown,
and it looks something kind of like moss.
-[Kristina] Can you hit all the orange too? -[Teresa] Orange?
It's okay. Yeah, you can do it.
-Little bit more. -Perfect.
-[Vikki] A crinkle. -[May] Beautiful.
Well, I'm gonna start air brushing a little bit.
-[Titus] Looking good. That looks nice. -[May] So that I can-- Yeah.
So, I'm worried about the weight.
We're trying to find something that doesn't cause the sugar to melt
because of the pumpkin water.
[Vikki] We're just hoping that nothing breaks, nothing falls off,
nothing squishes or collapses.
So, I wrapped the sugar in plastic.
That's my barrier between the water.
And I hit it with freeze spray.
-Look at us go. Thank you. -[May] Magic.
Ten minutes left!
[Amy] Aaron, everything else needs to get on.
[Elan] Teresa, we need your help desperately.
Cool, cool, cool.
[Amy] One side's shiny, one side's matte.
-Something like this? -[Amy] And you can cut it and trim it
to, like, how you want it.
That looks nice.
I like the way that color is coming out.
So, what's your thought? Just-- Literally just pop it on?
[Kristina] Yep.
You have three minutes to go! Let's go!
[Amy] I know this is insane
and it's not what we planned
but we just have to make decisions and just put stuff on.
[Teresa] I'm gonna bring the taste out.
We gotta be careful. That one's wiggling.
[Aaron] Yeah, that's super cool. Yeah, I love it.
[Yaya] All right, guys. This is, like, the last of the tasting element.
One minute! This is it!
Oh, my gosh.
-[Vikki] Ah! -[May] Oh, my God.
[Kristina] One minute, guys. One minute.
I'm gonna rub some--
[Elan] Don't move. Don't move.
Green-- Can you green the tip of these? Super quick.
-[May] Okay, we can do it, guys. -[Vikki] We're almost there.
-[Yaya] This is it. This is it. -[Aaron] Okay.
-Ten, nine... -[Kristina] Oh, my God.
-[Jonathan] ...eight, seven... -Watch out, watch out, watch out.
-[gasps] -[Jonathan] ...six,
-five, four... -[Vikki] Perfect.
-[Jonathan] ...three, two... -Don't touch it. Don't touch it. Don't touch it.
[Jonathan] ...one.
-Done. -Hands off your display.
Wow, you guys!
Ugh.
-Gonna be a difficult color. -We finished!
[Amy] Oh, my God.
Yes!
-[laughs] -[Titus] We got everything up, right?
[Elan] Oh, my goodness.
[Kristina] Whoo!
For this Spine Chiller challenge,
we asked for some mashed up monster mayhem.
Grim Reaper and Medusa.
The Grim Reaper, he brings you death.
And Medusa, she turns you to stone.
So, we combined the two and we turned people into tombstones.
-[Aarti and Shinmin] Ah. -[Jonathan] Hey!
[Yaya laughs]
[Aarti] The pumpkin work, Aaron, is stunning.
We love the concept of Medusa and the Grim Reaper coming together.
Everybody knows who they are, what they look like.
So, I think your strategy was so strong going into this round.
What doesn't quite work is Medusa is not coming through very strongly.
The snakes themselves,
in Medusa, they have this sense of movement,
that they're coming out to get you.
And they feel very static here.
It's so clear that the three of you are super talented.
I can really see all of your different technical skills
highlighted in a really great way.
The sugar work really, really shines through.
Now, you spent so much time treating this beautiful face of the Grim Reaper
and it's totally lost.
We really can't see the details.
You ready to try the tasting element?
-Heck yeah. -Yeah.
[Yaya] The tasting element is the roses.
It's a tomato and strawberry compote with a hint
of black pepper and balsamic.
So, you actually just pick up the white chocolate rose and
-dig in. -Oh, you even shaded it? What the heck?
I would put those in a bouquet at home.
Hmm.
Look, I know this is your plan C.
And aesthetically, it's absolutely gorgeous.
The modeling chocolate is super overpowering. [chuckles]
Here's the thing. When you tell me there's black pepper and balsamic vinegar,
I wanna taste it.
-I think it needs more black pepper. -[Shinmin] Yeah.
Black pepper also has a natural fruitiness,
-especially if you use a whole pepper corn... -[Yaya and Amy] Yes.
...and bash it yourself.
That heat and that vinegar would've cut through this modeling chocolate like that.
Sweet Screams,
good job.
-Thank you. -Thank you. [chuckles]
[Vikki] For our Spine Chiller, we ended up doing
a jinn and a wendigo attacking a local farmer.
For the jinn, which is the bottom part,
we ended up going with rice cereal and cake,
and then the head and the body was made out of carved pumpkin.
This came together in a super strong, powerful character.
And Maythe, this guy,
the expression on his face, even the fact that his mouth is pulled back in this
scream and you can see his teeth,
it's incredible and that really sells the scare for us.
I love the shading on the body of the wendigo.
Where it meets the jinn, it's a little bit too sharp.
I wish that you can just blend that in a little bit.
The color palette, I have just a little bit of issue with,
especially with this beautiful lamp that's so hidden
that we can't even see it.
Your old farming guy.
I mean, my heart is just breaking for him,
like, I'm gonna plead for his life.
You gave his eyes this sort of glisten,
so, he's almost weeping.
I think the thing to me about a jinn is
it's mostly, like, smoke.
The orange is kind of throwing me. You know what I mean?
I think if you'd gone for a sort of a grayish blue,
you'd get the sense of this thing coming out of the air.
Tell us about your tasting element.
We got, um, sriracha and peanut butter
and we decided to do a peanut brittle as part of the armor for the wendigo
and part of the bark element as well.
Little bit of a hybrid between a honey comb and a brittle,
-so, that way it wasn't gonna be quite as hard. -[Aarti] Mmm-hmm.
Um, it's a little bit-- gonna be easier on the teeth.
This is a pretty simple tasting element.
I think when you have two ingredients
that are so far away from each other,
I think I'm missing a third ingredient element
to sort of pull them together a little bit more.
-The other thing is that it was peanut butter. -Yeah.
And there's just sort of like a ooey gooey nature to peanut butter
that's missing from this.
I don't like this...
because I love this. [laughs]
-Oh, my-- -[Shinmin] Um...
I know Aarti and I kinda disagree on this but
I'm a sucker for anything that's spicy
and you definitely added enough heat.
And what I really love is it's a part of your display.
It's a part of his, like, carcass.
-I would expect it to be super crunchy like this. -[Aarti] Right.
The one missed opportunity is
if you glued this onto his body with peanut butter...
-Ohhh. -[Shinmin] ...which is actually part of the--
the challenge, then you would add that extra gross
ick factor but great job.
Thank you very much.
-[Vikki] Thank you. -[May] Thank you.
-Yes! Yes! -[exclaims softly]
[Kristina] We decided to go with a Demonstein.
We have a Lilith, our demon, emerging out
from the underworld into this magical land.
And she merges herself with the nature around her to stay alive.
And one of the trees that she merges with
is an avocado tree.
[laughs]
[Kristina] The mushroom characters, they like to steal her avocados,
and this time they did not win that battle.
I love how you took the challenge of the avocado
and pulled that into your design.
That was very smart, so good job there.
I love that you made the horns out of pumpkin.
It's a beautiful use of that natural orange hue.
I love that you merged her with nature.
The color palette is absolutely beautiful.
You even balanced the contrasting reds with the greens,
and the shading is just spectacular.
And as beautiful as the sculpting is,
my problem is this mash-up concept.
Demonstein is not very clear.
When we're thinking of Frankenstein
we are definitely looking for those iconic design elements.
-The bolts on the side of the head perhaps... -Mmm.
[Shinmin] ...the stitching, the scarring
and if you just really included those,
we would be able to really believe your story.
Let's hear what you made for a tasting element.
[Teresa] We got coffee and avocado,
so, I did a chocolate shell.
Underneath the chocolate shell there is a cocoa nib streusel,
avocado mousse on top,
and the little ball that looks like the pit
that is the coffee crema that's on the inside of that chocolate.
Oh!
-There's the coffee. -Yeah.
That was so interesting.
There's actually, like, this really strong grassiness about it.
And then the coffee comes in super strong
but it actually doesn't overpower the avocado
which was my fear of mashing those two together.
I'm just blown away by how intelligent this dessert is.
-It's beautiful, it's so much fun to eat... -Thank you.
...the coffee is a beautiful high note,
and then I just find myself going back into that avocado.
-Just-- It's almost like a palate cleanser. -[Shinmin] Yeah.
-Well done. -Thank you so much.
-Thank you. -Thank you.
Whoa!
[Jonathan] Teams...
new horrors were created here today,
and that's a beautiful thing.
Two teams will be moving on to the main competition
and one team
will be going home.
The team that will be eliminated from Halloween Warsis...
Sweet Screams.
I'm sorry but you're done in this Halloween Wars.
[softly] Good job.
I'm sad that we're not able to move forward in the competition
but I'm glad I got to be here and really put myself out there
for the world to see.
We'll see the rest of you in the main competition.
Next time onHalloween Wars...
-[honks] -[Jonathan] ...we send in the clowns.
[woman] He is a creepy.
He likes to save a memento from each person.
That is the stuff of nightmares.
-[gasps] -[Aarti] Wow.
-I'm, like, emotional and crying from this dessert. -Aww.
[Vikki] This is too short.
There's a gaping hole.
[woman] Oh! Oh, my God.
So many pumpkins in this one.