One by one, teams have been scared off.
And now, this Halloween Wars is down to the Final Four.
-[crunches] -[screams]
[Jonathan] Last time,
Delectable Demons came up with enough tricks
- to be treated to victory. -[snarling]
[Jonathan] While Death By Deco was sent home.
The remaining all-star champions
lead their teams into battle once more,
in the hopes of creeping ever closer to the title...
[woman] Just got to give her an upper lip that doesn't look like Botox.
[Jonathan] ...and $25,000.
[man] This team might have bitten off more than they can chew.
[Jonathan] The most heart-pounding season of Halloween Wars All-Stars
starts right now.
Captains, you have handled the pressure,
and pushed your teams to the edge.
You deserve some Halloween Wars love
for surviving this far.
-Yes. -We do.
You know who else deserves love?
Vampires.
[chuckling]
But when the undead put themselves out there,
it can have disastrous results.
For this battle, we want you to envision a nightmare scenario,
when a vampire date goes wrong.
And we're upping the stakes, literally...
-'Cause, vampires? -[woman chuckles]
...in this Final Four mash-up.
Each team must include at least three characters
in your display.
You heard me right. Three!
[Kyle] We have to make three characters.
Seven hours is not enough time to complete this challenge.
Jeez, Jonathan.
-I know. -Gosh.
[Jonathan] To ignite the passions of your vampire,
create an oozing component
-at the heart of your tasting element... -Wow.
-[woman] Ooh. -Okay.
...flavored with romantic ingredients
-your judges will fall in love with. -[chuckling]
-Aw. -[Jonathan] Scream Of The Crop,
you get chocolate.
-Yes! -Sweet.
Shriek Squad.
-Pomegranate. -Oh!
-All right. Pomegranate. -Yeah. Yeah.
Delectable Demons.
Lemon. [kisses]
-[gasps] -Yes!
And Two Ghouls And A Butcher?
-Basil. -[chuckles]
Cake artists, it's your turn in the specialty spotlight.
[sighs] Okay.
One character must be made out of cake.
So, while we're at it,
we're gonna insist that the tasting is a layered cake with that oozing element.
The judges are just itching
to carve into one of these creatures.
And, of course, the baking assistants are here to give you a helping hand.
-You have just seven hours. -[woman chuckles]
-Go. -[woman laughing]
-[Kyle] All right. So, what do we think, ladies? -All right.
What are we gonna do, guys?
I definitely wanna go on a date.
I don't know about you.
We're talking about vampires. So...
The old Gothic vampire, but they're using a modern-day method
-to get to know each other. -Oh, like a dating app?
-[Briea] Oh, like a dating app. -Yeah, yeah.
Clarissa is seeking revenge.
Her husband got turned into a bat on her wedding day,
by a vampire.
So, of course, she creates an app to lure back the vampire.
[Shannon] I'll do the cake part
-with the filling inside her, like, abdomen area. -[Eric] What, here?
-[Briea] Okay. -Yep.
-Hear me out. -Okay.
-Season 11, I did a-- -[Emerlie] Oh, your season!
...a Goat Yoga vampire.
Season 11, the judges loved that character,
so I thought it would be a cute surprise
for Shinmin and Aarti
to bring him back for one more go.
-He was picking up a chick at Goat Yoga. -[Emerlie] Oh, interesting.
-And he got the digits, now he's on his first date. -[Emerlie] He's on his date!
Our Goat Yoga Dracula got the girl that he was winking at.
And so their first date, she orders a garlic dish
and her garlic breath literally kills him.
The very first date with my husband--
-Oh! -...was to a miniature golf course.
-Nice. -I like that idea.
Yeah, I mean, like, our vampire--
It is the cake spotlight today,
-so let's-- -[groans]
-...base it around you and your love. -How you feeling about that?
-[in singsong voice] No pressure. -No pressure.
So, it's Gary, the Ghoul's first date
with Dracula's niece, Bianca.
In an attempt to impress her,
he dives into the putt-putt pond of piranhas
to retrieve her ball.
Who does a vampire even take on a date?
-Death. -Death.
-A date with Death. -That's awesome.
Vampire Nosferatu is on a date with Lady Death
in a graveyard.
He brings along his cat, Nibbles,
who doesn't like being a feeding cat.
So, Nibbles eats some deadly nightshade.
Nosferatu falls asleep on his date,
and wakes up to be burned alive by the sun.
We'll take the tasting element out of...
-Reaching up out of his ribs? -Yeah, I'll do it straight out of his ribs. Yep.
-Yeah. -Let's do this!
[all] Shriek Squad!
-[Eric] Guys, come on. Let's do this. -We got this.
-[grunting] Oh, yeah, I can. Okay. -[gasps, chuckles]
-[Shannon] Go, go, go! -I get to bake today.
Shannon, what's your plan first?
My plan is to get the cake baked,
mix baked in the oven, first thing,
-so that I can get it chilling as fast as possible. -[Eric] Excellent.
So, the tasting element this week is focused on cake.
Not a lot of cake artists can bake and decorate.
She's able to do both,
and she said she has a vanilla bean and a lemon curd cake recipe
that'll blow the judges' socks off.
How does it feel to be a chef this time?
-[chuckling] Yeah. -And not just decorating?
It makes me a little nervous. [laughs]
I am definitely feeling the pressure.
It's a lot of work, a lot on my plate,
to have to do the tasting element
as well as a full sculpted figure.
All right, I'm getting these cakes in the oven, guys.
[Briea] Good job, Shannon. Thank you so much.
There's his face right there.
-So, I'll sculpt him... -[scale rattles]
Strap him on like that.
[Briea] Eric is making the vampire.
[Eric] The cake is the spotlight now. And that's all Shannon.
He's gonna be, kind of, the secondary figure,
but he's got to have an expression that's responding to her.
Check it out.
We are building a gondola.
Hopefully, it won't take that long,
'cause I got other stuff to do.
[Shellane] So, I'm getting flour sifted.
I have to get started on my cake.
For our two main characters, I am making
a lemon-basil olive oil cake with strawberry curd.
I am a cake decorator.
But I've been spoiled that I do not have to bake at our bakery.
I'm a bakery owner with my mom and my sister.
Since it's a family business, we all have our very important roles,
and I am the cake decorator.
I haven't made a cake in years.
Whew!
I'm sketching out our frog character.
[Shellane] Alan is making our third character,
which is our frog, who's guiding our boat.
And he makes this out of butternut squash
and carrot for arms and legs.
This carrot is gonna look eventually like a leg,
because I'm gonna cut it in half like this,
and it's gonna have another appenditure here.
And it's gonna have feet.
-He's sexy. -[Emerlie chuckles]
[Shellane] Good job, Alan.
I'm starting on an orange buttermilk cake.
So, this week, the spotlight is cake.
And cake is definitely my specialty.
Since I'm also a pastry chef, I love doing the baking,
so I'm ready to get into it.
In my tasting element, I'm making a vanilla buttermilk cake,
scented with orange zest,
and I'm also creating caramelized pistachios
and put them into a white chocolate ganache.
And I'm also going to be creating a pomegranate curd
to go as the oozing layer in the middle.
Right now, I'm carving the main piranha.
We're gonna have some bat-winged piranhas that are gonna be
attacking both of the characters.
We've made it to the Final Four. We are very excited.
We were in the bottom twice.
But we work too hard, we care too much.
We're done being in the bottom.
And we're really gonna embrace this challenge as the upswing
after being in the bottom.
[Jonathan] I get to build stuff today. I'm so excited.
[Kristina] Jonathan will be building this incredible windmill putt-putt course
for our backdrop.
-[drilling] -[Jonathan] I'm working on the windmill.
And I'm adding some dimension to get my roof to pop out a little bit,
rather than just being a flat roof.
I feel like an architect. Jamie, look at my roof!
-[Jamie] Oh! Look at your roof! -[Kristina] Aw! It's so...
-So cute! Yeah, yeah! -[Jonathan] It's coming out so pretty!
-Jamie. -There it is. What?
[Jamie chuckling]
[Kyle] Hey, Sarah, what are you doing?
All right, so I'm starting to scale some stuff for you here.
-Oh, I appreciate that. -[Sarah Arnold] To make your life a little bit easier.
[Kyle] I'm a little worried going into this challenge
because I am a cake sculptor,
and this time I have to bake.
But I'm a stay-at-home dad, so, I bake for my kids.
So, I'm going to make a chocolate cake with a mocha ganache
and a chocolate Swiss meringue buttercream.
In a competition like this, you have to...
You have to add simple things that, uh, are hidden flavors, but complementary.
Things that'll bring it out, like, uh, mocha.
Can't say I ever thought I'd be building a coffin
out of rice cereal treats, but, hey.
I am a pumpkin person.
But I am helping Kyle out today
'cause he has a lot of stuff to do.
[Kyle] Blood Stain is working on the coffin,
and she's making the entire thing out of rice cereal treats.
And I'm really happy that she's taking up this other load for me
because I don't know if I'm gonna get to it.
-Teams, you have six hours left. Six hours. -[woman] Okay, okay.
Ooh, they are perfect!
Jamie's cakes are already baked.
-[Sarah Arnold] Already? -[Kyle] Yeah.
How is that possible? [scoffs]
I am scared.
I don't know how much time this is gonna take away
from me working on the piece.
I hate you, Jonathan.
Jamie's cakes are already baked.
-[Sarah Arnold] Already? -[Kyle] Yeah.
I am a little out of my element
when it comes to baking on this scale,
because I am a cake sculptor.
I'm mixing my, uh, my espresso with buttermilk
to make sure that my cake gets thick and fluffy
with that espresso flavor.
I'm not used to adding on different flavors, like adding mocha.
It's something that I just don't do on a regular basis.
But I have to get my cakes in the oven
and I have to do all this other stuff.
Okay. Cake's going in.
All right. Ready to go.
So, what are you guys looking for this week, when it comes to judging?
[Shinmin] I wanna see two characters interacting,
looking like they're in some sort of romantic lovey-dovey situation.
It's an extra challenge for the cake artist,
because not only are they focusing on creating the character,
but also the tasting element.
So now, I'm gonna start working on the lemon curd filling.
I'm definitely known locally, where I do my business,
for the taste and flavor of my cakes and the moistness.
So, I'm very excited for the judges to get to see what I can do there.
I'm multi-faceted, I build and I do the art.
But I also bake a really awesome cake.
So, this is ready to be covered in plastic wrap
and put in the fridge to chill.
-[Sarah] Hey, Eric. -Yeah.
What's that? Kind of looks like an armature.
[chuckles]
[Alan] Let's just keep bothering Eric. Hey. Eric.
-[Jonathan] Hey, Eric. -[Alan] Eric.
-Eric. -[Sarah] Eric!
-Slow down. -[Jonathan] Eric!
-Eric! -Eric!
Trying to trip me up.
This method's a little different.
You're actually drilling holes and stacking pumpkin and then carving it,
once it's on the armature.
It's a different technique. I like to use the shape of the pumpkin,
but with this narrative, it doesn't really work, the big pumpkin.
We gotta make him kind of a spindly vampire look.
I'm not quite as confident with my speed with this process,
but I'll still be faster than everyone else.
-That's all that matters. -[chuckles] I knew it.
I was thinking, "God, he's so humble. What a humble thing to say."
-[chuckles] -[Briea] And then, boom! Comes right in with it.
All right, pouring colors. to the stained glass window.
I'm gonna take care of the backdrop.
I'm casting real sugar into the windows,
so it looks like stained glass.
All right, we have a couple of different temperatures going on.
Different temperatures will give us different overlaps of color.
Different viscosities and temperatures
will allow different manipulations to move,
so, it looks like actually flowing stained glass.
[drilling]
-All right. Good. Good. -[Eric] Good.
All right. Thank you, Eric.
-Whoo! -Looks beautiful!
[in singsong voice] Let's make a curd.
Now, Jamie's working on her oozing pomegranate curd,
and it's really important that this is done in such a way
that it oozes from the cake
because that is an essential element of this challenge.
Right now it's glooping.
So, you know, technical terms.
I need ooze, not gloop.
Since the base of this curd is made with just pomegranate juice,
I can thin this out by just adding more pomegranate juice,
even though it's already been cooked. No problem.
[Kristina] This is gonna be the body of our ghoul.
I'm going to be making
Bianca's date, Gary the Ghoul.
When you look at our piece, we want you to be able to see
the instant attraction between these two characters,
much like Jamie and her husband,
which this theme is based after.
So, right now, I am the only all-star pumpkin carver,
which means everything I do is gonna be held to a higher standard.
And it's gonna be really important
for me to nail literally everything from here on out.
-What do you think? -That's awesome.
Five hours left on the clock.
So, I'm gonna be making Death's head.
The reason that I chose daikon is because
pumpkin doesn't have the same translucency and it doesn't come in white.
This is the most pure white that you can get.
-[woman] Yeah. -[Kristina] That's so cool what you can do...
-[chuckles] -[Kristina] ...with a big chunk of radish.
-[chuckles] -Yep. [mimics crunching]
So, what I'm doing now is
I'm just blocking out a face for my vampire.
I make his face out of black modeling chocolate
because I wanted it to go along the lines of a dead figure.
Your vampire guy looks great.
So, I actually taught myself
how to carve cakes, how to decorate.
I used to be a corrections officer,
and my mom owned a bakery,
and she asked me to give up my career to help her with her bakery.
She knew I was an artist,
and she wanted to see if I could use my art to shape cakes.
Turned out I was pretty decent at it.
-[in accent] I want to suck your blood! -[Jonathan] Ahhh!
[all chuckling]
[Shellane] I am doing our curd,
which is the oozing element.
It's a strawberry-basil flavor.
[Emerlie] I'm not super familiar with the taste of basil.
So, I think I taste it, but you should probably taste it yourself.
It needs more basil. But let me do the basil buttercream,
-'cause that might bring out more flavor. -[Emerlie] Yes.
[Shellane] So, right now, I am making
a paste with powdered sugar
and fresh basil to add to our buttercream.
I'm not tasting basil, y'all.
I'm about to put this whole freaking plant in here.
I taste it, and it's just not as strong as I'm hoping for.
I need basil to come through because that is our element,
and if it doesn't taste like basil,
we might go home.
I'm not tasting basil, y'all.
I'm about to put this whole freaking plant in here.
I am making it my point
to get as much basil flavor in here as possible.
And it's a spotlight, so it's an even bigger deal
that we get this basil flavor to come through.
If this cake doesn't taste like basil,
this might cost us the entire competition.
It looks like a matcha powder, almost.
Hopefully this will do it.
That's an insane amount of basil. Let's see what happens.
I double the amount of basil that I originally added in the buttercream,
make it into another basil paste,
and add that back into my Swiss meringue buttercream.
That's it. [sighs]
We got basil, y'all.
-[Emerlie] Does it taste like basil? -It tastes like basil.
Only four hours left.
[woman] Four hours? Oh, my God.
So, I've got Lady Death's face done.
I'm working on her leg.
I have to try to remember what a skeleton foot looks like.
I also went with daikon because I want Death to really stand out.
And If I can do that without having to paint it white?
If I can just do the, um, the shadows with, like, a blue,
I think it'll be really spooky and quite beautiful.
[Sarah Arnold] You're doing great, Blood Stain.
[Sarah] Guys, I'm so happy with this color. It's, like, exactly what I wanted.
Um, working on the body over there for our vampire.
Even though Kyle is the cake artist,
- he works primarily in rice cereal. -[Aarti] Yes.
[Shinmin] Because he's more of a sculptor,
- as you mentioned. -[Aarti] Mmm-hmm.
[Shinmin] And most of his characters,
-as you recall, they're all very lean-- - [Aarti] Mmm-hmm.
[Shinmin] ...and tall. And you can do
- that kind of structure out of rice cereal-- -[Aarti] That's true.
[Shinmin] ...because it just dries really firm.
He is not gonna be able to give us those super lean,
tall with, like, deep, deep musculature, in cake.
So, I am very curious
how he's going to portray his vampire tonight.
[Kyle] We're gonna get it done.
So, guys, I've got the tasting element,
everything ready for that, in the fridge, chilling.
And now, I'm working on making flesh tone for our Vampiress Bride.
So, she is human.
-She's wearing makeup to catfish him. -[Shannon] Correct.
[Briea] Shannon has to sculpt this bride's head.
[Eric] How's she coming along, Shannon? Good?
[Shannon] Yep, she's coming along good.
It's important for me to stay in this competition,
because I come from a small town in Wyoming,
and it's not really a well-known place.
So, it would be very cool, to be somebody
that went out and did something on this scale.
I just really wanna prove that I'm as good as
the rest of these amazing artists,
and I really, um, belong here.
[Eric] Looks like an angry bride to me.
That is looking so... You're so good at realism. Thank God.
Looking over here at Delectable Demons,
I see this massive pumpkin character coming to life.
-It's huge. -Huge!
-[Jonathan] Huge! -I know. I think Eric's forgotten
-that this is not the pumpkin highlight. -[chuckling]
[Jonathan] I know.
[Shinmin] Because this is so large,
Shannon really has to match that scale with her character.
Otherwise, it's not gonna look like a believable match at all.
But look at the face that Shannon's created--
-[Shinmin] Oh, yeah. -[Aarti] ...on the bride.
-[Jonathan] Wow. -[Aarti] So expressive.
[Jamie] Right now I'm painting modeling chocolate
on the outside of the rice cereal treats
to give it extra strength before I build it.
[Kristina] So, Jamie's going to be making the entire cake structure,
which is going to be the figure of Bianca, the vampire.
This is a cake spotlight,
and the character should be a big, prominent role in the piece.
And we feel like Jamie really nailed that.
[Jamie] Right now, I'm beginning to build my tasting element,
and her tasting element is gonna sit
right up on top of her chest,
so that when we cut into it, it will be, like,
a bleeding heart.
[Jonathan] Look at that figure, Jamie.
I am making a pine plant out of sugar right now.
All of these items that Jonathan will be making will be made out of isomalt,
using a number of different techniques.
From pulling to casting, he can do it all.
He's gonna be making the plants and flowers,
and then the water splashes that will be trailing behind the piranhas.
He also blows a golf ball eyeball.
And, of course, in typical Jonathan fashion,
he has to make something super cool.
So, he's gonna be making this golf club
that Bianca will be using to attack the piranhas.
-[Jonathan] Here? -[Jamie] Yep.
-Okay. Gonna cover this. -Beep-beep.
I'm going to slap this onto the boat structure and create wooden panels.
Then I'm going to carve out, like, a wood texture effect.
-This boat is gigantic. -Mmm-hmm.
My only concern is,
can Alan cover this boat in pumpkin in time?
There's a lot more going on after this.
I'm going to, uh, paint it, and paint everything.
It's gonna look great.
And if they pull it off, this could definitely get them into the semi-finals.
[Shellane] Okay, so, I'm using modeling chocolate
to mold the head of our date.
I finally finished the tasting element,
and now I have to start on my two characters.
Unfortunately, she has garlic breath.
So, I have her, like, kind of mid-pout, mid-talk.
And then, we're gonna have the garlic fumes coming out of her mouth.
Because the cake components took so long,
I'm now having to rush
and try to finish her as quickly as I can.
I'm getting her skin on, then I have to get her little red dress on.
Unfortunately, these aren't abstract characters,
like we had on the last challenge.
So, I gotta really take my time
in order to have a very good presentation for this cake.
I get the date to a halfway point before I decide
to stop, and start working on our main Dracula character.
-Just needs final details on her dress. -Okay.
Make her look extra va-va-voom.
-Okay. -So, you can finish that while I do the vampire.
-You got it. Awesome. -Awesome. Thank you.
Teams, more than half the time is gone. You've got three hours left.
-[Alan] Gosh. -Oh, no.
[Sarah Arnold] All right, I'm getting ready to pour our sun now.
So, my plan for the sugar is I'm going to make a big sugar sun.
That's gonna be the main disruptor of our date.
I'm also making a sugar scythe for Lady Death.
I'm making sugar nightshade plants
that our little cat is going to get into.
Some, like, open, some closed buds.
We pretty much make, like, a star pattern with my petals.
I'm almost done with these. I'm just putting the centers on.
We'll leave airbrushing for the end if we have time.
[Kyle] I'm using her chocolate to create a cylinder
that I'm gonna use to hold my fudge sauce in in the middle of the cake.
We have to make this cake ooze,
so I come up with the idea to make a tempered chocolate tube
that we can fill in with the fudge sauce
and, then, place it into the cake
so that when the judges cut into the cake,
it will break the tube and, then, the chocolate ooze will actually come out.
I unmold the acetate and it looks perfect.
It looks like it's gonna work.
[Arnold] How's it look? Does it feel super fragile?
[Kyle] No. Solid as a rock.
Okay. Yeah, that feels good.
[Kyle] I'm pouring the fudge sauce in,
and it looks like it's holding up.
I'm heating up a knife so I can level out the top.
[Arnold] Just go really gentle.
-[Kyle] We have a split. -[Arnold] Okay. On down the side?
-[Kyle] Yeah. -[Arnold] Okay.
So, I look over at my chocolate tubing, and it's already oozing.
So, if all the fudge leaks out of this and the judges cut in,
it's not gonna be there because the cake's gonna absorb it.
If this cake doesn't ooze, I'm gonna let my team down.
Level out the top and it looks like we have a split.
-We have a split. -[Arnold] On down the side?
Yeah. Everything's falling apart. That's why.
My chocolate tubing is already oozing.
So, if all the fudge leaks out of this and the judges cut in,
it's not gonna be there.
If this cake doesn't ooze, I'm gonna let my team down.
-I don't want this to be our crash and burn. -Okay.
-Yeah. -Okay.
[Kyle] We've gotta get this cake to ooze,
so Sarah comes up with the idea to fill little blocks
with the same kind of chocolate,
and it won't be so much pressure on the structure as a whole.
[Arnold] We really are like a surgical team.
I'm, like, handing him all his tools.
Yeah, as long as we get a really good seal on this, we'll be okay.
They look good, guys.
[Kyle] I make a base layer of cake
and, then, I cut out a section for my blocks that hold the ooze.
Yeah, these turned out way better, so I'm ecstatic.
You're looking at two hours on the clock! Two hours.
-[grunts] -Two hours, Jamie.
-[Jamie] Okay. -[Eric] All right.
Let's make a face!
I wanna make her look pretty, like she's all dolled up for her date.
[Elias] I love the fangs.
[Jamie] Now, I just gotta give her an upper lip that doesn't look like Botox.
-[Elias laughing] Yeah. -[Jamie] All right.
-Jamie's given us her trademark gorgeous face. -[Li] Yes.
[Aarti] It's petrifying at the same time.
And she's massive, by the way, 'cause Jamie's pretty tall.
-[Bennett] Yeah. -[Aarti] And she's on a step stool.
[Jamie] Hey, we gotta get some fish on here.
-[Kristina] I'm working on them. -[Jamie] ASAP.
[Kristina] I'm gonna be painting all of these pieces by hand.
When you paint a pumpkin using an airbrush,
it puts it on thinner, it takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of coats.
So, you can use airbrush coloring just with paintbrushes.
You get a lot of saturation immediately.
Doing it as fast as I humanly possibly can.
[Briea] How's your paint job coming, Eric?
[Eric] Just starting now.
[Briea] Good. Good, good, good.
I cannot stop looking at that vampire that Eric's created.
I know! It's so big, and it's not even the pumpkin challenge.
-[Li] I know. -[Aarti] So gorgeous.
I'm a little worried that he might be stealing thunder tonight from Shannon.
[Shannon] So, I've piped my buttercream dam,
and I'm now adding my lemon curd filling
in between my buttercream dam.
[Briea] In order to stack cake,
Shannon does not want it to collapse with all the oozing inside.
So, she decides to make cake pop clay.
[Shannon] So the cake clay is working exactly like I wanted it to.
It's nice and malleable.
It sticks together really, really well,
so I'm able to just push it on here and shape it exactly like I want.
-[Eric] Way to improvise. Look at you. -[Shannon laughs]
[Kyle] So, I'm gonna put the tasting element in the vampire's ribs.
So, they're kind of exposed right now,
and it'll be the easiest spot to cut into and tear apart.
-[Sarah] Does it feel solid, Kyle? -[Kyle] Yeah, actually.
Kyle is sticking with what he's comfortable with, which is rice cereal.
Everyone else is doing giant tall structures out of cake.
The interesting thing is, this vampire is actually lying down on the ground,
so he could have done it entirely out of cake
and he would have enough support from the baseboard.
So, I feel like he's gone the slightly easier way.
[Sarah] I am making our third character, which is the cat,
the feeding cat that the vampire brought with him
as a snack for his date.
You'd think, for a person with four cats, I'd know how to sculpt a cat better.
But, no, it looks like a rabbit.
[Kyle] Blood Stain's working on this cat,
and I know that she knows what cats look like.
I just hope that she can translate that,
because she's never worked with modeling chocolate before.
[Sarah] Looks like an Egyptian cat, kind of.
Come on, kitty. Let's go.
One very short-necked cat.
I am trying to mold my vampire's face.
[sighs] I have a ton to do.
I'm going to probably not be able to do
all the detail on this side of the face.
Thankfully, it's the burn side.
So, I'm just gonna paint it to look grotesque.
I'm using a clay extruder, but I'm using an attachment to make it go faster.
[Shellane] Emerlie is getting started
on her hyper-realistic food element for our character's dinner.
I specialize in hyper-realistic props,
so this was a time for me to shine
because I get to do some hyper-realistic food.
I've just made pasta, and now I'm making lettuce.
[Shellane] She takes actual lettuce
and paints food color onto wafer paper molded over the lettuce
so that it retains the actual veining, and texture, and shape,
and it looks like a real salad.
[Alan] This is food coloring that I'm painting on,
and it's, like, a heavy brown.
I still have two goats to carve.
So, instead of entirely making this out of pumpkin,
I'm painting the inside with melted chocolate.
We're gonna make it.
[Briea] Moving on to the bat. Yes, it's happening.
We are required to have three characters on this piece.
I really wanna be the supporting role for Shannon's bride,
and what better way to do that by making a bat out of sugar?
Little tiny details is what's adding up to who wins and who goes home,
and I really think I'm pulling out more techniques
and I hope the judges noticed that.
All right, I just need wings, guys. It's there.
You're probably not gonna like this,
-but there's only one hour left. -[man] One hour?
-[woman 1] We gotta start going! -Nope.
[woman 2] Absolutely not.
I am stacking our cake,
which is our tasting element, with the basil.
I don't think I've ever been this short on time,
so I'm filling these pockets with our curd.
It would really be awful to go home on the cake round,
'cause this is my jam.
This is what got me here.
It made me an all-star in the first place.
All right, so I'm adding more ooze.
Just to guarantee
that there is not a problem with the oozing element.
Even as I carve cake away to form the shape of the body,
I'm hoping that I'm not taking away too much of the ooze factor.
I'm so flustered.
[sniffles]
[sniffling] I don't have time.
-[Li] No! -[Bennett] We've got some tears over at Shellane's.
-[Li] Oh, no. -[Aarti] Poor Shellane.
[Shellane crying] Baking threw me off.
I've never seen Shellane crack.
-No. -And she's been under a ton of pressure.
-And it feels like it's finally getting to her. -[Bennett] Yeah.
She feels like, perhaps, she's reached her limit on what she can get done.
[Shellane sobbing] I'm really afraid of letting them down.
[sniffling] Oh, my gosh.
There's not a lot of time left.
I still have two incomplete characters.
The pressure is on.
As the team captain,
I feel that I have an overwhelming sense of responsibility
to make sure we get past this round.
[Emerlie] You think you can finish both characters,
or would you like me to come back and help?
Emerlie comes in and she adds hair to our date,
so I don't have to worry about that portion.
I think I can do it. [sniffles]
[Emerlie] I believe in you.
I'm able to finish my Dracula character,
get him dressed up in his finest date attire,
add some arms, hands, his infamous man bun.
[Emerlie] Okay, you have your airbrush colors.
-Thank you. -Okay.
Shellane's vampire.
-Can we talk about how much she got done... -[Li] Oh, my gosh.
[Aarti] ...in the last few minutes?
[Li chuckling] She did. She cranked that out.
[Aarti] It's all happening in that face there.
-And the Lady! -[Li] The lady is incredible!
-[Emerlie] Look at that. -[Alan] It's beautiful!
Thirty minutes left!
I know you don't wanna hear it, but that's what you have.
[Shannon] No! Stop doing that to me, please.
Okay. Change of plans. Okay.
I'm gonna find a way to fix this.
So, we've got 30 minutes left, and over at Delectable Demons,
Shannon has decided to redo the body of her character
So, the fondant's not working in the front because it's too heavy,
because there's not enough surface for it to rest on.
So, I'm going back to my old faithful
wafer paper that's nice and light.
[Li] She wasn't feeling the drape of the fondant,
so she's pivoted and she's going back
to this wafer paper technique that she brushed on with cornstarch
to give it that body.
I'm using the last 23 minutes to make some wine bottles.
I keep pulling and blowing as much as I can.
I have all these wine bottles to blow
and the spilling wine glass in the vampire's hand.
There it goes. You can see that it's starting to be manipulated.
Ten minutes! You have ten minutes left!
[Kyle] To make sure our piece looks cohesive,
we're all taking our turns airbrushing different elements on it,
so it looks like the whole color scheme is done by one person.
That there, and then, one of your little corals
-in the front. -Okay, okay.
Five minutes! This is it!
[Emerlie] Okay, I guess I'm gonna put his plate down.
-[Shellane] I'm coming! Coming! -[Emerlie] We're doing this!
[Shellane] Getting it done!
-[Alan] Oh, he's amazing! -[Emerlie chuckling] I know.
Can I get all my stuff on the board?
Here we go. It's bat time, Mr. Batty Batty.
All right, guys.
[both] Briea's hanging the bat!
-[Li] What's going on? -[Aarti] Oh, my God, it's giant!
There's so much excitement on Halloween Wars.
Do not wiggle at all, guys. Don't wiggle.
You guys got this. Almost there.
[Shannon] You got this, Brie. It's the coolest thing ever.
One minute remains!
[Shellane screams] One minute? Okay.
[Elias exhales] That looks amazing.
Oh, the golf ball.
-Will that work? -Yup.
[Elias] Drill a hole.
[Arnold] All right.
-Now, just hold it. -[Kyle] Okay.
[Briea] Let me attach the chain and we'll start working together.
-[Shannon] Okay. -[Briea] Okay?
[Shannon] Sounds good.
I'm gonna make it, his eye sockets deeper.
-[Shellane] Okay. -[Emerlie] Yeah, that'd be cool.
[Kyle] We're almost there. We're almost there.
We're almost at the finish line.
-[Eric] I gotta put this in. -[Briea] Yup. Do it, Eric. You got it.
You got it. You got it.
-Ten! Nine! Eight! -[Arnold] Do the final touches.
-[Bennett] Seven! Six! -[Shannon] Perfect fit, Briea. Good job, dude.
[Bennett] Five! Four! Three!
-[dramatic instrumental music] -Two! One!
Time! Stop!
-Oh, my gosh, you guys! -[cheering]
Jesus.
-[Alan] Oh, my gosh. -[Aarti] Great job!
-[Li] Incredible! -Good job.
-[laughing] -Good job.
[ominous instrumental music]
Scream of the Crop, you're up.
[Kyle] So, Nosferatu finally got a date with his lady love, Lady Death.
Cake is going to be Nosferatu himself,
and the coffin. Lady Death,
she's modeling chocolate, but her face, her leg, and her hands
are made out of daikon radish.
The cat was made out of modeling chocolate and rice cereal treats.
And sugar is the scythe, the deadly nightshade, the flames, the sun.
Well, Sarah A,
I would like to talk to you first about your amazing sugar work.
These nightshade flowers, even though they're so clean,
the colors that you chose are so muted,
and the palate just works so well with the environment.
They're absolutely stunning.
The spotlight tonight is on cake
and, Kyle, you gave us another amazing cake character.
I love the fact that he's reaching out to her like, "Please help."
The look on his face, he's in just absolute desperation.
Kyle, I really do adore that paint work that you did on the side there
because, for a second, I thought that that was just coming from the light
being cast in the back, and it isn't. It's your paint job
that really gives it that sunrise glow.
For me, the only thing is that, because Nosferatu's face is gray,
he doesn't pop against Lady Death's cloak.
So, I wish you'd done his face white, actually.
And, then, I think he would have stood out from his date
just a little bit more.
So let's talk about your love ingredient and what cake you made.
I got chocolate, so I made a chocolate cake.
I also did a mocha ganache with a little cream liqueur mixed into it,
and chocolate nibs so that it gives a little bit of texture.
I also did a Swiss meringue chocolate buttercream to go on top
with a fudge sauce ooze that comes out.
Kyle, this is a great chocolate cake.
-Thank you. -[Aarti] It is deep. It is rich. It is lush.
It's decadent.
I love the pairing with the coffee.
That nice bitterness is really working beautifully.
The only thing that's not working for me
is I'm getting no oozing from this at all, unfortunately.
Kyle, I know that you're typically not a baker.
I think you should be.
This cake is delicious.
I agree with Aarti.
The one thing we're missing, as you know, is the ooze.
Scream of the Crop, great job. Thank you.
-Thank you. -Thank you.
Delectable Demons, tell us about your Vampire Date Gone Wrong.
[Briea] Well, Clarissa wanted a perfect wedding,
but a vampire crashed it and turned her husband into a bat.
Of course, the vampire is made of pumpkin.
Shannon made the entire cake figure
out of modeling chocolate, rice cereal, cake pop
and, of course, the oozing cake element inside of her stomach.
The backdrop is covered in fondant,
and you have sugar accents of the husband bat with his chain.
[laughing] Well, Shannon, I completely get revenge energy from her.
Her face is so expressive.
-It's really great work. -Thank you.
For me, the whole display just looks a little empty.
-It looks a little stark. -Oh.
[tense instrumental music]
The whole display just looks a little stark.
Maybe if she had been turned towards him,
or the two of them had been brought together just a little bit,
then there would be this real sense of battle going on
between the two of them.
Briea, these stained glass windows are perfection.
The pumpkin is super-dynamic.
It's got a lot of movement.
He actually looks like he's reacting, but she's not really giving.
Well, today's all about cake, so we're excited to hear about
what love ingredient you got and what cake you made.
So, our love ingredient was lemon.
And so, for you, today, I have a vanilla bean white velvet cake
with lemon zest, a lemon curd filling,
and a vanilla bean American meringue buttercream, also containing lemon zest.
Shannon, this cake is so moist, and your curd is just perfect.
Definitely getting the ooze factor here.
-It's delicious. -Thank you so much.
-I don't wanna be interrupted, really. -[all laughing]
This cake is so stinking good.
-Oh, good. I'm so glad. -[all laughing]
Delectable Demons, thank you very much.
-Thank you. -Thank you.
Shriek Squad, tell us about your Vampire Date Gone Wrong.
[Kristina] Well, this is Gary the Ghoul's first date with Dracula's niece, Bianca,
Our pond, the stones,
all of the leaves, and the water sprays
are all made out of sugar today.
The ghoul and the piranhas are made out of pumpkin.
And our Bianca is entirely made out of cake.
This was the cake spotlight challenge
and, Jamie, you give such good cake.
-I mean, jeezum crow, girl. -Thank you.
Her face, there's such concern and such humanity in that face that makes it so relatable.
And I really, really love these piranhas, Kristina.
They're front and center.
They're painted with vivid, deep, saturated colors.
I love that each one is different.
I feel like you guys have hit your groove again.
Your styles are melding so well together.
And, Jonathan, the fact that you've added so much color to your sugar work,
it just adds this really nice natural sense of movement.
I think the one thing is, I just wish that you turned the head of this ghoul
just a little bit treating to us
so that we can see the amazing sculpting work that you got on the face.
Yup.
So let's talk about what love ingredient you got
and what cake we're gonna be eating today.
So, the ingredient that we got was pomegranate.
So, I've created an orange cake
with a caramelized pistachio white chocolate ganache.
-[Li] Oh, right into her heart. -[Aarti] Oh, jeez!
-[Li] Oh! -[Aarti] Gosh, honey!
[Jamie] And a pomegranate curd.
And also the cakes are soaked with a pomegranate triple sec simple syrup.
[Aarti] I think the color is beautiful.
I wish it oozed more.
I love the pairing with the pistachio,
but that pistachio flavor is kind of taking over.
But this is a very tasty cake.
-Thank you. -The cake is definitely delicious.
Is it hitting all the points that we asked for? Not really.
Shriek Squad, thanks.
-[Aarti and Li] Thank you. -Thank you.
Two Ghouls and a Butcher, let's talk about your Vampire Date Gone Wrong.
So, our Goat Yoga vampire got the girl!
-[laughing and cheering] -Yes!
[Shellane] Our couple are all cake. Our gondola is made out of pumpkin.
Our gondolier is made out of squash with carrot legs.
And we have an isomalt canal, isomalt plate,
as well as some other sugar things.
This is so clever, Shellane, for you to bring a character back.
We were both so excited to see him.
The many layers of color on the burnt side of his face,
the teeth, the eye sort of squeezed shut.
I just think that you did such an incredible job.
Alan, this is the best work I've seen from you yet.
I love that you pivoted and you painted the inside with chocolate
'cause you're like, "I just don't have enough time to do that out of pumpkin."
That's really, really great planning,
because then you're able to really support the rest of your teammates.
Shellane, I know that you got emotional today.
Well, I think you should be emotional,
because this is the best piece you guys have produced yet.
Oh, my gosh.
And, Emerlie, the food that you created on the sugar plates,
they're so believable, it's insane.
So, tell us what love ingredient you got
and what cake we're gonna be eating.
We got basil, so we made a lemon-basil olive oil cake,
a basil buttercream, and our oozing factor is a strawberry-basil curd.
[Li] Shellane, I know that you don't feel like you're a baker,
but this is a really good cake.
The texture of this cake is absolutely beautiful.
It's fluffy, it's moist,
it gives a really nice bounce-back.
I think it's fantastic.
The only thing I'm missing is, I wish that the basil was a little stronger.
I'm not getting super strong basil notes,
but I think that this is a really great pairing,
and it did give us a pretty pleasing ooze.
-Two Ghouls and a Butcher, great job. Thank you. -[Shellane] Thank you.
Love might suck for vampires,
but the work you all accomplished today did anything but.
There was one team that delivered the perfect chemistry of flavor and design
in their Vampire Date Gone Wrong.
The winner of this challenge is...
[tense instrumental music]
-Two Ghouls and a Butcher. -[all clapping]
Congratulations.
You took the judges on a ride and they loved it.
It's obvious that this is an all-star season
and you have made the judges' job very tough.
It's coming down to the smallest of details.
[sighs] Scream of the Crop,
we love the emotion that you were able to show us
with the faces of your vampire and Lady Death.
But your choice of color on the vampire's face
made it hard to distinguish him from Death.
Delectable Demons,
we loved the details you captured with your vengeful bride.
But, while we appreciated your individual work,
there was no love connection between the pieces,
leaving the display feeling a little stagnant and empty.
Both teams showed why they have survived this Halloween war so long.
But, today, one of you must go home.
[dramatic instrumental music]
Delectable Demons,
I'm so sorry, but it's time to say goodbye.
[Eric] It's an all-star season.
It's very tight. It's very competitive.
Couple of little mistakes and you're going home, and that's where we are.
I'm so proud to have built the pieces that we built.
I couldn't have asked for a better team.
We're artists, and we're here to express ourselves.
And, at the end of the day, we got to play with food,
and that should be a win in itself.
[Bennett] Two Ghouls and a Butcher, Shriek Squad, and Scream of the Crop,
congratulations, you're moving on to the semi-finals.
[clapping]
Next time on Halloween Wars,
the three remaining teams take on a monstrous Mother Nature...
[Elias] Oh, he looks so lifelike, Jamie.
[Bennett] ...that bites back.
We have a surprise for them.
[Aarti] This is so disturbing.
The pressure is getting to them.
I'm thinking this was a bad decision. [chuckles]
Shoot, shoot, shoot. [gasps]
[screams]