That chill up your spine can only mean one thing.
It's the semifinals,
and we're racing towards the frightening finish
of this Halloween War.
[screaming]
[Jonathan] Last time, Two Ghouls and a Butcher
bit their fangs into the competition,
and team Delectable Demons was sent home.
Now, the three remaining all-star champions
lead their teams into a battle...
-[woman 1] This is it. -[Kyle] Final three.
[woman 2] Gotta make it happen.
[Jonathan] ...that determines who reaches the finale.
It can go very, very well or very, very wrong.
[screams] Ah!
For a chance at $25,000.
-[man] It looks disgusting. -It's not working.
-[winces] Ooh. -[Aarti] Oh, no.
-Oh, no. -[gasps]
[Jonathan] The most heart-pounding season of
Halloween Wars All-Stars starts right now.
-[howling] -[thunder rumbling]
[Jonathan] Teams, congratulations.
You are the final three.
-[cheering] -Whoo-hoo!
Because you've proven that you're the best of the best of the best,
we're gonna throw you into a pit of peril
unlike anything you've ever experienced.
[Aarti chuckles] Oh, jeez.
-It's gonna be fun for us... -Yeah.
-...not so much you. -[Aarti chuckles]
[Jonathan] When it comes to cult classics,
there's no more beloved than the iconic '80s
horror comedy rock musical, Little Shop of Horrors.
-Yeah. -Yes.
[Jonathan] This movie has it all.
A love story, a psychotic dentist,
and, of course, a giant singing plant that eats people.
[laughter]
And now, in celebration of Little Shop of Horrors,
we want each of you to imagine
your own unique nightmare scenario
of what happens when Mother Nature
-bites back. -[laughing]
And in honor of the massive,
monstrous Audrey II from the film,
we're gonna up the stakes for this challenge.
Your main character must be at least four feet tall.
-[woman] Holy cow. -[exclaims]
Sugar artists, tonight, you're in the spotlight.
-Yay. -[Elias] Yay.
Whatever way your wicked wildlife attacks its victims,
it must be made out of sugar.
For your tasting element,
each of you have been randomly assigned
a different part of the flower
to incorporate into your treat.
[both] Okay.
[Jonathan] Scream of the Crop,
-you get the petals of a rose. -Oh.
Two Ghouls and a Butcher, verbena leaves.
-[Shinmin] Hmm. -[woman] Oh.
-Shellane's like, "What's that?" -[indistinct chatter]
And Shriek Squad, the chicory root.
-Ooh, that's actually... -Oh, okay.
Don't worry, you'll each get a baking assistant
to help you with your challenge.
Teams, you have just seven hours.
-You ready? -Yes!
-Go. -[Aarti laughs]
[Kyle] All right, girls. Final three.
-All right. -All right, guys.
[singing] ♪♪ We made it to the semifinals♪
-Well done. -I love Little Shop of Horrors.
-Yeah? It's such a good movie. -This is exciting.
[Bloodstain] What do you think, Sarah?
I don't know. I was kind of thinking for sugar,
I wanna do something like vine.
Something that we can, like, wrap around
-and really have it engulfing something. -[Bloodstain] Okay.
-Like an oil baron kind of guy... -Yeah.
...that dumps oil in the rainforest,
-or a jungle or something. -[Bloodstain] Yeah.
All the plants absorb it, come to life and start attacking him.
On our display, we're gonna have this
four-foot, fat-cat figure
being attacked by all these plants
and being stretched in uncomfortable positions.
During judging, we're gonna turn on a black light,
and the entire piece is gonna light up with neon colors.
Why don't we do, like, the original human-eating plant?
-Like an ancient civilization. -Ooh.
-Like, in a underground tomb or something. -Oh.
-Okay, underground tomb. -[Shellane] Yeah?
Our display is based on the idea of,
what did the original human-eating monster look like?
We have an explorer who has stumbled upon this tomb
where a flesh-eating plant has taken over this ancient warrior.
Can you do a four-foot tall chocolate and sugar sculpture?
-Are you guys sure you don't want this to be pumpkin? -The accents, metallics...
-No, this is Emerlie's... -Oh, yeah. Spotlight's on you.
-Spotlight is on me, yes. -Spotlight's on you, all right.
Well, with the Little Shop of Horror themes,
I think the first thing people's minds are gonna go to is
vine, planty type stuff, so...
-Yeah. -I think maybe we should steer away from that.
-I didn't wanna do that. -They mentioned Mother Nature, like, attacking.
-Tornado. -Oh.
Mother Nature is sick and tired
of pumpkin carvers ripping those pumpkins
off the vine just to butcher them.
And she's sending out her attack dog tornado
to collect the pumpkin carvers from the patch
and get 'em out of there.
Can you make an entire tornado out of sugar?
A four-foot tall one.
-[Jamie laughs] -[all] Shriek Squad!
[all] The finale!
[woman] Go.
Wish these things had some texture. [grunts]
[Kyle] So Bloodstain's working on this face.
I don't wanna, you know,
leave it to the last minute like I've done before,
trying to get structures together,
'cause this is the semifinals.
It's really important to show how good we can be.
She's making it look like the face is actually getting choked,
to where the whole thing is filled up with blood
to the point of bursting.
[Bloodstain] It's starting to look a little bit like Alfred Hitchcock.
-[laughs] -[Sarah] Wow.
All right, so I'm gonna get started on this tasting element right away.
Because it is the sugar spotlight,
Sarah is gonna have to throw up all the sugar that she can,
but she's doing the tasting element as well.
[Sarah] We got rose for our ingredient,
so I think I'm gonna do a bonbon
in a white chocolate shell
with a raspberry rose gelee and a lychee cream.
This is my lychee purée that I'm gonna use in a curd.
I'm going to bring it to a simmer
with these rosebuds that are all dried out.
Rose is very overpowering, so one of the challenges is
being bold enough with my rose where the judges definitely taste it,
but not where it tastes soapy, 'cause that's something that happens a lot.
Aside from doing the tasting elements,
I'm still doing all my sugar components.
So, I have a lot of work cut out for me this time,
and I really have to stay on task.
And then this is gonna go into the fridge.
And then once it's set, I will unmold.
[Kyle] Trying to get emotion just out of this guy's hand,
like he's reaching out for something.
He doesn't know what it is, though.
All he wants is the pain to stop.
So I've gotta put a little bit of fear into his hand itself.
I've gotta get started on this four-foot character.
So, what I start doing is I start building out his limbs.
This is the biggest structure I've made in this competition,
so it's a little nerve-racking.
I'm working on the pumpkin carver's head,
and he's gotta look pretty scared.
He's about to get sucked into a tornado!
He's gonna be balding,
he's gonna be missing a tooth.
And he's gonna have this appearance like
he wasn't expecting this to happen at all.
[Jamie] I'm actually super excited to do this big painted backdrop.
[Kristina] Jamie's gonna be doing a beautiful painting on our background
to bring color to our piece.
What's super cool about this alcohol reacting with
the black colors that I'm working with,
is that it brings out a whole bunch of other colors that are within the black.
So you get these, like, purples and greens,
and like, almost like an oil slick effect.
So Jamie, I'm thinking of going with colors
that are kind of matching your tones.
I'm gonna go for those dark purples, some dark blues.
I wanna hit a touch of pink.
The sugar spotlight for this challenge,
Jonathan is gonna be focusing solely on using
multiple different techniques to cover this tornado in sugar.
[Elias] This is the largest sugar piece I've ever done.
This sugar is just gonna be the base coat to my tornado.
I know it looks terrible right now,
but that's the whole point of it. It's basically to have
the isomalt stick to isomalt.
It's the best way to stick a sugar to sugar.
But in order to do that, I really have to make sure
the first layer's adhered very, very well.
Or else I can risk the sugar just all falling off.
Today, it's going to be messy at this station.
Going into this challenge,
Emerlie is taking a big risk
by making a huge four-foot tall structure
made entirely out of chocolate.
And then I'm gonna add isomalt accents.
Emerlie has never made a display this big before,
and she's never made an actual person.
If she pulls this off, this will be super impressive for the judges.
I wanna start covering this face.
[exhales heavily] I don't usually do face sculpting, not even in cake.
[Shellane] You're about to kill it.
-[chuckles] -I see you.
-You see me, I see you. -I see you.
[Emerlie] Thank you.
So, once this cools down and hardens,
I'm also gonna carve it down.
Right now, I just wanna build it up
so I have something to work with.
I am getting started on one of the plant growths
that's gonna surround our warrior.
Alan is using this very fine,
detailed carving tool to create different
depths of lines into these pumpkins
to really show the intricacies of these fungi.
[Alan] Hey, guys, I think I'm gonna start a new line of wearable art.
What do you think?
-[Emerlie] Oh, how pretty. -Summer, fall, winter.
-[Emerlie laughs] -[Shellane] That could catch on.
So, I am adding cake to my child explorer.
It's a very small character.
This is the first time in a long time
that I've only had to work on one character.
And so I'm making sure that
he's my best work so far.
I am rockin' and rollin'
because last challenge, your girl was stressed.
However, we won the last challenge.
[both] We did.
-We did. Plot twist. -So, if you need to cry for this one to win...
[laughing]
This is the semifinals, right? We've seen their work
just consistently be amazing every single time.
-And we're definitely left with the three best teams. -Yes.
And they're all so different
-with their strong suits, right? -[Aarti] Yeah.
[Shinmin] We have Scream of the Crop.
-They always bring on the creep factor. -[Aarti] Yeah.
-They always had problem with the color palette. -Yeah.
So, if they can just correct that, they can go sky high.
And then we've got Two Ghouls and a Butcher,
-and they're always so good with storytelling, humor. -[Aarti] Yeah.
And I feel like with each challenge, they're creating bigger,
-and bigger, and bigger displays. -That's right.
[Shinmin] And Shriek Squad, I think that
they have shown us time and time again
-that they're so good at pivoting. -[Aarti] Hmm.
Teams, you have six hours left. Six hours.
-[Kristina] Six hours, okay, that's not bad. Not bad. -Six hours, okay.
-Oh, six hours, guys. -Come on.
Oh, boy.
I'm gonna try to flip these out again now.
Hopefully, they come out.
Sarah pulls out her tasting element,
and she's trying to demold them.
[winces] Ah.
-Ooh... [groans] Oh! -[Kyle groans] Ooh! Ah.
She smashes almost an entire row
of her bonbons when they're popping out.
-[winces] Ah. Ooh... [groans] Oh! -[Kyle groans] Ooh!
Bonbon troubles are the last thing I want to be dealing with right now, honestly.
Sarah smashes almost an entire row of her bonbons.
I'm gonna need to temper chocolate
and that's gonna take an extra 20 minutes to temper the chocolate.
It's a little bit of a pain that I have to go through it again,
but gotta make it happen.
So I'm getting ready to stamp our molds with cocoa butter again.
As quickly as I can.
I'm definitely feeling the stress, feeling the pressure.
I'm trying to just get everything done
and I want it to look really nice.
So I'm hoping I can just get these done
as fast as possible and move on.
There we go. These ones actually look better than the first round.
Okay, guys, our bonbons are gonna go into the fridge.
We're going to use chocolate on our little explorer's head
because we want our sugar character to steal the show.
So we're gonna go a little bit small on this one.
Because this challenge is the sugar spotlight,
as team captain, I know that I have to take a step back
and give Emerly the time to shine.
Because I'm holding it in my hands
and my hands are very hot,
I'm kind of deforming the skull a little bit, and it's melting on me.
But I think I'm gonna put him in the fridge so he can harden back up,
and so I can get back to it.
Next, I get started on my character's modeling chocolate
and fondant for his skin and his clothing.
So far, the competition has been going great for us.
We have won two challenges,
which is the most out of any other team,
so we're feeling very confident.
Give this guy some arms and legs and he will be done.
Right now I'm coloring our pumpkin Carver's head.
I'm using airbrush coloring.
I'm doing it by hand so I don't have to fuss
with clogging air brushes
because this is going to go a lot faster.
It's going to get me a nice deep saturation right off the bat.
We are working on our tasting element.
-Tasting at 'em, tag team. -Tag team style.
We wanted to, like, do a dessert together
because we both are pastry chefs, I would say.
The flavor we get for our tasting element is chicory
and since chicory has a mild coffee flavor,
we're going to end up going with
pumpkin spiced latte macaroons.
I'm working on the fillings.
[Kristina] Jonathan's gonna be making not one, but two fillings.
One of them is gonna be a chicory pumpkin pie filling and a chicory
dark chocolate ganache.
These are all ready to go and delicious.
Jamie's going to be making a hazelnut pumpkin spiced macaron,
and she's piping the macaron to be like the pumpkins growing in the field.
I got this, but to the ovens. That's the problem.
Okay.
So I'm about to spray the backboard.
We're gonna spray it all green.
It's a water based thing.
It's gonna be a really quick spray.
The judges have been knocking us a little bit for our color theory,
so we're painting the entire backdrop green.
But when the judges come up for judging, we have a surprise for them.
And that's gonna show them how actually finished it really is.
There's a giant green background, also a green base,
and the plants are gonna be green.
It's just gonna be green on green on green,
and we've told them that a thousand times.
However, they do have a surprise in store for us,
which is that they've installed
-a black light. -[gasps]
[Aarti] I'm not saying that that will cure the problem necessarily,
but they are trying to go about it from a different angle altogether.
If they can be successful in that move, I'll eat my words for sure.
-Oh, my gosh, he's gonna be huge. -Whoa.
[gasps] Is that a time plant?
Why, yes, it is a time plant Shinmin.
And it says you have what? Oh! Five hours left.
[screams]
Okay. I might need a spotter.
We definitely are taking a risk.
We're going for a four-foot tall chocolate structure
which is not easy to do.
[Emerlie] Isomalt is a very rare skill to have,
but I also picked up on chocolate sculpting,
which is a very rare skill to have.
Not a lot of people can do it.
I invested quite a bit of time and money into it,
took a very big workshop for that.
So I have never been able to do a large sculpture or anything.
I've just done tiny little projects.
I'm hoping that by doing this chocolate sculpting,
that helps me to stand out
so that we can make it into the finale.
I am using a wire brush.
I want this to look like textured, petrified wood.
So I am just hacking at this to give it some natural look.
[Shellane] I placed my character's head in the freezer
so that it can firm back up for a bit
and he is frozen solid, which in itself isn't a bad thing.
But then he starts to sweat and he keeps sweating.
Just like with an iced drink, it's forming condensation on the surface
The condensation has made the surface
of the modeling chocolate just a little tacky.
[Aarti] Shellane just pulled her character out of the freezer,
you know, uncharacteristically had left it in too long.
So now she has to wait for the condensation to dry off
before she can add any color to its face.
So you know, it's just these little mistakes
that I don't ever see from these people.
They think it's just the pressure is getting to them.
[Shellane] This is bad.
The condensation has made the surface
of the modeling chocolate just a little tacky.
I have to get the condensation off of my character before I start painting.
So I tried to grab a paper towel just to blot his skin.
But that's leaving a sticky, textured surface
on my modeling chocolate.
So I took a little shortening and I'm just taking my gloved hand
and rubbing his face down.
The shortening technique did work.
It smoothed out his skin.
It actually made him a little glossy.
So I think that pulls off like a sweating kind of idea.
I'm probably gonna use butternut squash for the feet and hands.
[Shellane] Alan is working on our third character,
which is a skeleton who was the original victim of our human eating plant.
He's making femurs and tibias and skulls and rib cages.
The majority of the skeleton is still going to be pumpkin,
but I would prefer to use butternut squash
because it's already the right shape to begin with.
It's shaped like a hand and a foot.
And this has more density than pumpkin, so I can add more detail.
People can have four toes.
Only four hours left.
-Four hours. -Four hours?
That's only halfway.
Now that all the armature on the fillings are done for our tasting element,
I think I could start focusing on my sugar
and just really [indistinct] my life away.
Jonathan will be focusing on this tornado.
It is made out of isomalt,
a huge risk which could either pay off
or end up being really bad for us.
This is by far the biggest sugar piece I've ever created, four feet tall.
Of all these teams, this feels like
-the most ambitious sugar piece, right? -Yeah.
Like, Jonathan's really going for it.
Definitely a big undertaking there, but I do love it.
[Jamie] Yeah. Oh, my gosh.
Not only is he working around a really big base,
so he can't even get that close to it,
He's also fighting gravity
-because it is on an incline now. -[Aarti] Yeah.
It's so difficult to slap on sugar
that's heavy and hot on an incline,
trying to patch it up into that space.
I would have done it upside down on the kitchen.
I'm making a barn. It's going to be small.
It's not going to be the size that it would be for the character.
We're doing a really drastic force perspective.
So this will be in the distance on the farm.
Well, we could be doing better on time,
but the key is to just not stop and keep going.
This competition has been a bit of a roller coaster for our team so far.
We started at the top, we went down to the bottom,
we started going back up.
I would really like to keep that momentum,
you know, just keep going up.
Do you guys want to put this on the board now or just put it over here?
Just leave it over there.
We've got to make sure that these colors aren't muted and overlapping.
Maybe some yellows, some purples.
We're gonna have this four-foot figure,
and his entire body is gonna be made out of cake.
I started working on his belly which is gonna be huge.
Last rounds. We got really, really close to going home this round.
We're pulling out all the stops.
We're doing everything possible.
This one is pretty much win or go home.
Because if you don't win,
you are up for elimination immediately,
and that's a very, very scary thought.
I'm really trying to hit these bright,
vibrant colors that you might find
in a tropical forest somewhere.
Because it is the sugar spotlight,
Sarah's setting the scene up with vines,
flowers, leaves and oil spill that's completely made out of sugar.
This neon powder that I just added in is gonna make it really pop.
[Kyle] Sara is actually adding the neon powder directly into the isomalt.
So when the black light hits it,
it will actually glow from the inside.
I still have a lot of stuff to do.
So there's no time to slow down.
Sugar is very temperamental.
It needs to be at the right temperature while you're working with it.
It just has a short window of time
that it stays flexible at that temperature.
Only three hours left on the clock.
I apparently have become a pumpkin airbrush artist. [chuckles]
Alan is helping me cover the board,
so I'm helping him airbrush all of his carved pieces.
I've never done this.
It's slimy, it's wet.
I don't think I like it, but I'm gonna do it for today.
Okay, so I've got verbena, which is very interesting.
Verbena is a lemon scented leaf
that is often used in teas, but it's a very subtle taste.
Emerlie decides to make a lemon verbena marshmallow bonbon
with a cream cheese white chocolate ganache.
[Emerlie] I want it to have the tea leaves.
It's gonna steep in that sugar syrup
and then I'll strain it out before I add it into my egg whites.
Marshmallow.
But I want to pipe it while it's nice and soft.
[Shellane] Our tasting element is going to be decorating
our chest piece for the warrior.
[Emerlie] I'm filling my bonbon molds
with this lemon verbena marshmallow.
Now I'm adding crushed up feuilletine on the bottom of my bonbons.
More than half the time is gone.
You've got three hours left.
Three hours, guys.
Okay, guys, we gotta start moving now.
Jamie is working on Harold's body, which Jamie will be making
out of rice cereal treats and modeling chocolate.
So I'm running a little bit behind.
I really, really need to focus on this and just keep pulling sugar.
I'm pulling as fast as I can, but it's taking so long to clear the amount of strips
I need to really build this tornado up.
I'm thinking this was a bad decision.
It is so big.
I think he's really the only one who's giving us
the entire four foot "character"
as a tornado in sugar, or at least that was his plan.
I'm nervous and it's not looking like a tornado. We need a new game plan.
If I don't pivot now, then we'll never finish.
It's not working.
We're running out of time.
The strips are taking ,just too long,
so we're gonna have to pivot here.
Essentially, we would want this entire piece
to be perfectly made out of isomalt.
But most importantly, it just needs to be done.
We need to get to the point to where the piece is covered.
Well, okay, I can come in.
I'm going to roll out a whole bunch of modeling chocolate.
That's... Ugh.
Modeling chocolate and stick it.
Just like big, big, fat strips of it.
-Yeah. -Get it up there. Yeah?
Okay.
[Elias] We're gonna focus on the modeling chocolate
to kind of fill it in and then go over it with the sugar.
This should give us the time that we need to finish.
We're probably just gonna need to do this in, like, pieces.
-Okay. -[Shinmin] You gotta do what you gotta do.
And if he can cover the modeling chocolate
and the fondant with that sugar, I'm definitely willing
-to accept that as his sugar piece. -Yeah.
I don't want to cover up the sugar work that you've already done.
Yeah, okay. Perfect.
Okay.
This pivot was absolutely necessary.
But it's definitely taking away
from what I've got to create here.
So, you know, high gear.
That's where we're going now.
High, high gear.
I'm gonna make like this rose flower type thing with, like, teeth in a mouth
and this big gross tongue coming out.
I absolutely love working with sugar.
I was introduced into sugar work
through culinary school, and that's where I saw more
of the artistic side of sugar and chocolate work.
And that's where I really fell in love with it,
because I feel like there's so much personal expression
that you can really show through chocolate and sugar
that I feel like I can't get with cakes.
So I really love working with it.
-Vampire flower. -Let me see.
I still have to put the tongue on him.
-Yeah, I like that. -That's cool.
Okay. I'm getting ready to blow the plants.
I love seeing how everyone's interpreting Mother Nature fighting back
because everyone's doing it a little bit differently.
-[Shinmin] Completely different. -I was expecting just plants.
And then when we look at these displays,
there's a lot more than plants going on.
Scream of the crops there,
they are definitely doing literal plants.
[Sarah] I have noticed that the other teams
are doing really big sugar pieces,
like this tornado and this giant character.
So I am a little bit nervous that my pieces are a lot smaller.
So I'm hoping that the judges will see
that I've used a wider variety of techniques.
We have to get that head on soon
'cause I have to wrap vines around it.
It's just a lot of finishing work on this one.
So this is going to be his little gold chest plate,
and this is going to be his pants.
Emerlie is making our chess pieces and a skirt for the warrior.
So she boils down some isomalt,
add some edible gold dust,
and pours it out on vinyl in the shape of the chest plate.
I'm just adding some individual plates to my piece.
It's going to be one piece, but it's going to look like multiple plates.
I want the tasting elements to come off of his gold pieces.
[Shellane] Emerlie decorates our chest piece with the tasting elements.
[Emerlie] Typically with chocolate, you would use freeze spray
so that the chocolate solidifies faster.
Unfortunately, freeze spray will crack my isomalt.
I don't have the choice to do that.
Can you hand me more bonbons?
So instead, I just have to be patient and hold this here.
But I don't have a lot of time.
[Shellane] And they're just sliding off
because the isomalt is still too warm.
-Is it just too hot? Is it melting now? -It is.
I don't have time for this.
-Let's just put it on the board. -Yep.
My tasting elements are sliding off because
I still have some residual heat.
And I will have to add some ice and melt gems instead.
[Shellane] We need to pivot,
so we place the tasting elements on the ground.
And we add isomalt gems to the chest plate.
So I have some gems here made out of isomalt
that are really gonna look pretty on this display.
[Shellane] This structure in particular is the spotlight
of the entire challenge.
We have to get it together.
What do you need?
I need more time.
I know it's scary, but you've only got one hour left.
[all exclaiming]
I'm painting white chocolate to give it, like,
a texturing effect.
It's gonna give it some motion, three dimensional
without being just airbrush color.
[Kristina] One good thing about our team is that we understand that
things might not work according to plan.
And so we've learned to pivot.
Unfortunately, with the setback,
we are a little bit behind.
Right now, I'm working on getting our guy created
so that, you know, he looks like he's getting sucked into a tornado
because I think without our guy here,
we don't really have a character being attacked by nature.
So it is muy importante to get it done.
I don't know any pumpkin carvers
that go picking pumpkins naked,
so I need him to be dressed, pronto.
I'm starting to paint this with an edible color emulsion gel.
It's still not opaque, but it gives you a much more vibrant color
than just the airbrush,
and I'm padding it into the creases
so that it will make the depths really pop.
The judges have mentioned a few times that there's no point in carving detail
if you can't see it.
We've got to get color on the pumpkins.
[Kyle] She's making it look like the face is actually getting choked
to where the whole thing is filled up with blood to the point of bursting.
The eyes are bulging.
It looks disgusting, and it's awesome, and I love it.
Perfect. Okay.
He's getting wrapped around his throat by one of the little vampire flowers.
He's coming together exactly the way we want it.
That's a face. [chuckles]
I'm worried about attaching this.
I need to get this skirt onto my structure
because without it, it's going to look incomplete.
These isomalt pieces need to be cooled down so that I can pick them up.
But then I have to heat them back up
to be able to shape them exactly to my character.
And I have to be careful that my chocolate structure
doesn't melt underneath that heat.
This is a very big piece.
I just need to pick this up.
And it's a little melty in some places.
Better be careful.
Thirty minutes left.
-Thirty minutes. -Thirty minutes.
I think this will work.
Okay.
Wow, the spotlight's on the sugar artists today, and it's also the semifinals.
It might just be too much pressure on Emerlie.
I don't think she's used to working with sugar pieces this large.
Well, she heated it so that she could get a bend into the shape.
-Right. -But It's just not securing.
[Shellane] Okay.
Oh, gosh.
I cracked the whole thing...
around the hand.
-Oh, no. -Oh, no.
[Emerlie] The skirt keeps breaking on me
and I realize it's not gonna hold.
Shoot, shoot, shoot.
[Shellane] Just hold it.
What can I do? What can I do?
[Emerlie] I just need to get it around the hand.
[Shellane] This guard is very heavy, and it's not staying up well.
A piece has fallen off the skirt
and it's starting to crack.
We have all hands on deck trying to make sure that
this skirt stays on our warrior.
That piece of sugar is probably at least five pounds
and I think she needs to actually
have screws going into the board
to then hang the sugar work onto almost like you're hanging a painting.
[Bennett] Yeah.
[Shellane] She has the isomalt ready for you.
[Emerlie] I gotta keep holding this till the end.
There's still some screws over here.
I want a clean presentation.
Even in the chaos, it's got to be clean.
Twenty minutes left.
-Twenty minutes. -I'm holding it.
I'm not risking it yet.
If we have time, we have time.
I am making sponge sugar.
And this is the old school technique.
[Kristina] In our final moments, Jonathan is spinning
a whole bunch of sugar because if you think about
the way a tornado looks,
it'll have these sort of fluffy spots.
The spots where all of the dust is being brought up by the wind
and spinning the sugar is sort of going to give the tornado that effect.
[Elias] Am I still spinning webs?
Yes.
You are spinning until you die.
It's like, it's not facing the judges at all.
We're in the last moments here and we realize the face
is not looking more towards the judges.
It is so important that we fix this
because this piece really needs to look good.
I'm ruining the paint job that I don't have time to fix.
Oh, that's better.
Five minutes left, everyone.
All right, guys, this is it.
Okay, more here.
-Is that good? -Final touches.
-Is that good? -I think maybe airbrush the roots.
It looks too fresh.
Just mute it a little bit.
[Alan] Airbrush it a tiny bit, please.
Little bit. There, better.
Okay, tasting element,
I'm starting to put on the lily pads.
-Oh, he looks so lifelike, Jamie. -Whoo-hoo!
It looks like he's really scared for his life.
Last seconds. Last seconds, girls.
Here, watch out.
Anything that we need to fix?
No, I don't think so.
If you see any loose pieces of chocolate or isomalt on the board, get it.
Ten, nine,
eight, seven,
six, five, four,
three, two,
one.
Time's up.
Wow.
This is so creepy!
-[all laughing] -This is so disturbing.
[sighs] Man, he look creepy.
Nice job, sugar artists.
We did it. We're done.
Scream of the crop.
Tell us about when Mother Nature bites back.
[Kyle] This is toxic tycoon hangs out.
Every year he comes out here, he dumps all his toxic waste.
The plant life keeps absorbing it.
This time, they actually grew sentient enough to enact their revenge.
-Ooh! -Oh!
[Kyle] He's made out of rice cereal treats and cake.
His face is made out of pumpkin
and then an explosion of sugar.
We have sugar flower, sugar vines, sugar leaves, sugar roses
roses that have tongues and vampires.
It was Sugar Spotlight this week.
Sugar Sarah, this is your moment, and you took it.
Oh, my gosh.
There is so much ding dang sugar on this display.
And my favorite thing is that stinking flower with the teeth and the tongue.
It is vicious. It is cheeky.
It is menacing, but cute at the same time.
It's like an orchestra of sugar holding up this bad guy.
So, well done.
You gave us so much personality in your sugar work.
I really love those little picture plants that you have in the back.
And I know that's not easy to do.
I wish that you brought some to the foreground because they are so beautiful.
Now the main character is huge.
So obviously, we have to look at him
and address every part of him.
I love the fact that you created this pumpkin head.
The fact that he's being choked.
It makes sense that the head is red.
I was really worried when it was just all white
because he looked like he was in an insane asylum.
But the shading really helps.
Amazing job.
-Thank you. -Thank you.
What element did you get and what are we trying today?
[Sarah] Our ingredient was rose.
So we have these radioactive bonbons for you.
It's a white chocolate shell with a raspberry rose chili and a lychee cream.
I love the ideas of what you were going for.
I think rose and berries go really beautifully together
and I like the introduction of lychee.
I think for me, you needed a bit more rosewater.
Because the raspberry is taking over the whole thing
and I'm not really tasting the rose at all.
I just got the rose water.
Just now.
-[chuckles] -[Shinmin] I agree with Aarti.
Raspberry, as we know, is a very loud ingredient.
But you also brought along her insanely loud cousin, Lychee. [laughs]
[all laughing]
So those two definitely stole this thunder from the rose.
You chose two supporting flavors that were just too strong.
Okay.
Scream of the crop.
-Great work. -Thank you, guys.
Thank you.
You guys, I thought the rose was so strong.
[all laughing]
Two ghouls and a butcher.
Tell us how Mother Nature bites back.
So we were inspired by the movie
and we made ancient Audrey.
A family goes on a vacation to an ancient civilization,
and we have an explorer who was very inquisitive,
sees a flicker of light through the wall,
enters into this tomb of sorts,
gets snatched up by this living organism,
which is made of petrified wood
and vines and flesh eating bacteria
and he becomes its next victim.
So, Emerlie, the spotlight's on you today.
And you went for it, honey, you went for it.
One of my favorite things that you did was that sugar skirt.
And we saw it ripping.
And I'm glad you kind of leaned into it
because it does give it this old, ancient feeling.
I love the sort of striations that you were able to get into that skirt.
It has a lot of movement and texture.
And it really works.
Well, Emerlie, you definitely gave us
a really super tall character here.
The piece as a whole feels quite a bit empty
compared to what you've shown us in the past.
And your color palette is very, very neutral.
Very beige, very brown, very yellow.
A lot of your fungus work in the back,
those are kind of missing.
And I know when I saw it here on your kitchen,
I saw so many lovely details, but they're really lost there now.
This week, I feel like I'm not seeing
all your talents gelled together as well.
Emerlie I do wanna applaud you for such a tall character.
And Shellane, your character, as always,
is absolutely amazing, and it's actually 360.
I saw him from the back with a droopy hood.
It looks so realistic.
-Thank you. -What'd you make for us to taste today?
[Emerlie] So it is a lemon verbena marshmallow
inside of a white chocolate bonbon.
I also have a slight layer of a whipped cheesecake ganache.
And there's a touch of feuilletine for crunch.
-Wow. In this little thing? -Yes.
[Aarti] Damn, girl.
Well, really, I definitely like the crunch
that I'm getting from the feuilletine.
I like the texture of your marshmallow a lot as well.
I'm not really getting the whipped cheesecake.
Verbena is very subtle.
It just has a super, very low key lemon flavor and aroma to it.
I don't know. I think I'm just missing a little bit more
of that verbena sensation.
[Aarti] Yeah, I think you were really smart
to not interrupt the flavor with a bunch of other things.
But I think that verbena is just so subtle
that it either needed a stronger steep or just more of it in there
to show up because I'm not really getting it very much.
Two ghouls and a butcher. Thank you so much.
Thank you.
That was a rough one.
Bring it in.
Okay.
Shriek squad.
Let's talk about how your Mother Nature bites back.
[Kristina] Well, Harold here has been a pumpkin carver
for over 25 years.
But when he goes to the patch to pick his pumpkin this year,
he discovers that Mother Nature
is tired of her big orange beauties
being stolen off the vine just to be butchered.
We have an isomalt and modeling chocolate tornado.
We have a 50-50 blend of fondant and modeling chocolate
that Jamie sculpted Harold's body out of.
All of the pumpkin vines are made out of sugar.
We also have a pumpkin barn and a pumpkin head for Harold.
Jonathan, that is just a monstrous beast you took on there.
I was super worried, and I think you pivoted perfectly.
I feel like as a whole, you guys have brought back that magic
that we experienced in that very first challenge,
where all of your colors, all of your medium, the storytelling.
All of that worked cohesively and blended so well.
Speaking of blending, Jamie, of the 50-50 fondant
and modelling chocolate, just worked so well here.
This might be your smoothest.
The clothing just has movement.
Really, really great storytelling.
Jonathan, you swung for the fences today.
This was definitely, I think, the most ambitious design
by any of the sugar artists tonight
and I commend you for that.
Was it as successful as you intended? Probably not.
But you get the sense that it's the tornado, the eyes,
and the angry eyebrows are such a great touch.
And it really gives us that sense of Mother Nature as a character biting back.
So good job there.
Kristina, that barn is darling.
I love it.
So what was your ingredient and what are we trying today?
Our ingredient was chicory.
[Jamie] I made a hazelnut pumpkin spice macaron
and Jonathan made two amazing fillings
of a chicory, dark chocolate ganache
and a chicory pumpkin pie filling.
the flavor that I get loud and clear
is the bitterness of the chicory.
And it plays so well with sort of that.
velvety, comforting flavor of the pumpkin.
The chocolate is just held in balance enough
so it doesn't take over the whole thing.
It's a really intelligent bite.
You guys always come up with really creative tastings.
-But this one's genius. -[chuckles]
The addition of the pumpkin
to really match the scene here is so smart.
And I also feel like I'm tasting the storm of a story.
-Yeah. -So amazing job.
-Thank you. -Shriek squad, great job.
[all] Thank you.
Oh, my God, guys.
Compliment.
There were some real moments of brilliance tonight,
but one team in this battle delivered the mother lode.
To give us nature
that fights back in the the best way.
The first team headed to the finale is...
Scream of the crop. Congratulations.
[all cheering and applauding]
That means Shriek squad and Two ghouls and a butcher.
We're gonna have to say goodbye to one of you tonight.
Shriek squad.
[Aarti] This piece is a reminder
of the cohesiveness and teamwork
we saw in the first challenge.
Each of you really went for it,
and there were some great moments.
And we are definitely in pumpkin spice season with that delicious macaron.
But tonight was all about sugar.
And while you really went for it, Jonathan,
the execution wasn't totally successful.
[Shinmin] And Two ghouls and a butcher.
We have seen some amazing teamwork from you, and Shellane as captain,
you delivered a perfectly executed character out of cake.
But with the spotlight on sugar this week,
the ancient warrior was less successful.
And your overall piece was missing contrast.
You both proved that you have the skills to make it to the finals.
But at the end of the day, only one more team can move on.
Shriek squad...
your twist on chicory...
was enough to stay.
I'm sorry, Two ghouls and a butcher, but it's time to go home.
[all applauding]
Even though we're going home, I feel so proud of the pieces
we've created alongside my teammates.
We had an incredible bond.
And I love them so much.
Congratulations, Scream of the crop and Shriek squad.
We'll see you next time for the Halloween War's finale.
Yes! Whoo!
[Bennett] Next time in the thrilling Halloween War's finale...
-Go, go, go! -Get it done.
We got to go big.
[Bennett] Shriek squad and Scream of the crop risk it all...
It's my play time. It's finale time.
This is no joke. I can't hold it together.
...as they check into a haunted hotel.
We just have to pick a really complicated dessert for the finale, right?
Pull out all the stops.
[Bennett] But only one will check out a winner.
Palms are sweating.
It is going to fall down.
-Oh. -No.
[Jamie] This is turning into a nightmare.
[all gasp]