I am back.
Zak Bagans, from Ghost Adventures here.
In this season on Halloween Wars,
you cannot escape the fright.
Nine teams of cake, sugar and pumpkin artists are about to compete
in a series of challenges...
Pumpkin Gods, let's go.
Inspired by the most profound hair mongering encounters
my Ghost Adventures crew has experienced
at haunted locations all over the world.
Aaaah!
[Zak] Each week someone will be eliminated.
This is a complete disaster.
[man] We didn't do all this hard work, just go home.
[Zak] Until only one team stands alone in our crown,
the Halloween World's Champions.
It all starts tonight with three teams
in our first qualifying round.
Get ready for the most intense...
Wow!
Terrifying...
[all exclaiming]
and astounding season of Halloween Wars yet.
[man] Push, push, push.
Oh, my God.
I'm scared.
[thunderclap]
Now, as Zak told you there are nine teams at start.
But this season we're starting with three qualifying rounds
of three teams each
and after each round
one team will be eliminated.
The three teams competing
in the first qualifying round are,
Ghosty Gals,
Lollipop Lunatics,
and Whisk Craft.
The rest of you can go home for now.
[laughter]
[thunderclap]
[Zak on TV] Hey, Eddie.
What's up, buddy?
I was doing pretty good till I saw you.
When Halloween Wars asked me to take over again
and even up the scare to a whole other level,
I told them to be very careful what they wished for.
[thunder rumbling]
Oh, man.
Shhh.
[Zak] New Orleans, the city forever
entwined with the practice of voodoo,
perhaps the most famous priestess
of this mysterious religion
is the original Voodoo Queen of New Orleans, Marie Laveau.
While attempting to communicate with Marie
my crew and I experienced strong evil forces,
ghostly hisses
and even a malevolent presence
that rushed towards us.
[man] Are there any negative energies in here?
Oh!
We grappled with a Voodoo Queen and survived.
Now it's your turn.
Eddie, tell them what it's going to take.
Don't take a whole lot of sweets, I tell you that.
[all laughing]
All right, like Zak said,
the Voodoo Queen still puts people in New Orleans on edge.
So she is not exactly invited to the hottest Mardi Gras parties.
So it means this year she is throwing her own bash
at the only place that will have it,
the swamp.
Now use your skills in pumpkin, cake and sugar,
to create a freaky fat Tuesday,
where all the swamp creatures get down
with a little Voodoo Queen magic in the mix.
Now as for flavors, we are going for classic New Orleans flavors.
Pralines, bananas foster
and my personal favorite,
the bourbon.
Oh!
- The bourbon! - The bourbon.
We got to put the "The" before the bourbon.
Here are some Mardi Gras beast
reveal which one you'll be using.
Go.
- Nice catch. - Nice.
- Oh! - Yeah.
- What did we get? - Bourbon.
Oh, I like banana foster.
All right, y'all, you got seven hours, so go!
- This is such a great start to Halloween Wars. - I know.
[laughing]
- Okay. - All right.
- Okay, okay, so... - Okay.
Oh.
What are we gonna make?
[Jamie] What kind of things lives in a swamp? [Beverly] Animals.
So you got like crawfish.
- Yeah! - [Beverly] Nutria.
Nutria, oh those big nasty rat things.
Our team name is the Lollipop Lunatics
because we're kinda crazy but super-sweet
and maybe hotheaded.
I don't know.
So we got a giant crawfish.
- [Beverly] Big! - Big.
What are they going to be doing at the party? I mean...
- Nolan's music. - [Willy] Music.
- Music? - Yes.
- Here we go. - Got this.
- Yes. - Yeah.
[Jamie] On our piece Marie Laveau
enchants her very own Swampy psychedelic band.
We've swampy water made out of poured sugar.
Our nutria is sculpted out of cake.
And we have a giant crawfish sculpted out of cake
with a tail and its claws made out of pumpkin,
so he can play his washboard stomach.
I pray to you, sugar gods,
please do your thing.
[Jamie] Beverly is our sugar artist.
The good thing about isomalt, they let me play with fire.
[Jamie] Bev's sugar artistry is very smooth and clean.
She is incredibly talented.
[Willy] Here we go.
I'm a little guy.
I got to get up on the top of this.
Oh, yeah.
[Jamie] Willy is our pumpkin carver.
Once I've all the detail of the crawfish...
[Jamie] Willy's got some amazing pumpkin carving skills.
He's just speedy and he gets the job done.
Right behind you, Bev.
And I'm Jamie the cake artist.
I would describe my artistic style
as graphic, and vibrant
with all of those little details in there
because it really is the devil in the details.
Let's get some zest in here
and not zest my finger nails.
Our team got bourbon.
We're doing a Sazerac flavor to the cake.
A Sazerac is a classic New Orleans cocktail
that was actually developed there.
You have bourbon, absinthe, for their anise flavor you've some bitters
and a twist of lemon zest on top of it.
So for our cake we have layers
of lemon and anise centered butter cake,
crispy feuilletine and really bourbon-y buttercream.
[Jamie] The flavors are coming together really well.
All those aromatics that we need in our cocktail cake.
We're not gonna drink it, so might as well smell it.
[Jamie laughs]
- Going to the oven! - [Beverly] All right.
[Willy] Awesome, awesome, awesome.
What if we do one voodoo doll in the middle?
[Shannon] Yeah, I can do that one out of cake.
What about the tree, or she's a trees, like a dead tree stump?
Our team name is Whisk Craft.
It's a tongue twister so that'd be interesting for the judges.
I would love to do that out of a pumpkin
- and maybe make, like, the tree has kinda feminine shape. - Yeah.
[Chad] Marie Laveau has embodied this dead broken tree.
She brings her voodoo dolls
and they're all having their own Mardi Gras party right there in the swamp.
What if we had, like all the swamp creatures? We could do, like, alligators,
- snakes, stuff that you'd find in the swamp. - Yeah.
I'm Chad Gainey. I'm from Panama City, Florida.
I'm actually a chainsaw carver by trade
and every Halloween I like to carve some pumpkins.
I could do a gator out of sugar.
- I can do an owl. - Oh, that would be awesome.
- That would be cool. - Yeah.
My sugar artist is Brooke Taylor.
She's outstanding sugar artist.
Brooke is gonna make the wildlife creatures,
some of the party favors and the swamp water out of isomalt.
- [exclaims] - Yeah.
- Okay. - Check that one out.
I'm adding the bananas to the cake now
and I'm leaving them in bigger chunks.
[Chad] We got banana fosters, so we're making a banana cake
with butter, rum, walnuts.
Filled with flambe, bananas, and rum,
with vanilla bean meringue butter cream.
For the banana stuffing what I do like to have
more ripe bananas rather than green ones.
So you can get some really good banana taste out of it.
[Chad] Shannon is a fantastic cake artist
because her work is super-clean.
She is pretty versatile. So I think that
we're gonna have a strong blending of mediums.
I got the most important ingredient, guys.
- Oh. Yes. - I got the rum.
[Chad] I'll take two.
[Brooke] These are the walnuts that are going in the cake batter.
We're cooking them with a little bit of butter
and brown sugar and rum.
Just to really reinforce that bananas foster flavor
but also to get some crunch into it as well.
- [Brooke] Yes. - That's really good.
[Brooke] Yes?
Hmm.
What if we did like, she is pissed at them
so she makes them into a voodoo doll
and everyone who has to go into the party is like
pinned, pin on voodoo doll type of thing?
[Janira] Our team name is Ghosty Gals.
I feel very confident that we're gonna knock it out of the park.
[Monique] So how about Marie Laveau, where she fit into in this party?
[Janira] Maybe she pregamed too hard. And she like...
- [Monique] Oh, she had that bourbon. - [Janira] Yeah.
- [Monique] Like she fell into the swamp? Like she... - [Janira] Yeah.
[Monique] Okay. [Janira] Yeah, yeah.
Okay, we'll do like a glass, like sugar bottle?
- Of course. - Okay.
We can definitely do that.
[Janira] Suzanna is the sugar artist.
She studied at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.
Okay, so I'm gonna carve her face out of pumpkin.
Maybe I could carve something, like shrunken heads.
- Oh, that would be so creepy. - That would be awesome.
- Yeah, that will look so nice. - Yeah.
[Janira] Monique is the pumpkin artist.
Monique has started in pumpkin carving when she was nine-years-old.
And she just grabbed a vegetable peeler and got to work.
Hey, hey, this is my personal pumpkin patch, they're all blend.
It's not anymore.
[Janira] I'm chopping up the butter.
So the brown butter just gives a very nutty flavor to the cake.
I'm Janira Green and I'm a cake artist.
If it's something more elaborate
that's, you know, that kind of cakes I love to take on.
If it has exquisite detail in it, you know I love it.
Let that cook down.
The cake is a brown butter cake.
It will be filled with a praline filling
in a brown butter meringue buttercream.
My brown butter is taking forever to burn.
I hope it finishes on time.
Oh, snap.
It's bubbling over.
I decided to do the brown butter cake
because when you brown the butter
it creates a great nutty taste that will go perfect with the praline element.
But that takes a long time to set and cool down
so the risk involved is the set up time
because I might not get my cakes done in time.
But it's definitely ready to set.
Once the brown butter is cooked down,
I pour it into a shallow pan
because the thinner it is the quicker it can set.
Run this to the freezer.
[Eddie] I can't think of a better city to kick off the season.
It's haunted, it's all about food, it's all about fun,
- so I can't wait to see what they're gonna create. - [Shinmin] I agree.
I think there's two different ways they could tackle this.
To me Mardi Gras is very celebratory.
It's feathers, it's rhinestone,
it's like teeny-tiny bikini bottoms,
like, you know what I mean,
you know what they wear like the outfits...
[Eddie] How many beach you got back in the day? What do you expect?
[Aarti] But then voodoo to me is voodoo dolls.
- It's... - [Eddie] Darkness.
- darkness and a lot off tiny details. - [Eddie] Yeah.
So they can go in either direction
and really either would work.
I'm just looking for some bourbon to be honest with you.
- No. - The bourbon.
- The bourbon.
- Aperitif. - Yeah. Aperitif bourbon.
[thunderclap]
[Zak] Six hours.
[timer beeps]
[Jamie] Oh, that's the cake!
I got cake, success.
Coming out of the oven.
- Willy, I'm gonna set my hot pans right here. - All right.
[Shannon] Okay, so the cakes need a few more minutes.
[Brooke] Few more minutes?
- Few more minutes. - [Brooke] Okay.
- We better hurry. - [Janira] I know.
We gotta get those cakes in the oven.
- Yes, definitely we need to get these cakes in the oven. - Yeah.
Nobody else is still preparing their batter.
Going into the oven.
So I'm behind at this point.
About 30 minutes.
[Monique] We could have the bestest layout here
but if we don't have a good tasting element then...
we're going home.
[Jamie] That's some egg yolks. My sugar.
There is going to be a very thin layer of
lemon curd inside of the cake.
In the recipe this is gonna act like just that bit of acid
to balance the flavors,
to make sure that the cake isn't just all sweet.
I'm cooking at over water-bath so very gently gets heated and cooked with steam,
which is nice and gentle, so it doesn't scramble.
Because a scrambled lemon curd is nasty.
Ooop!
Weee...
Just a little bit of lemon curd.
Banana foster
is traditionally served
like the half of the banana, the whole piece.
So we wanted to kinda mimic that,
in cake filling form.
I just added brown sugar to my pan and melting it down.
I'm gonna add these bananas in here.
I'm gonna add a little cinnamon.
This will be in between our cake layers,
to really sell that banana foster flavor
I'm going to add the rum.
Then I'm gonna light it.
I like this technique.
It gives that smokiness,
and I'm gonna try one.
Just to make sure.
Oh, God, that's good.
That'll do.
That'll do great.
These are watermelon radishes.
These radish guys are gonna go on to the tree
and they're gonna hang and be cool little shrinken-head-lights.
I wanted to start them early, because as they dry out
they kinda start to shrivel so it's gonna add to the look of shrunked-ness.
So once I pop the light inside
its gonna look like this.
How cool is that?
[Eddie] So, Jamie, what's this gonna be?
- It's gonna turn into a nutria... - Okay.
Which you know easily found in Louisiana
and they're giant rat creatures essentially.
Oh, I know. I live in Houston. I've seen them all over the place.
It's like massive splitter walking around.
- Just looking for Donna Tella. - Yeah.
- All right. So talk to me now, you know I'm a bourbon guy. - Yeah.
- Well... - How you gonna incorporate that bourbon?
Well we decided to go with a classic
developed in Louisiana cocktail.
[both] The Sazerac.
♪ Sazerac ♪
- Yep. - You're speaking my language.
- That's right. - Now don't disappoint me now.
Yeah, I mean, that's some of our Bourbon butter cream.
Damn.
- It's pretty bourbon-y you know. - Yeah.
- No promises. - [Jamie] No promise.
-All right. Good luck to you all. -Thank you.
Willy, how's that crawfish doing?
We're getting there, we're getting there. Thank you.
I'm trying to get these pieces off, and you know,
flat pieces we can mount back on the tree.
It's kind of a pain though because I got to take
and just shave this whole pumpkin, piece by piece.
It takes time shaving it this way.
Usually I just go to the town with my peeler and wham, wham, get it going.
This is taking forever
but hopefully it will pay off in the end.
I wanted this tree to have a little bit of a hour-glass shape,
like, Marie Laveau embodied the tree.
It's looking like a snowman right now.
I'm just not happy with the way it's shaping up.
I'm the one that's fully responsible for the pumpkins.
So, if this didn't work, I've just wasted a lot of time.
[eerie laughter]
Okay, so here's the new, new pumpkin,
I'm putting in the armatures for the arms.
- Does that look torso-ish to you? - [Brooke] Yeah.
[Chad] It looks more like a tree and less like a three stack snowball.
So I think from here on it should be smooth sailing.
I'm taking the skins that I cut off earlier and saved
and I'm attaching them in that way it covers up the seams
and it adds a bark texture to it.
This is my banana cake here and my vanilla bean butter cream.
This will help hold the cake in place.
And I'm gonna stack with some butter cream
and a little bit of that bananas foster filling and keep going.
[Chad] When Shannon starts making this cake voodoo doll.
The rice cereal treat are not staying on the bottom very well.
I'm melting some chocolate down, right now,
because some of my rice cereal is getting a little bit loose.
I'm gonna make sure that it sticks.
[Chad] I can see that Shannon is getting a little bit concerned about this
because it is taking extra time for her to have to go back in
and make sure that this cake stays up.
[Shannon] The chocolate is acting like a glue
keeping the rice cereal treat in place,
because gravity sucks.
But I think I'll get it done.
It will be all right.
[Aarti] I think you know this team has done a really good job
of encountering errors and quickly adapting.
They're super flexible and figuring out a way around it.
I'm about to start doing the bottle.
I'm very nervous because I always make it with a mold
and I didn't bring one
and so I need to make it like freehand.
I'm gonna put it in the bottle here
and I'm going to pull the sugar surrounding it.
I'm gonna flatten the base.
Now slowly I'm gonna close it.
Look at this.
I did it, the bottle. Yes!
So I'm just gonna cut the top
and we have a nice looking standing 3-D bottle.
Oh, I'm so happy!
[Janira] Oh, my God, that looks so good.
- I wanna cry. - Oh, my God how cool.
[Janira] You could make the hole at the top
- like with somethin... - No.
- No, please don't push it. - [laughs]
[Willy] I'm trying to do the Mardi Gras mask
for my little character here.
Water melon will allow me to create some really nice decorations around it.
It's a little more softer as well.
Pumpkin breaks easy, this one you can kinda bend a little bit.
All right.
Ta-da.
[Janira] Yes.
Our cakes coming through.
I'm doing actually the praline.
This is for the filling.
It's like caramelized sugar with toasted pecans.
And then you grind it and you make it like
the consistency like a peanut butter.
Here we go.
I'm making a buttercream dam,
and the dam just allows me to
fill the middle with the pecan fillings.
So creating a buttercream dam will allow it not to like, splish out the sides.
There is a layer of cake, a layer of buttercream,
the pecan filling
and that will be topped with the crunch texture.
We're gonna pull the sugar for the owl, guys. [phew]
[Chad] Brooke is making an owl out of isomalt.
She's gonna pull the feathers for the wings.
[Brooke] He's gonna go on top of the tree.
Um, kinda watching over.
He's festive but solemn.
I'm just trying to figure out how the owl works here.
- It is kind of symbol of something serious. - Yeah.
Well, owl is a thing like in the woods, in the forests,
I don't think about owls, it's not the first thing I think of in the swamp.
- [Aarti] Oh, at the swamp. - I mean if it's done well...
I'm absolutely willing to accept their story.
[Brooke] I have rolled out a piece of isomalt,
and this is the wing base.
It's a lot of feathers.
So I'll pull it,
scribe down the middle,
so then we get some texture, feather texture.
Very soft landing.
Now to be really careful not to put too much heat on the bubbles,
or they'll shatter.
We're gonna piece it together.
[Chad] Oh, he's cool.
I love those feathers.
Okay. I'm glad you all like him.
That's what's most important, really.
[Monique] I'm getting Marie's head.
I feel pretty good on where I'm at right now.
Okay, so I'm looking around,
and I see a lot of big pumpkin chunks.
I don't see a whole lot of detail.
I think our detail's gonna really convey a story.
This is a really cool technique.
This pad here will actually smooth out part of the pumpkin,
so especially when you're doing face or anything realistic,
I like to use this,
and it'll just smooth out any grooves I use,
and make it look a little bit more like skin.
So, I'm about to get ready to start melting some isomalt,
to make some swamp.
On our piece, we have swampy water,
made out of poured sugar.
It needs to feel extra swampy.
Get all the water distributed, like it's wet sand.
That way, it can bubble like a cauldron.
[laughs evilly]
I'm gonna color my isomalt swampy green.
Yes, my pretty.
- That looks awesome, Bev. - Thank you.
It's looking good.
[Chad] I'm carving this face in the top pumpkin to be Marie Laveau.
I'm trying to make this face almost like it grew into the tree.
I don't want it to be like a head,
like somebody's in the tree,
peeking out, you know.
[Brooke] That's so cool.
I like her. She looks, like, evil.
- [baby crying] - [thunderclap]
Is that a real baby?
Who brought a baby?
[Chad] Willy, is that you over there?
[Willy and Chad laughing]
- [Chad] It'll be okay, I promise. - [groans]
[thunderclap]
Traveling through New Orleans was like walking among centuries
of restless spirits trapped in the layers of history.
But ghosts often reveal themselves only to those who choose to seek them out.
[Eddie] All right, so listen up.
In honor of Mardi Gras,
add a classic king cake baby into your cakes
that only can be revealed when someone cuts into it.
Now, be sure to give that baby a creepy Halloween twist.
- [Chad] All right. - [groans]
We can't eat babies.
It's a PG show.
What did he say? He wants...
- [Willy] A baby. - Babies?
So, the cake...
When you cut into it,
you have to see it.
What are we gonna make it out of,
so that it doesn't just, like, disappear and dissolve into the cake?
[Beverly] I can do an isomalt baby.
I'ma sculpt a headless baby, a creepy baby.
Creepy baby!
[Beverly] There goes the baby's head.
Oh, no!
Wah, wah! [laughs]
Can't have pins in it, because it's inside.
The cake is a little soft right now,
but I'm giving him a little bit of a blood neckline.
I might give him a little heart.
Sorry, baby.
- [laughs] There we go. - [Willy] Nice.
Pretty baby. [chuckles]
You know, if we... Swamp creature might be cool.
That would be with a twist...
- Yeah. - Like baby alligator or something.
I mean, baby snake.
Want me to do it in sugar?
Is that easy enough for you to make him out of?
- Yeah. - Yeah?
We're getting Gummy Worms, we could just throw 'em in there.
[Brooke] I am pulling some darker green,
and we're gonna make baby snakes to go in our cake.
I'm scoring this a little bit,
so I have, like, a scaly look on my baby snakes.
Adding some of this red cocoa butter on here.
A little gorier.
- How am I gonna get all three of 'em in here... - Okay.
- without compromising the cake? - You can just do one.
Do your favorite one.
We were gonna give all three judges good luck,
but I guess only one of 'em's gonna get it now.
[Monique] Let's do a zombie.
[Janira] A zombie baby?
- Yeah. - [Janira] Out of what?
If we get, like, modeling chocolate,
um, we can, like, sculpt the baby
and then cut the baby in half,
hollow out the modeling chocolate
and fill it with, like, sprinkles or something,
so when you cut into the baby, demonical sprinkles come up.
Um, sculpting a baby by hand,
I have no idea what I'm doing.
Once it's firm,
I'll cut it open in half
and hollow it out
and then fill it with red sprinkles.
Now let's fill the baby guts.
- Ew. - [laughs]
[Janira] There, baby.
Make more cakes.
I'm cutting a hole out of the center of my cake
to fit my baby.
Okay.
- And then I'll tuck in some of the other cake... - [Beverly] Okay.
[Jamie] ...just to get 'em back in there.
What do you think about this?
- The Lollipop Lunatics made a headless baby. - [Shinmin] Mmm-hmm.
- What's the baby itself? - Sugar.
This is the bourbon bitter soak,
what makes all of it taste "Bourbony".
Will that baby make it?
If it's around the buttercream,
where there's actually a lot of fat,
- that can actually add as a shield for the sugar. - Mmm-hmm.
If it's right on the sponge cake,
where it's soaked with bourbon,
then we might be in trouble.
Right now, I need to shape this crawfish's head,
because crawfishes don't have a flat top.
They got, like, weird pointy head goin' on.
But now I have to cover it while watching out for a baby.
Don't slice the baby.
[Aarti] It's funny, because I think that, technically,
Lollipop Lunatics probably has the strongest design, right?
- [Eddie] Mmm. - Like, everything is complete,
the seams look pretty clean, the pumpkin work is extraordinary.
I like this fresh, kind of cutesy approach to the challenge.
This is the cool part.
Start getting some washboard ribbing going on.
It still is... look around us... Halloween Wars.
This needs to creep Zak out,
and I think, at this point, it's not there.
- [thunderclap] - Hey, Jamie,
- nice to meet you. - Hello there.
I just heard that you're a fan of my show Ghost Adventures. Is that true?
It's very true.
Oh, I love you even more now.
[Jamie] A little bit of fangirling going on,
maybe a lot. It's fine.
[laughing] Did I blush? Maybe.
One hour left.
[Janira] I'm very worried about the time and how much we have to do.
We still have to cover this fountain in modeling chocolate.
- Just grab a chunk. - Uh-huh.
[Janira] Try to flatten it a little bit,
and then just pass it through.
As I'm starting to cover the tree,
time is just slipping away.
I do not have time to cover the remainder of the tree branches
the same way I was doing the trunk.
- I'm really, really concerned about Ghosty Gals. - Mmm.
[Aarti] The tree is massive.
Modeling chocolate. That's just not the right material.
They could do, like, a chocolate buttercream.
They could've done it with, like, a chocolate ganache.
So many other much, much faster ways of covering that.
- [Aarti] They have a lot of ground to cover. - [Shinmin] Yeah, yeah.
This is it, because if they don't survive this round,
they're going home.
I'm really happy with the way the airbrush is coming out.
It's really bringing it to life,
turning it from a pumpkin into a tree.
Because the artistic work in that tree is so great...
- [Shinmin] Yeah. - I mean, it's pretty breathtaking.
- Mmm-hmm. - How are you gonna match that in the Voodoo doll?
I was thinking the same thing, right.
When I'm looking at the doll,
- I know it's not done yet... - [Shinmin] Right.
[Eddie] ...but it just seems kinda like a Patch doll.
- Yeah. - I think that they really need to age it
- and dirty it up a little bit. - Mmm-hmm.
- Maybe missing a button eye. - [Eddie] Yeah.
Don't have both of those on there.
Maybe a little insides comin' out.
- Okay. - Eyeballs, kinda, just...
- This is what I thought we was doing there. - Just hanging, you know?
Gonna make it pop.
In the interests of time,
I'm just covering the branches in buttercream,
'cause I can just lather it on
and airbrush it to match the tree trunk.
[Monique] Honestly, I think that looks better anyway.
It'll look like bark. It'll look much better, I think, than fondant.
- It's a happy mistake. - Okay.
- [thunderclap] - Ten minutes, teams.
Come on, let's rush. Let's go, let's go!
- Okay, guys, ten minutes, ten minutes. - Oh, my goodness.
I've never airbrushed anything this big.
Just pouring a little bit of isomalt on here to attach my owl.
Oh, shh... Uh-oh.
His bottom just fell off.
We're improvising,
and he's gonna sit down here,
- and nobody even look at him, okay? Deal. - [Chad laughs]
One minute, one minute.
Anything that stands out, let's do it.
- [Suzanna] Oh, oh. - You guys just look so freaking cool.
Oh, my God, I'm gonna vomit.
Time's up.
- [Monique cheers] - Unleash your Voodoo Queen.
Where did he come from?
Oh, my gosh! [chuckling]
Unleash your Voodoo Queens.
[Monique] Good evening, and welcome
to the swamp party, ladies and gentlemen.
So, here we have our Voodoo Queen.
She turned everyone who wronged her into a Voodoo doll.
She drank a little too much bourbon
and pregamed her way into sliding into the swamp,
so here she awaits her guests.
It's a Mardi Gras miracle!
We thought we were sending you home a couple of hours ago.
That tree's fantastic.
Thank you.
The fact that you painted lighter chocolate on top of a darker chocolate,
that's a very fast and easy way to show detail and shadowing.
Every time I take a shot of bourbon, I'll make that same exact face.
[women laughing]
Ooh-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo.
Good job.
What I have a concern with, though, is that the tree is more the focus,
as opposed to Marie Laveau,
'cause it's so detailed,
and I'm wishing that Marie Laveau had more detail.
She should have, like, frayed lace
and just have a little bit more gore to her.
Right now, she looks like
a lady I used to go to church with back in the day.
You know what I mean? She's sitting in the second pew.
Those shrunken heads, to me, are so inspiring.
I love that you've used what that watermelon radish had to offer.
The natural red,
pale, kind of icy white,
the little bits of green coming out of it...
I mean, you really hit the challenge.
We wanted Voodoo Queen,
Voodoo doll, swamp,
and you gave that to us.
All right, how about we cut that cake
and see if we can find ourselves a baby?
[all laughing]
- [Aarti] Just a baby. - [Shinmin] You see it?
- Yeah. - Oh, I see something.
- Oh, I see it! - I see something.
It's kinda ingrained.
[Monique] Yeah, take the feather too. That'll look cool.
- Here you are. - [all laughing]
[Monique] We have a browned butter cake
with a praline filling and browned butter buttercream,
with a little bit of sweet and salty nutty crumble.
I never thought I would say this,
but we highly recommend that you cut the baby.
This feels so wrong,
wrong because this baby is so realistic-looking.
The baby's green.
All right, let's see what's going on here.
- [Aarti] Wow. Ugh. - [Shinmin] Oh, my God.
[gasps]
It's like red granulated sugar.
- Ugh. - [women laughing]
- Oh, it's a confetti zombie baby! - Yeah.
You guys fully embraced this twist.
The thing about pralines is the crunch
and that sort of burnt sugar flavor
that goes with the roasty-toasty nuts.
You nailed it.
[Shinmin] This was so successful,
and the praline crunch...
- Mmm-hmm. - just really fills the mouth with such delight,
and then I taste that salt as well.
It's just... It's a really, really wonderful bite.
[Eddie] My only concern is that
just the crumb of the cake is a little tight.
I just wish it was just a little bit lighter,
- had a little bit more moisture inside of it. - Okay.
- Thank you, Ghosty Gals. - Thank you.
- Good job. - Thank you.
Oh, wait.
You guys get the... [indistinct]
I gave 'em a little baby.
- Great job. - Good job.
We did it.
[Brooke] Our Voodoo Queen
decided if they weren't gonna let her party downtown,
that she would have her own party.
- [woman snickers] - [Brooke] She has embodied the swamp
and made herself a tree
and invited all of her favorite friends,
the Voodoo dolls, the alligators...
All the swamp creatures have come.
Our tree and snake are all pumpkin.
It is a bash in the bayou.
- [chuckles] - [Aarti] Gosh, guys,
there's no mistaking what your piece is about, right?
We get Voodoo, front and center.
We get New Orleans for sure, and we get swamp,
so great job there.
You hit all the high points.
- Yeah. - [Aarti] Brooke,
I can't walk away from this without talking to you about that owl.
There is so much detail in it.
The light-up eyes are also a lovely way
to bring some light into a dark spot.
I wish you'd actually placed it on the tree.
- Mmm-hmm. - Yeah.
- I tried. I tried. - I'm guessing there was a reason.
He was gonna fall, so...
Copy you. It's just wonderful.
It's wonderful sugar work.
- [Brooke] Thank you. - [Aarti] Really well done, there.
This tree is just fantastic, Chad.
- Thank you. - [Shinmin] I really love how
you used the actual skin of the pumpkin,
and it looks like the pieces of the bark that hasn't fallen off yet,
and also, as much as I love all the Mardi Gras jewels,
I think it's just a little bit too tossed all over.
If you created clusters...
- Yep. - they would be points of interest.
[Eddie] The issue that I'm having is that,
because of the size of the Voodoo doll,
I'm torn.
My eyes are going to the Voodoo doll,
because it's in front,
and there's no detail, really, there,
and I wanna work my way back to the tree,
because I know that should be my focal point,
but the size of that Voodoo doll is just disrupting that for me.
All right, let's taste your cake.
[woman] Oh. Yee!
- Stomach pains. - [women laugh]
- Oh! - [Brooke] You found the baby.
- [Brooke laughs] - [Aarti] Oh.
- The baby! - [Eddie] What've you got?
- It's a baby snake. - [Eddie] Ah.
[Brooke] We got bananas foster,
so we did a banana cake
with butter-rum walnut,
flambeed bananas that have rum, cinnamon and brown sugar,
and then a vanilla-bean buttercream
that kinda gives you that "ice cream" feel with your bananas foster.
I was very lenient with the rum.
- [all laughing] - Flag one for the cake, one for me.
I wish.
The banana is very front and center
in this cake, which it should be.
You got bananas foster,
and I really appreciate that.
Normally when you have a banana cake,
it runs a risk of being kind of mushy,
but you found a way to keep the body of the cake intact.
[Aarti] Your bananas are sweet.
Rum is very sweet, made from sugar cane.
So I think you need a couple of ingredients
- to make it a little more dynamic... - Mmm-hmm.
So whether it's the bitterness from the caramel,
- or even some salt. - Mmm-hmm.
The baby snake.
The sugar work, again, is amazing.
I wish it was a little bit more movement to it.
It seems a little stiff for me.
You know what I mean? Find a way to kinda give it a little bit more...
- [Shinmin] You just curl the tail off it. - [Eddie] Exactly, yeah.
- Thank you, guys. Good job. - Thank you.
- I think we did fine. - It was good.
- Think so? - Yeah.
Maybe Voodoo baby's a little big, but...
I think we put good work on the table, and...
- Yeah. - Yeah, I'm proud of us.
[Jamie] Our Voodoo priestess enchanted a swampy zydeco
to entertain her Mardi Gras party.
The entire bottom half of our crawfish is carved out of pumpkin.
HIs claws are out of pumpkin.
His entire top half is all cake,
and he has sugar limbs, sugar antennas, sugar mandibles,
and our nutria is all cake,
and we have an accordion that is pumpkin cases on either side,
and we also have some carved pumpkin party guests down here.
- Willy? - Yes, sir.
[Eddie] You did a really good job with the pumpkin carving,
'cause it literally looks like a cooked crawfish tail.
I've eaten many in my day,
and that is spot-on.
I wanna rip that sucker apart.
It is so lifelike,
and you brought in the shine
with that wonderful sugar work, Beverly.
The eyes reflect at you when you look at them,
like it just emerged from the swamp water.
What's not working for me...
I'm missing the sort of black magic "Voodooness" of it.
I get zydeco, and I get New Orleans,
but I don't get "Voodoo Queen" from your piece.
I think it would've been a more successful piece
if you had maybe put the Voodoo Queen on there,
or a Voodoo doll,
something that really directly says,
"Yes, this is New Orleans,
but we rose to the challenge of Voodoo Queen."
Let's taste your cake.
- [Jamie] Here I go. - [Eddie] Show me that baby.
[Jamie] Give me the baby.
It's...
- go, go! - Whoo hoo hoo!
Oh, my God, that's big.
- It didn't melt. - [Eddie] Oh, my gosh.
And it's a headless baby. Of course.
- Of course. - It is a headless baby.
Oh, gosh.
[Jamie] Since we got bourbon,
we decided to go with a classic New Orleans cocktail,
the Sazerac,
so we have lemon
and a anise-scented butter cake.
We have very "bourbony" buttercream,
crispy feuilletine for some texture.
I love that hint of bourbon that I get...
- Mmm-hmm. - 'cause you have some of those layers
that have been soaked,
and so, right when you think that it's not enough bourbon,
- that really moist crumb... - [Jamie] Yeah.
That's been soaked in that bourbon just pops through.
- I feel very special, 'cause I got the headless baby. - Yeah.
- [chuckling] - [Aarti] Ain't she cute?
I was very concerned about your sugar baby melting in the middle of your cake.
This thing is not going anywhere. It's...
- [clinks] - solid.
Erm...
I have two things I wish were better, okay?
- One, I wish the feuilletine was a little crispier. - [Jamie] Okay.
[Aarti] Two, I don't taste the anise as strongly as I hoped,
only because, unfortunately, I've had my fair share of Sazeracs.
- Yeah. - You know, absinthe's really strong.
-It is. -[Aarti] It's really strong. It's almost medicinal,
but I think maybe if you had bumped up that anise,
even pad it with some fennel,
which is a little stronger,
I think then you would really drive home that this is a Sazerac cake.
- All right. - [Aarti] Thank you very much, guys.
[all] Thank you.
All right, up the creepy factor.
- [snorts] We can up the creepy factor. - Yeah.
Going forward, we're just gonna add more...
- dark magic in it. - [Willy] Darkness in it.
In this first qualifying round,
Zak inspired you to create the Mardi Gras party in the swamp
for the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans,
Marie Laveau.
Now, you all scared up some amazing cakes,
but one of you cast a love spell on us.
Ghosty Gals...
- Great job. - Oh, my God.
[all laughing]
[Eddie] That cake was the bomb.
[Janira] Oh, my!
Now for the tough part.
One team is gonna have to pack up and head home.
Lollipop Lunatics,
your crawfish was so wonderful.
It was magnificent.
Pumpkin, cake, sugar, it was tremendous.
But we wanted to see that thing you do with Voodoo.
That was missing.
Whisk Craft,
we loved your tree and the owl.
They were both so wonderful, and Chad,
you honored the organic integrity of the pumpkin
in a way that we've never seen before,
by using every piece of that pumpkin,
but you did struggle with proportion issues,
and your cake flavor felt a little flat.
It was missing a keynote.
Whisk Craft...
I'm sorry. You're done on Halloween Wars.
I wanted to come and create something that was really cool,
and I feel like I did.
I was proud of what I made.
[Aarti] Bye, guys.
The only thing that I didn't accomplish that I came for
was to get that title.
- There was no bad team today... - [Aarti] yeah.
[Shinmin] ...but we're really happy you guys are here.
[Eddie] You all survived the first qualifying rounds of Halloween Wars,
but we're just getting started, and this season,
it's gonna get a whole lot scary.
[Eddie] Next time on Halloween Wars...
You don't know what you got yourself into.
- [woman 1] I get scared easily. - I'm scared.
- [eerie screams] - [Eddie] ...Zak transports us to London, England.
[man 1] Are you making a scary face?
[man 2] A Victorian monster theme.
[woman 2] The most dapper demon you've ever seen.
- When I think of London, I think of werewolves. - Okay.
[Eddie] We explore the ruins of the infamous secret society.
- It works, it works! - [woman laughing]
You want scary, I'll give you scary.
[man 2] It's crunch time.
- [gasps] - Oh, my God.
No crying. There's no crying in this game.
[Shinmin] This could be a disaster.
It looks like a disaster right now.