.

“COOOOORN!” – Emmett

“Now, we need to figure out this corn situation.” – Maci, panicking

“Who’s scared of corn? It’s just corn.” – Duff, observing

“Friendship bracelet” cream puffs. Apparently, friendship bracelets are trending right now? I had no idea. I can’t even keep up with what’s on trend anymore; I think I stopped noticing ten or fifteen years ago. Apparently, skinny jeans, side parts, and ankle socks age you now. Trends come and go so quickly. Like, Kardea was wearing bell-bottoms in this episode. Those were big in the ‘90s, when I was a kid! And I guess they’re back again now?

Aging millennial rant moment: I vividly remember how popular 1960s style was in the ‘90s: bell bottoms, door beads, inflatable furniture, lava lamps, daisies and peace signs, et cetera. When I was a kid, thirty years ago was ancient history! Comparable to like the Civil War or the invention of the automobile. How funny it was, that trends from thirty years ago were popular again. Now, I’m thirty-six, and trends from thirty years ago are resurfacing once more, but this time I remember the last time they were around. It’s so dizzying.

A couple years ago, I was walking through the mall with my kids, and saw a teenage boy wearing a “My Chemical Romance” t-shirt, and I thought to myself: “wait! That band belongs to my teenage years!” and then I realized that, back when I was a teenager, kids were wearing “Nirvana” and “Metallica” t-shirts, which at the time felt like a very “old” and “vintage” thing to like. Bands from the ‘80s! How retro, how cool! Because Metallica was big in the eighties and Nirvana was big in the early ‘90s → I was in eighth/ninth grade in 2003-05 → so an approximately an twenty-to-eleven-year difference. Similarly, MCR was big in 2004-08 → this kid at the mall was rocking a MCR shirt in 2024 → a sixteen-to-twenty-year difference there. It’s no different from the trends when I was a teen. Wait. Wait, wait, wait. WHAT?!

Getting old is so whack!!

Anyway, back to the youths, and the baking.

Friendship bracelet cream puffs. With a “choux your own adventure” twist, announced halfway through the bake.

I have a love-hate relationship with the Twists on these Baking Championships. Love them because they keep it interesting and keep us on our toes. Hate them because they tend to ruin the flavor combinations that I was already looking forward to. And this week, it was definitely more of a “hate it” scenario. Because most of the teams changed their plans pretty drastically. So instead of a twist, it felt like a completely new challenge was introduced halfway through.

I thought Abigail and Kenneth’s plan for a coconut cream puff with white chocolate ganache sounded stupendous! And I like dates (more than the average person, actually, I really like dates), but adding the date paste and changing the topping to royal icing completely threw them off. Jovie and Lenore did a 180 from passionfruit to ube. Maci and Emmett were going to do London Fog cream puffs (not my cup of tea, but interesting flavor choice, I was here for it!), but then they got stuck with corn as their twist ingredient?! Wisely, they decided to change plans entirely, because a tea-corn cream puff would just be weird. I guess with a cream puff, unlike in a cake, you don’t really have room for more than one or two flavors, so you have to be discerning.

The “corn situation” was, imo, the great drama of Episode 6. Corn was definitely the most adventurous ingredient out of the six on that table. Emmett seemed really excited to have received corn as their twist ingredient (lol), but it did require them to completely regroup. It was nice to see little Kenneth, the midwestern farmer kid and resident Corn Expert, inspecting the kernels for Maci and Emmett and advising them about the flavor profile of corn – that might have been my favorite moment this week! They ended up making it work, albeit at the expense of their decoration. I’m just glad they pulled through.

And glad to see Genesis and Akbar win this week! We knew, going into this week, that they were masters of cake, so I was curious to see how they’d do with a non-cake challenge. And they nailed it! Their décor was actually some of the most effective out of all the teams’ (the way they did white topping and black letters for the “letter bead” cream puffs made it read very authentic; I was surprised that they were the only team who did this).

But, sad to see the Bow Gals Harper & Holland go home. I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of them; they have real star quality. I was so not surprised to learn that they are Swifties who’ve attended the Eras tour not once, but twice. So cute. And the way they cooperate so seamlessly as a baking team is really impressive, especially for kids that young. What even happened to their filling, though? Am I crazy, because I swear I did see Harper filling those cream puffs. Where did it go? The case of the disappearing ricotta chantilly. I guess it will remain unsolved.

Oh, and can’t not mention Leia and Kiera! They did great with their flavors this week, which was nice to see. Strawberry pastry cream and yuzu curd sounds like a delicious combination – I actually like that better than their original plan to do strawberry-mango. For once, their flavors got better feedback than their decoration! Clearly, they can do both. I still think these two are going to win the whole thing.

I haven’t yet written about what I would do for this challenge if I were on this show, which has apparently become a thing that I do, so here goes. I’ve never made cream puffs, but, being me, I’d probably want them to be filled with chocolate. If my sister and I were baking together, we’d probably do either chocolate or coffee flavor, since we’re both coffee drinkers, and for the twist ingredient – I think ricotta would have been the most fun to work with. You could do like a tiramisu flavor.

Each team also had to do a little “slogan” written out on their cream puffs, something to represent their team (we had “wolf pack” for Kenneth and Abigail; “rock rats” for Jovie and Lenore; “luv 2 bake” for Leia and Kiera; “soul sibs” for Genesis and Akbar, etc.). What slogan would my sister and I put on cream puffs, if we were on this show? The only thing that comes to mind is “Twilight Zone” lol, because that was how we used to refer to our family home, back when we still lived at home with our parents in our teens and whenever we’d come home during our college years. Like, whenever someone in our family did or said something weird, awkward, annoying, or triggering, one of us would look at the other and just start humming the Twilight Zone theme song. Growing up in the Twilight Zone was a pretty defining aspect of our lives and our sibling relationship.

What would you guys do?! Tell me!! On to this week’s Stats:

Superlatives from the judges: 0 (Running Total: 4)

Kid who most deserved a hug: Maci, when she was panicking about the corn situation.

Kid who most deserved a high five: Also Maci, for finally managing to create a delicious, sweet, cereal-milkish pastry cream out of fresh corn, even though it took two tries.

The dessert that I would most have liked to eat: Genesis & Akbar’s winning tahini-strawberry cream puffs. In my family, we’re really big on PB&Js, and I personally love sesame flavor, so this sounded like a really great one to me. I also appreciated that they opted to keep the strawberry flavor they’d originally planned, and swirl the two pastry creams together. Very bold choice, and it paid off well.

What do we think?! Leave me your comments!