'Bakeaway Camp with Martha Stewart': Premiere sees six home bakers create mouthwatering s'mores, layer cakes
'Bakeaway Camp with Martha Stewart' premiered its first season on Food Network on Monday night. The show follows the journey of six ambitious home bakers from across America who signed up for a 4-week course in intensive baking in the backyard of baking mentor - Martha Stewart. Each week one baker would win a 1-on-1 crash course with Martha to put them ahead in the path if they could perform in challenging conditions that include 90 degrees heat, pouring rain, and too many bees.
The winner would walk away with $25,000.
Stewart is supported by celebrity chef judges Carla Hall and Dan Langan in the kitchen. TV host and sports commentator, Jesse Palmer is the host of the outdoor competition and head counselor for the participants Bryan Clark, Kela Hunte, Nate Clingman, Jessica Lugo, Cortney Anderson-Sanford, and Catherine Foley on the show. The format of the show is such that each week the bakers have to partake in two challenges - camp counselors challenge and camp director's challenge.
The bakers were all assembled in the backyard of Stewart's farm and she arrived on site atop a beautiful black horse. After a brief exchange with the contestants, she added that the winner of the 1st challenge would get a significant advantage. She announced that the winner of the challenge would head up to her farm where she would help the winner to prepare for the camp director's challenge.
The first challenge in the episode was for the 6 contestants to create S'mores and to elevate this rustic dessert into something elegant and modern. Kathryn's s'mores macaron with a marshmallow filling and chocolate ganache managed to stand out to Hall and Langan more than the 5 desserts. This set her up for a personal mentoring session from Stewart wherein Martha taught her the tricks to creating her favorite layered desserts which included layered crepe cake and lemon curd.
Meanwhile, the rest of the bakers at camp indulged in a game of badminton stewing over the fact that they were not the ones to get a chance to win a 1-on-1 session with Martha.
The next challenge was about layers and to introduce it, host Palmer came donning multiple layers and started stripping them off one after another, leaving the contestants totally in awe of him. The home bakers were tasked to create a luscious layered dessert featuring a - curd, custard, or ganache. At the end of the challenge, the dense nature of Cortney's layered dessert didn't work at the judges' table and she was the first contestant to be sent home.