'Nailed It!' Season 4: Jay Hanshaw aces both challenges, takes trophy home with wedding inspired baked goods
On the final episode of 'Nailed It!' Season 4, it was time for three amateur home bakers - Rachel Feldman, Ronald Jackson and Jay Hanshaw to try and recreate magnificent wedding day treats.
Christina Tosi joined Nicole and Jacques Torres as guest judge for the episode.
For the first round, the bakers had to create wedding band mini cakes. They had to choose one for themselves amongst a keytarist, a drummer and a singer. Each cake was a mini-cake base covered in fondant. The musicians and instruments were made out of modeling chocolate.
The bakers had 45 minutes to finish the challenge. Rachel had never made anything this extravagant before and she felt super frazzled doing the challenge. Ronald's buttercream was too liquidy but Jay was moving ahead in the challenge, making it look like a cakewalk.
At the end of forty five minutes, the judges went to each of the bakers work station to examine their creations. The spirit of a wedding is joy and happiness and Rachel's cake managed to evoke those feelings in the judges, making them smile. Nicole described it as a "wet and mushy cake" that she really enjoyed.
Ronald's cake looked like a donut with some cheese scraped over it, and upon tasting, the judges noted that his cake was overbaked and dense. Jay's cake had a great balance of ingredients and was fun to look at. The judges decided to pick a winner based on the look of the cakes and Jay was declared the winner for the first challenge.
For the second challenge the bakers had to create a Vegas inspired cake. It was a multi-tiered creation with a styrofoam structure in the middle from which hung a spinning cake topper made out of modeling chocolate symbolising a wedded couple.
At the end of the challenge, the judges noted that Rachel's cake had the flair of what she was asked to recreate but it still missed a lot of elements. She didn't cover the styrofoam structure with fondant and didn't make the cake topper. However, the judges lauded her creativity and loved the flavor of her cake.
Ronald's cake looked more like a soccer cake than a wedding cake with the green top and dice making it look like soccer balls. His cake was rubbery to eat and he'd also used too much pineapple extract which was very overpowering.
Jay's cake was imperfect and couldn have used a lot more technique but he managed to do a complete job with all elements in place. His cake tasted overbaked and the judges would've appreciated it if he had used a different flavor for the buttercream.
In the end, the judges decided to pick a winner based on the the visual appeal of the cakes, and they declared Jay the winner of the second challenge too. He walked away home with the trophy and a cool $10k.
'Nailed It!' Season 4 is now airing on Netflix.