MANCHESTER, NH – It was the rind of a blood orange that ended local baker Jon Buatti’s dream of being this year’s Food Network’s Holiday Baking Champion.
Monday night, Buatti of the Bearded Baking Co. on Union Street became the seventh of 12 bakers to be eliminated in the seventh season of the championship.
“I had so much fun here,” he told the judges. “It was the ride of a lifetime.”
Each week, Buatti and the other contestants did two bakes, a pre-heat and a main heat.
In Monday night’s “Pre-heat” bakers worked in teams of two to make jelly doughnut desserts inspired by traditional Hanukkah jelly doughnuts.
Buatti was paired with Eva Roberts, a bakery owner from Spokane, Wash. The two made fried Napoleans with a pastry cream and rhubarb filling.
The team of bakery owners Megan Rountree of Keller, Texas and Lashonda Sanford of Newport News, Va. also chose to make Naploeans while the team of Lorenzo Delgado, a Miami pastry chef, and Julianna Jung, a home baker from Champaign, Ill., made churros out of choux dough.
Buatti worked on the dough while Roberts made the rhubarb filling spiced with cinnamon and nutmeg.
“Ooh, I think that is dynamite,” Buatti said after taking a taste.
They decorated their Napoleans with a Star of David and a light blue and white icing.
Duff Goldman was the sole judge for that portion of the competition.
Rountree and Sanford’s Napoleans featured a blackberry cassia filling. Goldman thought the dough was perfect and the jam delicious. They took the top spot while Delgado and Jung placed second with their churros filled with blueberry ginger jelly. That left Buatti and Roberts in third, landing them in last place and on the Naughty List as they headed into the main heat to bake decorated upside-down cakes that, as a twist, had to include rosemary.
Buatti’s cake ingredient was blood orange and the cake had to be decorated with poinsettias. Rountree and Sanford, as winners of the pre-heat, were given exclusive use of special tools and ingredients that included fondant and cookie cutters.
As a result, Buatti decorated his upside-down cake with buttercream piped poinsettias, which judge Nancy Fuller said were “lovely.”
However, all three judges had problems with his cake. Carla Hall thought it was too thin (Buatti’s cake had stuck to the pan). The rind of the orange was an issue as well and Fuller suggested he should have made a marmalade out of the oranges instead of leaving the rind on the oranges.
Rountree placed first with her port-flavored plum upside-down cake decorated with Linzer cookies in the shape of Christmas ornaments.
Buatti had his ups and downs in the six weeks he competed. He sometimes came in last in a pre-heat but would redeem himself in the main heat or vice-versa. Last week, he was in the bottom in the pre-heat but dazzled with his triple-flavored cheesecake that rocketed him into second, his best placement.
The competition continues next Monday with the five remaining bakers vying for the $25,000 prize.
