(classical music)
- I don't know what to do.
(classical music crescendos)
- That's annoying! - It looks terrible.
- [James] We're hiding these.
(classical music crescendos)
- [Mike] Ow! - What is going on here?
- This is a joke.
- Where's the dish!?
- This should be really obvious!
- [Janice] Oh dear, oh dear.
Hello normals. - [All] Hello Janice.
(Jamie laughs) - No, I'm not a Normal,
I'm not Normal.
I said hello. (boys laughing)
- We brought you down.
- [Janice] Today's theme is meringue.
You must create a delicious dish
including a high quality,
technically sound meringue of your choice.
- Okay, why?
- [Janice] This is a Normals only challenge,
so Chef James will be watching you live
from the Chef's Cam area,
and will award a meringue badge
if your performances merit it.
James will decide the order as he watches along.
- Oh, fantastic.
Well, in that case, I- - That means
that we can impart some of the blame to you
if this doesn't work out. (boys laugh)
- I don't think I can be blamed
for any of what's about to happen.
(goofy music)
- [Janice] The Normals' most recent attempts
were more mer-wrong than meringue,
so we've given them 60 minutes for this challenge.
Each person will cook in 10 minute blocks
and will have two gos in the kitchen
with James deciding the order.
(alarm blares) - Right.
- He has extra sugar, that's a good start.
- Here's what I'm thinking.
A citrusy tart based thing with meringue on top,
and I think that means we need a Swiss meringue
which I think is one of the easier ones to do.
So for that, I'm going to need water, kettle.
- Well, he's only a minute in, but he's made a great start.
Very clear on what he wants to do.
He's wiping out the bowl,
because of you use a dirty bowl to whip up meringue,
it doesn't work if you have any grease in it.
This is impressive!
- So Swiss meringue is egg whites and sugar in that bowl,
and I have to make sure that the sugar is dissolved.
And I do that by doing that,
and if it's grainy, leave it in there.
If it's not grainy, it's fine,
and then mix it and whisk, whisk, whisk, whisk, whisk,
whisk, whisk, whisk, whisk, whisk, whisk.
And it should be good.
- Oh good, he actually listens.
He listens!
- I don't know, in terms of order,
if this is the first thing that I should be doing,
but I wanna get my meringue badge,
so I wanna do the meringue.
- That's the interesting thing about this challenge,
they all want to contribute to the meringue,
but is the meringue the first thing he should be doing?
Probably not with an hour.
I'm not sure what he's going for,
but if he's going for something like a lemon meringue
or lime meringue pie,
then he wants to get the curd on.
- Oh! I'm not panicking.
This is all fine.
That's a mug, that'll be all right.
Egg yolks in here.
This is gonna be great.
Oh no, it's a dirty mug!
It's got coffee in it, who left a coffee mug there?!
Oh no, god, heaven on a mop, please!
(James chuckling)
We know how to separate eggs, this is fine.
We've done this so many times.
Why are you panicking
about separated eggs? - Pure panic.
He knows how to do this.
I'd love to see them use the yolks for something.
If you're making a curd, it's really good to use the yolks.
- Right, but I'm gonna try and multitask
whilst I'm doing this then.
- Oh no, oh no, oh no. - Sp, what am I thinking?
I don't want to ruin this,
but I do want to run and get something else from the table.
Oh, oh, oh.
- It's a very gentle heat,
but you do wanna kind of keep it moving.
- There we go, multitasking.
- I mean, I can't fault him there.
- I think some ginger could be good.
I'll give the boys options: ginger, cherries.
So we can have lime and ginger, cherry and almond.
It's like a cherry Bakewell, oh.
Wouldn't that be nice?
Right, how is this doing?
That feels good to me.
Let's get the stand mixer in.
Bowl in, how does this bowl go in?
- See, J's done the meringue,
and he's not given anyone else a chance
to do anything with it.
- I think I'm leaving this
(alarm blares) in a good place.
We have meringue, it's a meringue pass-it-on.
James, who's next? (funky rock music)
(alarm blares) - Right, here we go.
We have meringue.
I don't want to be a (bleep),
but I'm gonna be a (bleep).
We have 40 minutes, why has he made a meringue now?
- He's absolutely right.
- Lime and ginger, nice.
Put them together.
I assume that this is a Swiss meringue.
What's that, vanilla extract?
- Oh no.
Oh, oh no.
- Well done, J.
You just wanna whisk this until the bowl cools,
and then it's good to go, and we can torch it.
I imagine that he's thinking some sort of crispy bottom.
I've done nothing for two minutes!
- Okay, so Mike's testing the heat of the bowl,
and you want to whisk it until the bowl is pretty cool.
They do know how to make meringue!
- I'm gonna make a base,
'cause something's going to need to either bake or chill.
Let's see what there is.
I found some honey graham crackers.
So honey, ginger, lime, all good combinations.
I'm going to make a buttery biscuit base,
press it into a small tart case-
- Oh nice!
- And we've got some sort of crispy, crusty base.
- So he's taken Jamie's idea of maybe like a tart,
but switched out the pastry for a kind of cheesecake-y base.
So I think it's a great idea.
It's a really good idea.
The meringue is probably almost there.
It's hard to overwhip a meringue like this.
Meringue's looking good though.
- Let's break these up. (food processor whirs)
Still a bit warm, so I'll keep it going.
Okay, so I have graham crackers, I have melted butter,
all going in together
and I'm going to pulse that until we get some bread crumbs.
(food processor pulses)
Okay, I have two tart cases here.
And now if I can just put some butter in here
so Baz knows that he's got to rub it,
put that in there (alarm blares)
and then get it chilling,
I think we will have a base in time.
Whew!
James, who's going next?
(funky jazz music)
(alarm blares) - Okay, we have...
that looks like meringue.
We'll stop it.
- Okay, I think that was a good start.
That meringue's been on for 10+ minutes right now.
He's tasting it, that's good.
- Ooh, that's good meringue.
Biscuit-y base, okay.
Nothing in the oven.
Fridge, nothing else on the go.
- I think because I'm watching,
they're all on their best behaviour,
'cause this is going well.
- I have an idea,
I have an idea. - Oh no, oh no.
- Do we have any frozen berries?
It's fine, let's see what we've got.
So I was thinking,
we've got everything here to make ourselves a Baked Alaska.
I wondered whether or not we could put ice cream
as the filling.
- So we've been doing a lot of cooking recently
for the new book.
And the one thing that gets left over is as ice cream.
Honestly, I think I prefer the tart idea,
because I'd like to see them make a filling
and they've got time,
they had time to make a filling
rather than use something that we've made already.
- Really love the idea of a Baked Alaska
'cause it's a showstopper.
Okay, the ice cream's tart, not too sweet,
it'll go really well with that, let's go kiwi.
- Kiwi ice cream is delicious.
- I need to get it out of there, I need to let that thaw.
- So I like his thought process,
he's gonna dip the tray into hot water,
and what I'm hoping he's thinking is that
he's gonna take the whole thing out as a block
and then slice it as a block.
- Pistachio, let's add a bit more.
In my head, I've got kind of a green theme going on.
Does this cut out?
Yes, it does, good boy.
- That was a fantastic idea.
Like, full credit for that.
- Let's skip a little bit, keep it melting very slowly.
I've got to soften that, got to soften that.
A little bit of seasoning in the base,
we'll add a little bit of salt.
- A bit of salt,
people don't think about seasoning with salt
in a sweet dish, but it helps it,
it just helps lift things.
- Sorry Mike, I'm guessing this is you.
I'm gonna hide these
because I don't wanna make tarts anymore,
I wanna make Baked Alaskas.
- Barry's on a completely different page than J and Mike.
- Cool, okay. (alarm blares)
- Have another 10 minutes, mate.
- So I didn't have to panic all of that time?
- I think you were hoping that somebody else might come in
and clear up your mess. (Barry chuckles)
- Yeah, I think this is gonna be fun.
(alarm blares) - Ooh, that'd be nice on top.
Some dark chocolate.
- Okay, so ice cream time.
The good thing about the ice cream is that
it's mascarpone ice cream with saturated fats.
The bad thing is that I don't think
he's gonna have time for it to set.
- Okay, into our moulds.
Okay, that's a good one.
I want a fine grate of chocolate
before I put my biscuit-y base on top.
- I don't think that's even going to register.
- Crumb going on top. - Nice.
- Push down.
Okay, let's get that into the freezer.
Okay, right. (Barry chuckling)
So now, I've got time to clear down
and try and make it obvious to the guys what we're doing
and what they've gotta do next.
I've never been this far ahead, I think.
Food-based clues only.
Another arrow here. - No, no, no.
- We're doing X marks the spot.
- Would you guys judge me if I just failed on that?
- I didn't write anything down, all right?
That's not cheating. (alarm blares)
I really hope they're set up.
In my 20 minutes, I feel like I've done okay.
Let's go for seven, seven.
That's modest for me, come on. (chuckles)
(goofy music)
(alarm blares) - Right,
let's see what's happened.
Big arrow.
Another arrow.
What, pineapple?
Oh wait, hang on, there's icing sugar.
Why is there a big X there?
These? - He's found it.
- Clues. What's this?
Okay, that's like a pistachio biscuit-y crumb.
That's what that was, so, right.
But what is that?
(James chuckles) (spoon clatters)
Woo-hoo-hoo, hee-hoo-hoo!
I hope that's not what we've made.
- Hey, that was nice.
I made that, it's kiwi ice cream.
- This is fun.
What can I actually do that's gonna be useful?
I can put on meringue in a piping bag, number one.
Let's do that whilst we think.
Nozzle, what nozzle should we go for?
Let's go for a fun nozzle.
Oh Jamie, just pick a nozzle!
I'm having this nozzle.
(whisk clatters)
(James snickering)
That's quite big, isn't it?
So there we go.
- Jamie's the only person who's touched the meringue so far.
So he might come out with this well.
- Push this down!
- So you could cut a hole in your bottom.
(James laughs)
Oh, there we go. - Job done.
Oh my God, I've got three minutes left,
and all I've done is put some meringue in a piping bag
and it's gone all over my hands
which is the whole point of putting it in the jug, right.
- It'd be nice to see him make something
to go alongside the Baked Alaska.
- Not knowing what the dish is makes it very difficult
to find a plate to set it up on.
But hey, here's a nice one, so we'll have that.
I could make a dish and finish it just as a backup.
- He's thinking he's gonna make a dish
and finish it in a minute.
Why is he, gruhhh, (laughs)
- Hey, at the end of the day,
we can always make a banana split, right?
That's just gonna confuse him. - What is that!?
- I'll leave that banana. (alarm blares)
What do I rate myself?
No, I think I've done well, I've done well.
I'm giving myself an eight. (James whistles)
- Mike! (funky rock music)
- Okay. (alarm blares)
A banana. - I love the banana,
I love the banana.
- I assume that that's the meringue from earlier.
Arrows, arrows, pineapple.
I've got, so Barry's next, isn't he?
I've just got prep for Barry.
- [Janice] Barry has been twice already, Mike.
(James laughs)
Oh Barry, did Barry go twice?
Oh (bleep)! (James laughs)
Well, where's the dish?!
Freezer, freezer, freezer.
There must be something in the freezer.
What's in this?!
I see that this is what we've made, but what's in it?
Right, okay, maybe there's a whole dessert here.
- So I don't think it's gonna be set.
It's gonna be sticking.
- I assume blowtorch. - Here we go.
Here we go.
- So I assume I'm heating this up
and I'm hoping that there's some sort of delicious,
fruity thing on the top of this.
Wow, this is fiddly for a last go.
I was not ready to be the plater upper.
Okay, so this is physically not coming out.
Oh, what the hell is that?
That's ice cream.
Oh, oh no!
How long has this been in?
Are we, are we...
Please don't tell me that this is supposed to be
a Baked Alaska,
because stuff needs to chill for about four hours,
'cause I've made one before, and we've had 40 minutes.
Am I just gonna,
shall I just pipe it on? - Just do it.
- Okay, right.
Guys, we're going for it.
We're just going to go for it.
I mean, the meringue's great, so well done J.
I don't want to speculate,
but this has Barry Taylor written all (bleep) over it.
- It's going well, it's going well.
The poking skills are good.
- Okay, I think I've covered in all the gaps.
We're just gonna have to blowtorch this.
- [James] Look at that meringue,
look at that meringue!
- Okay, I'm just gonna now,
I don't want to brown it much more.
I mean, it looks great.
I'm not gonna lie.
What, what?
I mean, is that someone's...
Is that someone's way of being helpful for me?
I mean, we've got pistachios already.
There we go. (alarm blares)
That was stressful.
I'm gonna give myself an eight.
(synth beat)
Do it, James. - Ready?
- Please.
- Yes!
- [James] Are you pleased?
- [Jamie] I mean, the meringue looks great,
but I also left the kitchen
with only meringue being in there,
so I have no idea what else there is.
- [Barry] That's not just a pile of meringue, is it?
- It's air. (boys laughing)
There's only one way to find out, isn't there?
There's a layer, we've got one layer.
- [James] We've got crunch. - I'm okay with that,
that's not bad.
It's soft, it is soft, I wish it were firmer.
- Well, should we eat it?
- Cheers. - Cheers.
- Well. - I like it.
- I like it. - [James] I like it.
I think it's very good,
I think the meringue was very well-made.
I was impressed that you worked together,
and that you knew what you were doing,
you were looking for the right things
with the graininess.
I questioned whether you should start with meringue,
and whether that was maybe a personal decision.
- If anything, not being aware of how long a meringue takes
shows a lack of knowledge about meringue, doesn't it?
- But he did make it.
- I made it,
I knew that it could sit there for awhile once it was made
and then it was done and we wouldn't have to worry about it.
- Okay mate. - Then it's you,
you got rid of the pastry, which I think was fair enough,
but you kept the idea.
So you're like, tart yes, pastry no,
which I think is fair enough.
And then Barry.
Barry didn't like either of your ideas.
- Standard.
- Barry knew what he wanted to do,
and he was gonna do it no matter what.
- Barry did an Ebbers. - He did a cloud egg.
(boys laughing) It's a cloud egg!
- It was going towards a tart, and if I'm honest,
I'm not confident in making curds,
so I just thought, "What do I know how to make?"
Which was- - You didn't make anything.
- Well, I knew-
- You grabbed it from the freezer.
- Well, I wa- - Something that
we had made already.
- Seeing as you watched the whole thing through,
and we each rated ourselves,
we're going to tell you our rating,
and then we'd like you to give your rating for us
and see how close they are,
because yeah, it's making you squirm,
(Barry laughs nervously) So it's obviously a good idea.
J, you went first. - Gave myself an eight.
- You made meringue, it's good meringue,
And then you cut banana in half.
(Mike snickers)
So maybe like seven
for the meringue. - Ooh, too far off.
- Baz? - Seven.
- Yeah. (sigh) (Jamie snickers)
Okay, a good point was that
you instantly took the meringue off, stopped it whisking.
I may have liked to see you make something
because you did the ice cream thing.
In an hour, you guys made a Swiss meringue
and a cheesecake base.
Maybe like a six.
You know, you don't want to offend someone,
but they didn't do a great job.
(Mike and Jamie snickering)
- So don't do my thing, fine.
- I'm in for an eight.
- Meringue, you knew what you were looking for,
you tested the bowl,
you left it running 'cause it was still really hot
after J put it in, and your piping skills were great.
So I'm gonna go with an eight.
Why not? I'll give you an eight.
- I think you've gotta rate whether this is a pass or fail.
- It's honestly, it's a hard one 'cause it tastes great,
but you didn't really do much in an hour.
(intense crescendo)
I'm gonna say it's a pass. - Ohh!
Great, okay!
And the most important bit, do we all get a meringue badge?
- You get a badge, you get a badge, you get a badge.
- [Mike And Jamie] Yes! - Well done.
- [James] Hooray! - [Mike] Great!
- [James] You all demonstrated that you learned
what to do with it.
- As always, get in the comments and rate the three of us
from best to worst, and let us know your theme ideas.
- If you'd like to continue this conversation
or laugh at our expense over on Twitter,
then please do so with the #sortedpassiton.
Almost forgot what we were doing.
(Barry laughs)
And after so many of your requests,
we're bringing back our Pass-It-On reaction videos.
This is where we all sit down and react
to each other's performances in full for the first time
and we film it.
You can see the fallout of this meringue episode
in a bonus video this Friday at 4:00 PM on our channel.
Set your notifications in YouTube so you don't miss it.
- Oh, hi.
Oh, this is the kind of stuff that gets cut.
- Stop it, cheeky.
- This is the kind of stuff that gets cut,
but it can't get cut.