TV • PAGE 21
THE BULLETIN • FEBRUARY 25 - MARCH 3, 2021
Food Network’s ‘Easter Basket Challenge’
pushes bakers to their creative limits
Sunny Anderson is all about Easter.
She loves the holiday itself, the food and
most importantly, the desserts. Which is
why her hosting gig on Food Network’s
“Easter Basket Challenge” was such a natural
fit for her.
“I’ve never really done like a holiday
competition show like this. I did a pie show
but I love Easter and I love the food around
Easter. I’m planning my Easter menu right
now and scallop potatoes is on it,” she says
with a laugh. “So I’m looking forward to it.”
Premiering Monday, March 1, the five-
episode, hourlong series challenges seven
professional and home bakers with creating
tasty and imaginative holiday masterpieces
to be evaluated by judges Jordan Andino
(“Junior Chef Showdown”) and Claudia
Sandoval (“Masterchef Latino”). The
contestants must interpret the outrageous
Easter themes presented to them and turn
them into delicious holiday confections and
elaborate edible displays.
In the end, the winning baker receives
a grand prize of a golden egg filled with
$25,000.
For her part, Anderson (“The Kitchen”)
came away impressed by the creativity on
display here, which involved more than just
baking.
“(The designs) are super elaborate,” she
says. “There’s PVC and wood frames – and
it’s not just cakes. These bakers are also
challenged with molding chocolate and
spinning sugar and doing some really artful
BY GEORGE DICKIE
things that are not typical in competitions.
And then we also have some height
requirements and dimension requirements
that we give in some of the challenges where
we really want people to do something huge.
And I think for the finale, we had them
make like a three-foot-tall Easter egg. ...
You’ve got to put something in the Easter
egg that’s hidden for the judges to find. And
obviously that adds another level of fun and
flair.”
But with the fun, there is also pressure.
Because of the complicated nature of the
designs, the bakers have hours instead of
minutes to complete their creations, which
didn’t always mitigate the stress level. In
fact, Anderson recalls one theme that had
the contestants particularly on edge.
“At one point, we asked them to do
something that would be worthy of an art
museum,” she says. “So when you think
about that, you’ve got to temper chocolate,
which takes forever. If you get it wrong,
you’ve got to start over. You’ve got to mold
things. You know, stack up cakes and carve
them. The fondant alone is just a headache.
You know, many of them almost didn’t
finish with the time allotted. It was amazing.
“There were photo finishes pretty much
every time,” she continues, “and a lot of
them at the end ... wished that they had just
a few more minutes. I think everyone says
that when they’re competing because there’s
a list of things you want to get done and it
doesn’t always happen.”
“Easter Basket Challenge”
BY GEORGE DICKIE
Wrenn Schmidt
OF ‘FOR ALL MANKIND’ ON APPLE TV+
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J9y78
Though “For All Mankind” is an alt history of the space program,
doing it nonetheless had to be something of a history lesson for you,
no?
Yeah, I think so. I actually feel like as far as the space program, the Apollo
years were more familiar to me. There was still a lot to learn, especially
technically, but I feel like some of that trajectory was much more familiar. And
I feel like even though I was alive, I was a kid during the shuttle age, I didn’t
really have much of an understanding of how incredible that technology was
and the ways in which it kind of changed the game for what we were doing in space as a country.
So that for me was really fascinating and kind of intense and mind-blowing to understand all of the
technology. I mean, I really kind of geeked out about that. And going to see the space shuttle that’s
here in Los Angeles was really stunning because I’d been studying as much as I could to understand
exactly how that machinery worked to kind of understand at what point does alarm bells go off for
Margo or for someone that’s really well-versed in how the technology works.
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