Best Baker in America

Eight of America's top bakers gather to begin the first in a series of Skills and Master Challenges designed to put their baking brilliance to the test. In the Skills Challenge, the bakers are tasked with baking flawless mini-upside down cakes. In the Master Challenge, the bakers must create a double barrel or a three-tiered wedding cake for 50 people, using lemon as the featured flavor. Judges Marcela Valladolid and Jason Smith determine which baker is eliminated.

Seven bakers remain, and in the Skills Challenge they are charged with making their choice of two different flavors of macaron. In the Master Challenge the bakers must conjure up their own highly creative take on the dessert classic - Baked Alaska - using torched meringue, cake and ice cream, with strawberry as the required featured flavor. One baker is not up to the challenge and is sent packing.

Perfect mini fruit tarts using pâte sucrée (sweet pastry) is the challenge that six bakers face in the Skills Challenge. For the Master Challenge, the bakers are given their hardest task yet: their original version of a St. Honoré cake that must contain the elements of puff pastry, pate a choux (cream puff dough), crème chiboust (a type of pastry cream), and a required featured flavor of coffee. One more baker is sent home after the challenge.

Five bakers are left in the competition and in their Skills Challenge they must tackle the temperamental and delicate café classic, Crème brûlée. For the Master Challenge, the task is to bake up their take on the complex and beautiful Opera Cake, a six-layer masterpiece said to evoke the tiers of the Paris Opera House. The required featured flavor is "noisette" or hazelnut. One baker is given their marching orders, as the remaining four are one step closer to the grand prize.

In their last chance to get into the finale, the four remaining bakers must make Mini Mirror Glaze Cakes - perfectly mirrored on the outside and with an entremet (layered mousse) cake on the inside - in the Skills Challenge. In the Master Challenge, the bakers must bake, plate and present a two-course dessert tasting menu, featuring chilies and fennel. One more baker's dream ends today as they head home before the finale.

The pressure is on as the final three bakers take on the most revered and beloved of all baking ingredients - chocolate. In the Skills Challenge the bakers must bake a perfect version of the ever-temperamental chocolate soufflé. The final Master Challenge is to create the Ultimate Chocolate Cake -- a truly spectacular, elaborately decorated cake that should be the best chocolate cake the bakers have made in their lives, using some type of liquor as the required featured flavor. A winner is declared, becoming the first Best Baker in America and walking away with $25,000.