Monster munchies: Duff Goldman and Rosanna Pansino host creepy cookie contest
Sugar, spice and everything spooky: Season 2 of “Halloween Cookie Challenge” airs Mondays through October on Food Network.
“Celebrity pastry chef Duff Goldman and social media sensation Rosanna Pansino celebrate the wildest and most colorful holiday of the year!,” Food Network describes. “They’ll bring together the best cookie makers in the country to compete in two challenges and create the creepiest, spookiest and tastiest Halloween cookies ever made! The winner takes home a trick-or-treat bag filled with $10,000!”
And that’s $10,000 every episode. New contestants park their brooms at the kitchen door and take on Goldman and Pansino’s cookie challenge every week, showcasing talent from far and wide.
So far this season, the competing cookie confectioners have faced monsters big and small, exploring what would happen if our favorite Halloween treats had a taste for us, too. Bakers have been asked to: make two-sided trick-or-treat bags — with one side being light and fun while the other is dark and spooky — out of lemon candies, black licorice and peach rings; decorate cookies with scary self-portraits; craft life-size oozing zombie parts out of cookies, overflowing with gooey marmalades and jams; and create creepy, 3D haunted mirrors — each old and cracked with crunchy treats like kettle chips, pretzels and corn chips.
This week, “Edible stained glass is one of the most colorful and bewitching trends in the cookie world, and four cookie experts make glowing Halloween stained-glass cookies,” the network promises. “After one cookier is eliminated, the remaining three masters build giant, elaborate Halloween fun houses that would thrill any Halloween carnival-goer. The judges will really feel like they are at a carnival as the bakers must incorporate fun fair flavors like caramel apples, grilled corn, popcorn balls and deep-fried sandwich cookies.”
In the season’s final episode, the final four competing cookie makers hope to scare the pants off hosts Goldman and Pansino by making edible, three-story haunted houses. Then, in the last round, Food Network has shared that, “The three remaining cookiers host a séance by making playable spirit boards. To make sure there is maximum ‘spirit’ in their boards, they will include spirits like apple brandy, cinnamon whiskey, coffee rum and black currant liqueur.”
A rambunctious carnival filled with delicious treats, Season 2 of Food Network’s “Halloween Cookie Challenge” airs new episodes Mondays through October.