Episode 3: Muffinmania!– Elon White looks to the solar system for inspiration for this week’s challenge and packs it into the small but mighty muffin!
Elon White, flanked by two columns of Union soldiers, fresh from their trip from 1864, watches as an ambulance carts off Amir Usif, rendered to mad, half-conscious ravings by the flat side of Bianca Peteron’s Nagiata. Elon announces that they are now down to eight contestants as a large, immersive map of the solar system appears around the contestants.
Each contestant, Elon says from the middle of a hand of poker with the boys from the Ohio 54th, will have a planet assigned to them. He wins his hand, the boys in blue throw their cards down in frustration. Your muffin must have your planet as a theme. Go!
Bianca Peteron of Spain is assigned Mercury. Jenalee picks Venus. Sean O’Malley, former fairy from Ireland, is given earth, Adonis Letapolis, current Centuar from Greece, Mars. Sam Brown from the United States is assigned Jupiter. Betty, tall and mysterious, is given Saturn, ringed and brave. Richard Rand despondently receives Uranus, the Union soldiers snickering in his direction. Luka Bretzagalatzin, finally, is given Neptune, an ice Giant to match the cold, dark, ice blue of his eyes and oft-exposed soul.
Luka begins making mini blueberry muffins with smiley-face icing. Bianca Peteron, at a loss, decides on corn muffins for her Mercury Muffins. One Union soldier attempts to convince her to just make her muffins with liquid Mercury before Elon White has him shamefully dismissed and sent home. Sean O’Malley, after some thought, decides to theme his muffins around Danu, Irish Mother Goddess of Earth and Fertility and, consequently, as a former member of the fairy folk, his own mother. His muffins taste of disappointment and infrequent phone calls.
Betty makes double chocolate muffins with enchanted rings that hover around them in an ever changing rotation of neon greens and yellows. Sam Brown makes a few texts to some friends and, to go with his Rhubarb- Cardamom muffins, presents the judges with the Chicago Philharmonic Orchestra, who play Gustav Holst’s Jupiter movement from his Planets Suite. Jeff Londing cries as the music swells; the Union soldiers remove their caps and remember their fallen brethren. Raleigh Simone shrugs and says she doesn’t care much for Cardamom.
Adonis Letapolis rages to anyone who will listen about the petulant Romans who came from the Greeks, stealing their laws and their Gods and perverting them. Instead of making Mars Muffins, Adonis makes Ares muffins, filled with mint, pistachio and orange, topped with a ginger icing that, when eaten, summons the Greek God of War who slams his spear on the judges table and demands the Centaur be given the prize. After the episode, Ares and Raleigh consort, producing a Warring Vampire Lord who is sentenced to life in prison for a Ponzi Scheme before he can bring bloody, fanged war upon the world.
Jenalee Wolland, inspired by Venus’ volcanic surface, makes dark-chocolate cayenne volcano muffins. They explode with fiery red delight, causing a stir of wonderment and fascination among the Union Soldiers. For the remaining year of the Civil War, the 54th Ohio keep cayenne muffins in their pockets.
Richard Rand finds himself out of ideas for a Uranus muffin and picks a fight with a few of the Union soldiers who keep heckling him. In the last minute, he pulls of a beautiful Carrot Cake and Prune muffin, guaranteed according to Richard, “to make Uranus work.” The crowd groans.
By the end, Bianca Peteron is sent home. Her corn muffins, Londing explains, were dry and lacked cohesiveness with the subject. Before she can be interviewed, Confederate Cavalry storm the building, resulting in a bloody engagement under the set of Samurai statues, their swords gleaming in the flashes of gunpowder and smoke. Bianca is eliminated.
The Whale and the Petunias 