Swiss Meringue Buttercream Ices 'MasterChef' Cook's Dreams of Making the Finale
In honor of its 250th episode, MasterChef celebrated with an episode named “United Cakes of America,” in which each of the cheftestants were assigned an iconic cake to recreate.
Last week’s winner of the Immunity Pin, Kennedy, was tasked with the job of deciding which cakes went to which home cooks, and, of course, as a member of the West team, she went easy on her teammates, and gave the more difficult cakes to cooks she felt were more of a threat.
Kyle Hopkins, a member of the strong Midwest team, was tasked with recreating the difficult Meyer Lemon Cake, which turned out to be his undoing.
“I am more of a savory guy than a sweet guy,” Kyle tells Parade in this exclusive interview. “That is a fact, but I did not think [baking] would be my downfall. Obviously, Kennedy having control of what cakes we had to make … she picked an art project for me, not a cake. I can’t do an art project. I can bake, I can make really good flavors, and I can even make them look pretty. But the three tiers and all that, it was the least Kyle cake possible.”
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The 41-year-old from Kansas City, Mo., had no problem with the sponges or the lemon curd filling, but when it came to the Swiss Meringue Buttercream frosting, it was his downfall.
“I’ve never made a Swiss meringue,” he continues. “I made it [again] when I got home, and it took me around 45 minutes and I had to get on Google twice while I did it. So, for me, it was my unfamiliarity with a classic baking technique.”
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As Kyle watched the clock tick down and get to the final eight minutes, he got frantic. He could tell the icing had failed and he needed something cold that would hold the cake together. In a panic, he added cream cheese to the mixture, and judges Gordon Ramsay, Joe Bastianich, and Aarón Sánchez were appalled, with Joe telling him it tasted more like a carrot cake.
“I don't think if I had it to do over again, I would add cream cheese,” Kyle says. “It truly was a desperate move where I just wanted to have something that would hold. Literally, in 90 seconds I needed something that was thick enough and strong enough to hold together a three-tier cake with two layers of lemon curd trapped inside.”
While Kyle didn’t go into the MasterChef kitchen thinking that baking would be his Waterloo, such turned out to be the case, but it was also due to how this season is structured with winners and losers each week from each of the four regions. For example, if Wayne had won for the Midwest, Kyle would have been safe as the judges would not even have sampled his cake. Instead, Kolby won, keeping the South team safe and putting everyone else at risk.
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“I didn’t have my best day but there’s all these other circumstances,” Kyle adds. “I actually do a significant amount of baking, and I have my whole life. I bake really delicious, good foods. My lemon curd was awesome. I was actually shocked at how good it was. I thought my cakes were as close to perfect as I was going to get in that setting. But without a Swiss buttercream to create the structure of a three-tier cake, I just had no hope.”
Also during our chat, Kyle discussed the dish that he had hoped to cook for the judges for the finale, how he prepared for the competition, how he found the form to audition by accident, and who he thinks might make the finale.
As you pointed out, so much of this is a game this year with the way that teams are eliminated. Do you think if it had been another season, you would have probably gone farther?
Doesn’t everybody say that? But I do. I won immunity in the first week, which I think was a pretty strong statement. Obviously, while it’s really awesome having immunity in week two, I kind of didn’t like it. I wanted to get used to that kitchen. I do have a level of confidence in my cooking, and I wanted to keep competing. I wanted a chance to get more familiar. I don’t know, I actually thought that I was way more comfortable and way more Zen in that kitchen than I thought possible.
I had a lot of fun even on my last day. I felt like I was able to look at this pantry and take all the collected recipes that I’ve cooked and techniques and skills I’ve learned and put them to the test, and I felt like I was doing really well. I really only got to do two of my own dishes. I did the lobster fries, and I did a chicken dish for the chicken challenge. But then there was the field challenge for which I had immunity, and then I was forced to do cake. So, I really didn’t get a huge opportunity to showcase my creativity and my skills as much as I wanted to. I believe had I been given the chance to cook a few more weeks or until the finale, I would have shown up as well as I had in the first part of the season.
What would you have liked to have cooked for Gordon, Joe and Aarón?
During my audition, I did talk about my finale dessert, which I was really excited for. Gordon is British. I’m not sure if you’re aware of that. His sticky toffee pudding is his signature dish at his restaurant in Kansas City. It’s a very British dessert. Toffee is also an ingredient that goes well with Belgian quadruple ales. So, I worked up a dessert where I made an ice cream with Chimay, which is a classic Belgian quad. And so, it’s a sticky toffee pudding. There’s a sticky toffee sauce, obviously, a beer ice cream made with one of the classic Belgian quads, and then a little bit of toasted nuts on top for crunch and complexity. When I made that at home, I was like, “This is a finale winning type of dessert.”
Did you prepare by cooking a bunch of different things?
My wife asked me early on. She was like, “Do you have a good red sauce?” and I was like, “Uhhhh, we can’t play that game.” I can’t go to culinary school in three weeks. For me, it was more about a philosophy. I had a couple of cookbooks in my hotel room, probably the most important one was Salt Fat Acid Heat, which is a decidedly non-cookbook cookbook. It’s a book that’s all about approaching cooking with balance -- trying to have a balance of acid, a balance of salt, a balance of intensity is really important, so one flavor doesn’t outshine the other. For me, it was having that thought process, whatever got thrown in front of me I needed to think about from a direction of color, texture, flavor, and balance that I can execute. And then from there, I can try to tell a story from my life or something through the food.
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What’s next for you? Are you still in the beer business or are you going to try to do something more food oriented?
I love my job. I work for Surly Brewing Company based in Minneapolis and I’ve loved their beer forever. I have a great job and I work with great people. It’s actually awesome -- I won the state fair challenge. We have a team meetup for our sales team at the Minnesota State Fair in a couple of weeks, which I’m really excited to go to.
We’ll see. I’ve talked to a few people. Obviously, I’ll keep doing some food stuff. I think I’m going to try to do a couple popup dinners in Kansas City and beyond. But there’s this weird thing with my life where everything I’ve done leads to the next thing. It never feels logical in the moment until it happens. So, I’m not trying to force anything right now. I’ve had a couple of fun conversations with people about directions my life might take and I’m very open to that. In the meantime, I’m going to keep doing what I love with beer and what I do with food and living my life with my family in the Midwest.
What made you enter in the first place? Have you been a cook for a long time or are you new to it?
I’ve actually been cooking for a very long time, really since I was a child. I’ve done all sorts of recipe development and helped consult on this and that. But I’ve never really had a solid job where I ran a restaurant or was a chef. For me, I left teaching to go work full-time for a brewery. COVID hit after six or seven years and I found myself at home with a couple kids and a wife and not necessarily in unemployment but I was very underemployed. We watch those [cooking] shows all the time at my house and we pause it and say, “I would have made this.” But it never felt real.
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When I saw a casting call and this opportunity I was like, “I’m not going to do that.” Ten minutes later, I went back online and found it and was like, “I’m going to do this.” It really was an opportunity. It was chance that I saw it and then I think probably like a lot of people, I sent in an application and was like, “I probably won’t hear from anybody.” Then slowly over time, it became more and more real until I was shaking Gordon Ramsay’s hand and cooking my pork chop recipe for him in the MasterChef kitchen. It’s been a wild ride and I’m very happy I took that risk.
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Of the home cooks that are left, who stands out as somebody you think might make it all the way to the finale?
Man, that’s a rough question. I’ll go one from each region. I really think both Brynn and Nina are big hitters. I think Brynn has a lot more to show. Brynn is someone I was very afraid of. In the South, geez, I don’t know. I’m looking both at Kolby and Reagan. I think maybe Reagan is the one I’m most afraid of. I think Reagan has sass and attitude and a lot of big, bold flavors. But I wouldn’t be shocked to see Kolby in the finale, either. I don’t even know if I can weigh in on the Midwest, because I love all those guys so much. I don’t know, I think Grant looks very strong with his pasta. Wayne is somebody who has so many recipes hiding up his sleeve. And Charles comes at it with such an open-mindedness and a specific kind of cultural tinge. In the West, I think Kennedy looks the strongest. I think Madame Donut’s an awesome baker. I loved Lizzie. I think James is strong, but I think Kennedy just has the wide range and the skills to make it to the finale.
MasterChef airs Wednesday nights at 8 p.m. ET/PT on FOX.