‘MasterChef Junior’ season 2, episode 3 review: Just a piece of cupcake

Tonight, “MasterChef Junior” really upped the ante when it came to given its young home cooks big challenges, as the remaining contestants had to do two very difficult things: Working in teams, and also working at something they’d probably never heard of.

For the first twist of the night, we saw the home cooks tackling cupcakes in pairs, in what was really a broken challenge. Rather than having to actually work together, each member of their pair basically made a different cupcake. Not exactly the biggest twist in the history of mankind.

The latter challenge tonight was far more interesting, and mostly because it brought us the opportunity to see a competition all about shepherd’s pie. It’s very delicious, but a tricky thing to make properly. If one component is off, the entire thing just tastes a little bit weird in the end.

Through this, Samuel continued to prove himself a force to be reckoned with, while previous favorite Oona struggled and barely kept herself alive. We lost in this episode the combination of Sam and Mitchell, and this reminded us in the end that these eliminations are probably sadder than almost any other show since we’re dealing with kids. The good news is that clearly, they’ll have their entire lives to build and grow from what they learned here.

This episode was not always the greatest, but at least we had a guest appearance from Gordon Ramsay’s mom, and some inspiration to make cupcakes. If we were to judge an episode by its ability to make us hungry, this one succeeded. Grade: B-.

What did you think about this episode, and the results at the end of it? Let us know right now with a comment.