MasterChef recap: Hologram Nigella's pressure test really takes the cake

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It's Anzac Day in the MasterChef kitchen, which means a visit from military icon and veterans' rights activist Nigella Lawson to teach the amateurs how to make bully beef.

In fact Nigella is here as part of 'Superstars Week', in which a legendary foodie figure will appear on a screen in the kitchen each night a la Marlon Brandon in Superman, to challenge the contestants. Tonight it'll be Nigella, tomorrow it might be Yotam Ottolenghi, then perhaps Heston Blumenthal, Curtis Stone, Ronald McDonald, etc.

When Nigella appears on the screen everyone applauds rapturously. "Nigella Lawson, on a screen!" Brent yelps orgasmically, as if that's not how he's always seen her before. Nigella tells the amateurs that their food is there to make people happy, and they all nod, scarcely believing they've never thought of this before.

Today's pressure test is in two parts. In the first part the contestants must taste 18 different biscuits and identify as many of their flavours as they can. The five amateurs who identify the fewest biscuit flavours will be forced to cook to avoid elimination in the second round.

The amateurs begin eating biscuits in what must rank as one of Australian television's most compelling visual sequences.

After fifteen minutes the amateurs must present their flavour findings. Linda and Tommy have topped the class, correctly identifying fifteen out of the eighteen flavours, which range from common favourites like chocolate and vanilla, to slightly more left-field selections like cardamom and Vegemite, to obscenities in the eyes of God like anchovy.

Failing to make the cut are Conor – who only named four out of 18, six fewer than the next worst, making one wonder if he even possesses a tongue – Brent, Maja, Yo Yo, Tom and Dan. That makes six – Tom and Dan have tied on 11 each and must perform a sudden-death biscuit taste test tiebreaker. "I'm really nervous to go against Dan in a taste test, I know he's really great with flavours," says Tom, in complete contradiction of the very reason he is in this situation.

Dan and Tom taste their biscuits, and let me tell you the entertainment value of watching this happen still has not waned. As Nigella takes a little nap, they both write down "raspberry". They're both correct, and so this phenomenally gripping sequence continues. Tom writes down "peanut". Dan, remembering the time his mother bought him a packet of biscuits from a secret magical cave, writes down "sesame". Sesame is correct and so Dan is safe from Nigella's next round of mental torture.

To the five losers – Brent, Yo Yo, Tom, Conor and Maja – Nigella now describes a dish. From her description, they must make the dish. Whoever is furthest away from the dish she was describing leaves in entertaining tears.

"At its heart this is a simple enough cake," says Nigella, and then says a bunch more other words that we don't hear because we are lost in her eyes. Basically what she says is to whip up some eggs and rhubarb and then tease the voluminous peaks until they're covered in mayonnaise.

The amateurs begin. "As a medical student I do well under pressure," says Yo Yo, which doesn't really follow – only if she is a GOOD medical student will she do well under pressure, and if she's a good medical student why is she on MasterChef anyway?

Meanwhile Brent does not know what 90 per cent of the words Nigella said even mean. He has confused oil with egg yolks and must start again, though what he's starting again is a bit of a mystery to him as he's still trying to figure out what "whisk exuberantly" means.

In desperation he looks up "cake" on Wikipedia to see if it helps. Andy and Jock visit his bench to make sure he understands how little faith they have in him. "You're making a cake," Andy tells him helpfully. Jock tells him to calm down. "If the wheels fall off, you're done," he says, causing a panicked Brent to go back and see whether Nigella mentioned her cake having wheels.

Meanwhile Tom, the anti-Brent, is doing everything right and therefore makes for very dull television.

With cakes and rhubarbs in ovens, Nigella interrupts to look attractive and demand that everyone make a crème anglaise. All the amateurs look at her screen with murder in their eyes. She looks back with smouldering innocence. "If Nigella wants custard, she's getting custard," says Tom menacingly. What custard-related atrocity is he planning?

Conor's rhubarbs are perfect, but his cakes are dense and his anglaise is taking too much of his time. It's often the way, isn't it: one of your kids is great but the others are a big disappointment?

Speaking of disappointment, Yo Yo has left her rhubarbs in the oven too long and they appear to have turned into bacon. As Nigella at no point mentioned a bacon filling to her cake, she cannot use them. Her cakes are also overcooked and she places them in the blast chiller as a punishment.

"I've got my fingers crossed for you!" shouts Nigella from her screen: a meaningless sentiment when directed at a group of five people out of which one will definitely be going home no matter what.

Now begins the Grand Assembling of the Cakes. "We would like to see five complete five cakes in five minutes!" Melissa bellows, but hey, everyone has a dream. Five complete cakes in five minutes seems a hell of a long way away when Yo Yo only just pulled her second tray of rhubarbs from the oven.

Conor begins using a piping bag to apply his icing in a manner almost completely unlike Nigella's. Four out of five cooks have got out their blowtorches to do the A-Team montage section of the cake, but Yo Yo is only just getting around to putting the cake together. She sounds depressed and defeated, but then she always does.

Time is up. "I can't believe you've all managed to get a cake out there," says Nigella, who apparently had an incredibly low opinion of the contestants. Nigella departs to count her money, and the judges prepare to stuff their faces.

The first cake is Brent's. It is white and brownish with spiky bits. It tastes like a nice cake. The second cake is Conor's. It is white and brownish with spiky bits. It has the consistency of a tub of Play-Doh. The third cake is Maja's. It is white and brownish but not very spiky. It tastes like a basically okay cake. The fourth cake is Tom's. It is white and brownish with spiky bits quite similar to Nigella's spiky bits. Her cake's spiky bits, I mean. It tastes like a nice cake with some soggy bits in. The last cake is Yo Yo's. It is white and brownish and looks slightly melancholy. It tastes like a revolting blob of raw rhubarby trash.

And so it is that Yo Yo selflessly sacrifices herself with a bakery train wreck, so that Conor's pretty bad cake goes unpunished. Yo Yo returns to the living hell of medical studies. "I'm not sad about leaving the kitchen, I'm sad about leaving you guys," she says to the group of complete strangers who are crying for no reason.

Tune in tomorrow, when someone will feel frantic.

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