Ben Pobjie recaps the Twins immunity challenge

Sweet Week, the week in which every dish must pay tribute in some way to classic glam rock band The Sweet, continues apace. Today the kitchen has been divided by the old wall, well known to veteran MasterChef viewers. Poh announces that today’s challenge is “something we like to call Twins” – each amateur must deliver and raise to adulthood a pair of twins.

Wait, no – actually, the amateurs will be working in pairs, but the pairs will be divided by the wall, and communicating without being able to see each other. The winner of immunity will be the team whose dishes most closely resemble each other. The amateurs will be assigned partners by choosing a coloured box, which will also contain an object they must use. “Jesus Christ!” exclaims Nat in despair. “No, you can’t cook with him,” Andy replies, and I think that’s worth putting in this recap because that was actually pretty funny. Good work, Andy.

Gill will cook with Lachlan and an air fryer. Darrsh will cook with Harry and a stand mixer. Nat will cook with Sumeet and an ice cream machine. Sav will cook with Josh and a blender. Let the chaos begin!

The teams begin running around and yelling at each other, in much the same manner as ring-tailed lemurs at the zoo. “Nat and me are roomies, we both have exactly the same vibe,” says Sumeet, making one wonder why this vibe has at no point even been hinted at on the show. Josh is worried because he is not familiar with desserts, and he might find it difficult to follow Sav’s recipe as she is not in any way a member of his family.

Jean-Christophe is a big fan of this challenge: it reminds him of his restaurants in France, where all catering employees are required by law to have walls between them. Back in the kitchen, Darrsh and Harry are making a meringue nest, hoping that a meringue will make its home there and lay some meringue eggs before the time is up. Darrsh has come up with a plan that doesn’t include any kind of fish, making Harry hopelessly confused.

Sumeet waves her hand over the wall. “Can you see my hand?” she yells. Nat can see her hand. This is of no use, because they are not communicating via sign language. “I’m ready for your sticky rice!” Sumeet continues euphemistically. Meanwhile Josh cannot hear anything Sav is saying and they are doomed.

“Get one of your pastry tins,” says Sav. “Get one of my pastry tins?” says Josh. “Line one,” says Sav. “Line one?” says Josh. This continues for what seems like more time than has passed since the dawn of the universe.

Harry is desperate to win for Darrsh, wanting his partner to get the props he deserves. He suggests elevating the meringue by putting in some barramundi. Meanwhile Gill is trying work out how to hero an air fryer. She’s never used an air fryer before, and falls behind initially by trying to make ice-cream in it. Luckily, she knows her sponge cake recipe like the back of her hand. Less luckily, it also tastes like the back of her hand.

“I’m ready for your sticky rice!” Sumeet yells. Didn’t she already say that? Is this episode already in repeats? Sumeet is struggling to hear Nat. Nat is struggling to hear Sumeet. Josh is still struggling to hear Sav. The cook is paused while they form a support group. The contestants’ difficulties are not helped when Poh and Andy start doing a sort of little comedy skit across the wall. Some days it’s a miracle these judges don’t cop a spatula upside the head.

“Get one of your pastry tins,” says Sav. “Get one of my pastry tins?” says Josh. “Line one,” says Sav. “Line one?” says Josh. This continues for what seems like more time than has passed since the dawn of the universe. Sav tells Josh to take his tin out of the chiller, and Josh asks if he was supposed to have pastry in the tin. Sav replies that he was. Josh replies that he didn’t know that. Sav begins yanking out clumps of hair, “Sorry Sav,” says Josh, who is on the brink of looking up “pastry” on Wikipedia.

The judges note that Harry and Darrsh’s meringue nests are in the oven and look pretty similar except that Harry’s is filled with prawns. Meanwhile Josh’s tart shell has crumbled, probably from disappointment.

Gill and Lachlan are screaming at each other about the air fryer, reaching a decibel level somewhere above an F-15 fighter. Lachlan asks what setting to use. Gill says she doesn’t know. Lachlan asks if they should put it on “bake”. Gill says she doesn’t know. Lachlan says that you use it just like an oven, don’t you? Gill says but isn’t an air fryer better than an oven? Lachlan says he doesn’t know. They enter high-level talks on a feasibility study regarding the possibility of setting the fryer to “bake” at 180 degrees. The other three teams begin to discuss chloroforming Gill and Lachlan.

Meanwhile Harry’s meringue is in danger of breaking. He wonders if it’s because of all the salmon he put in it. There’s a hole in the middle of the meringue but he covers it with a mudcrab.

Minutes left. “Have you ever watched Teletubbies?” Nat yells to Sumeet, her mind having finally snapped. Nat wants their dessert to look like the sun, and the only reference point she can think of is Teletubbies, because she has never been outdoors. Sumeet has no idea what Nat is talking about, but she must be used to that by now.

At the last minute of plating, Darrsh tells Harry to put a tablespoon of lime curd on his meringue. Harry is puzzled, as he’s never heard of a fish called “lime curd”. And then, it is over. The Iron Curtain comes down, and the people of east and west can once more embrace as David Hasselhoff always dreamed. But in many ways, the greatest tragedy is yet to come – tasting.

Gill and Lachlan serve their Swiss rolls. Gill suggests they hold hands. Lachlan is very unenthusiastic about this. Their Swiss rolls are very similar, and the colour of Dr Seuss’s green eggs and ham, which is delightful. Jean-Christophe compliments them on their skilled baking and on annoying their neighbours, the two greatest French pastimes.

Sav and Josh serve their choc cherry tart. Sav tells the judges what the dish is, allowing Josh for the first time to discover what her voice sounds like. The tarts are very different. Sav has put cherries on top of her tart, but Josh has put cherries around the edge of the plate. Everyone laughs at this unforgivable faux pas, and Sav and Josh are expelled from polite society.

“It’s a bit of a Tweedledum and Tweedledee situation,” says Sofia, but Tweedledum and Tweedledee were identical twins, so it seems like the exact opposite of that. Andy compliments them both on having overcome the handicap of being very bad at this challenge to plate up something that’s really quite terrible.

Darrsh and Harry serve their key-lime meringues. They are almost identical apart from the fact that Harry has sculpted his into the shape of Moby Dick. Harry’s meringue is stickier than Darrsh’s, earning Andy’s eternal contempt.

Nat and Sumeet serve their mango sticky rice with cardamom ice-cream. The dishes look basically identical, and everyone erupts in orgasmic ecstasy. The judges shower the pair with plaudits, although neither dish looks like the Teletubbies sun, so they are marked down for that. “You demonstrated that you don’t have to shout in the kitchen,” says Jean-Christophe in what seems like a compliment for Nat and Sumeet, but is in fact a severe burn on Gill and
Lachlan.

So Nat and Sumeet win immunity – duh! – and will join Mimi and Alex on the balcony for Sunday’s elimination, when we will discover who among the amateurs is simply not sweet enough.