The clock was running down. The pressure was on Marshawn Lynch.
His task: Decorate a baked meringue wreath with blueberry coulis, mascarpone cream and sugared berries.
The former Seattle Seahawks running back is one of six contestants on a new celebrity special of "The Great American Baking Show," a spinoff of the beloved British competition show. Lynch — introduced by host Ellie Kemper as "hoping to turn Beast Mode into Yeast Mode" — competed with D'Arcy Carden, Liza Koshy, Nat Faxon, Chloe Fineman and Joel Kim Booster.
Hosted by Kemper and Zach Cherry, the contestants tackled three holiday baking challenges for judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith.
Lynch is better known for his love of Skittles than for his own baking, and his inexperience quickly became apparent in the famed baking show tent. The first challenge required contestants to bake eight identical cream puffs shaped like holiday characters — Lynch chose Christmas elves, filled with strawberry cream and topped with fondant hats.
"If you could just go ahead and throw me a couple little pointers, I wouldn't hate them or snitch on you or none of that," he told the judges, decked out in a Beast Mode hoodie and beanie.
What do you need help with? Hollywood asked. "All of this," he said.
The plate of elfish cream puffs was in disarray when the judges came to taste them, but Lynch explained that there had been a fight between North Pole and South Pole elves. The judges accepted the explanation and told Lynch his fluffy, golden choux pastry buns were "really delicious."
The second challenge — the meringue wreath — went south quickly. Lynch struggled to separate eggs and whisk them with sugar ("What is soft peaks? I don't know what this is"). Later, he added an entire jar of vanilla bean paste to his meringue (the recipe had called for one teaspoon). The result: a meringue (which Lynch pronounced "mer-ain-gay") that Hollywood said "burned his mouth."
"What's whisked?" Lynch sheepishly asked the judges after they said his meringue was underwhisked, but his cream was overwhisked. "Y'all are using different language."
But the third challenge brought his redemption: a lemon drizzle cake in honor of his grandfather, PaPaw Lynch. Decorated with fondant dice, the cake represented his holiday memory of playing dice games with family.
"My grandfather has been making this cake for my whole life," Lynch told the judges. "After the games when I first started playing organized football, Little League, he used to bring these cakes as 'hey, you did a good job.' "
The simple sandwichlike cake wowed the judges, who called it "perfectly made." Leith likened his simple icing to a glace of sugar and water; Lynch beamed and said, "You used a lot of words I don't know, but they sound good, baby."
"What caught me unaware with this particular one was how good the celebrities actually were," Hollywood told Tasting Table in an interview. "You can tell that because they'd practiced — all right, Marshawn Lynch didn't — and the celebrities that practiced are always going to bring their best."
One takeaway from the show: an unexpected connection with notoriously critical judge Hollywood.
"I was watching some of his rushes, actually, when he was in the tent, and I went and had a chat with a few of them about it afterwards," Hollywood told Tasting Table. "It was lovely catching up with him, speaking to him one to one, quietly having a cup of tea. It was fantastic."
"I won for sure," Lynch said at the end of the episode. "I for sure for sure enjoyed myself, for real for real."
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"The Great American Baking Show" streams for free on The Roku Channel; find it at therokuchannel.com.
