We’re not sure what to make of Terry Christian’s soft-scoop ice cream on tonight’s Celebrity Masterchef, especially since he didn’t appear to manufacture it.
The 65-year-old broadcaster joined TV celebrity Dave Benson Phillips, former music legend Max George, and comedian Shazia Mirza on the BBC show today.
While judges John Torode and Gregg Wallace were calling Terry’s final dish “ambitious,” spectators couldn’t help but notice that he had ready-made ice cream.
As Terry cooked up his last challenge, Greg said: ‘He’s being really ambitious with his dessert, he’s going to give us a mango and passion fruit ice cream.
‘He’s already got ready made ice cream and he’s going to whip cream through that and fruit.’
Er, okay! That’s surely not allowed, said everyone at home, as one wrote: ‘Ready made icecream? Well that’s just cheating Terry Christian.’
Another said, ‘Ready made ice cream is not cooking,’ while the creamy plate really rattled another X user as they wrote: ‘READY MADE ICE CREAM! This is a joke!’
Apparently not, since John’s concluding remarks after they had gone through all of the applicants were only critical of his slightly underdone choux pastry.
If the show’s description of his pudding is correct – which dubbed it ‘a mango and vanilla soft serve ice cream topped with passion fruit, served with shoe pastry buns’ – then all Terry actually did was stir cream through ice cream, add a bit of passion fruit, and under-bake some pastry. Confusion.
‘At least he’s giving it a go, I like the ambition,’ the judge continued. ‘We should give him a place in the next round.’
‘It tastes amazing, the passion fruit is extremely intense,’ John said after sampling the dessert. The mango is very sweet, almost honey-sweet, with a layer of thick vanilla ice cream below. Wonderful.
‘I’m really impressed you made choux pastry. They’re not cooked enough because you ran out of time, but I like your ambition. You do crowd-pleasing food Terry.’
Terry also created a delicious-looking chicken curry that appeared to be “falling off the bone.”
But we doubt Dave, who was fired when a very dry sponge with bread-like qualities failed to please, will see it that way.
But at least he, er, tried…