Adaiah Stevens, 12, of Danbury, Conn. is a contestant on the Fox TV show, Master Chef Junior.
She is photographed in her home Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2014.
Danbury 12-year-old Adaiah Stevens survived another week on the Fox reality series “Master Chef, Jr.” last night, making it through to the final eight contestants.
Stevens, a talented home cook who has been plying her culinary trade since she was 4, has been a standout on the series, in which 16 cooks age 8 to 13 compete for $100,000 and the title of best young home cook in the country. Last week, she wowed tough British chef Gordon Ramsay and his fellow judges with a blood orange and lemon cream pie with raspberries.
This week, the eighth grader excelled in two tricky challenges. In the first, kids were broken into teams of two and asked to make a dozen cupcakes, while tethered to their partner, 3-legged-race style. In the clip below, the teams wrap up their baking while the good sport judges get in on the spirit of the competition by tying their own legs together.
Stevens and her teammate — the floppy-haired blond Sam — won accolades for their intricately decorated cupcakes.
After acing that challenge, the kids had to cook an upscale version of shepherd’s pie for Ramsay and his mom. Stevens went all out in reinventing the comfort food, using phyllo dough to create a layered, elegant take on the dish. She once again won the challenge (along with fellow kid chef Levi, whose more traditional shepherd’s pie was still tasty enough to impress the judges).
The show’s other Connecticut contestant — 9-year-old Oona Yaffe of New Haven — didn’t do as well. She was in the bottom three after making a shepherd’s pie that aced the potato portion but fell down on the filling. But the pig-tailed chef escaped elimination. Instead, the judges cut Stevens’s three-legged race partner Sam, who had a meltdown during the Shepherd’s pie competition, and a boy named Mitchell.
Let’s see if Danbury’s own culinary whiz kid can extend her winning streak to next week, when it looks like the kids will take on some egg dishes.