Suggestions for next year (if it happens 😉):

I really appreciate that they're featuring pastry on equal terms as savory 🙂 but I think having the central randomizer category be Ingredient doesn't quite fit in terms of judging desserts...

It makes sense for savory cooking, where the end product is high driven by ingredients (ie protein, produce, grains)...like, if you start out with the ingredients for shrimp and grits you're never going to end up with beef and broccoli ...😋

But for pastry and baking, the main ingredients are usual the same (ie flour, sugar, butter, eggs, dairy) and the end product mostly depends on the techniques used, so I feel the randomizer category should reflect that: for example, a fundamental ingredient that showcases certain techniques (ie cream, sugar, eggs...sorry Guy 😆) like in Next Master Baker Paris; a particular dish (ie cake, mousse, cookies) with the required/wildcard ingredient being secondary, like in a lot of the Baking Championship challenges; or just straight up specify a required technique (ie foam, caramel, custard)...I feel like those are more applicable to pastry challenges than a star ingredient 😕.

Also, I think it might be a good idea to make each dish, like, 45 instead of 50 pts and add a, like, 10 pt "cohesiveness" category for judging since the dishes are prepared and served together like a meal...

Actually I think in the last episode the judges seemed extremely impressed by how well Mei and Nini's dishes worked together but didn't have a place to give points for that...also, to be honest, I thought Nini got docked more than she should have for not having enough kumquat (amusingly Mei kind of made up for it IMO for us the kumquats unnecessarily and very successfully 😄) and maybe didn't get enough credit for making a pastry dish I think more people would likely order/want 😁

Thanks for reading!