MasterChef Australia’s floating dessert didn’t really float at all

IT WAS the incredible gravity defying ice cream that crushed the contestants. But were you suspicious about how it floated? So you should have been.

BY ALL accounts it was the MasterChef pressure test to end all pressure tests. A fiendishly complex dessert, so light, it literally floated on air.

But bemused viewers are wondering if pastry chef Christy Tania’s amazing ice cream float was a little too good to be true. They wonder if it really floated at all.

On Tuesday night’s MasterChef three contestants had to recreate Tania’s gravity defying dessert which consisted of more than 50 individual steps to create an airy vanilla, cognac and cherry chocolate creation topped with a toffee balloon.

Totes float. But not because of that balloon. Picture: Channel 10.

The piece de resistance? The dessert floated on air seemingly sucked into the stratosphere by its sugar balloon.

“It’s just a little bit of floating ice cream,” said judge and host George Calombaris. “And that balloon is totally edible.”

Tania gave some advice on getting the toffee balloon perfect. “You have to play with a lot of temperature, sugar, humidity and a lot of molecular gastronomy. Sometimes it will be too heavy to rise or too thin to hold the whole helium inside.”

“That balloon, I’ll be quite honest with you, that’s the tough bit,” said Calombaris.

But as the contestants Bryan Zhu, Samuel Whitehead and Trent Devincenzo, presented their dishes something odd happened.

So the plate thing that the ice cream float sits on... it appears to hover in mid air? But it doesn't. So how does it 'hover'? #MasterchefAU

— SUPER night owl (@cute_hamsters) May 22, 2017

Whitehead’s creation came into the judging arena of much doom sporting an enormous balloon which duly left terra firma.

Zhu’s balloonless dessert, as expected, had no lift.

But Devincenzo’s teeny tiny balloon couldn’t even hold itself up. And yet the ice cream semifreddo, tempered chocolate, hydrocolloid, isomalt hell mouth of a dessert it was attached to, remained remarkably airborne throughout.

It seemed the dessert was floating all of its own accord.

Bryan Zhu was not happy about the floating ice cream. Picture: Channel 10

Viewers were confused. “So the plate thing that the ice cream float sits on ... it appears to hover in midair?” questioned one.

“The idea was that the balloon held up the cone, but it is the plate that’s floating?”

We hate to burst your balloon, but it turns out the ice cream float wasn’t floating of its own accord at all. The admittedly impressive sugary floating bag above was just food theatre, a mere prop to add to the drama.

Channel 7’s Just Desserts had a similar floating cake, which also used magnets. Picture: Channel 7.

Furthermore, it’s not even the first time a dessert has floated — or rather not floated — on a cooking show.

Remember Adriano Zumbo’s floating Charlie and the Chocolate Factory hat creation from last year? That used the same mechanism to make the plate float. Whatever you put on the plate — be it an ice cream float or a bowl of Heinz tomato soup — will float too.

In the Just Desserts case, two extremely strong magnets were placed opposite one another. One of the magnets was on the plate and the other on a base on the table below. The base was the big piece of metal directly below the plate.

The negative attraction of the magnets caused them to push away from one another, a bit like when you try and get two magnets to touch. If you get the opposing magnets in just the right place then one will float above the other.

The idea was that the balloon held up the cone, but it was the plate with magnets that are floating. #MasterChefAU

— Andrew (@IHateLentilSoup) May 22, 2017

The lack of 'float' from this ice cream is disappointing. I'm sueing #MasterChefAU for false advertising 😜

— Kiera (@UnderYourPorch) May 22, 2017

Review: Dessert was amazing; Textures, flavours, colours and plating brought me near orgasm. But the dish didn't float 1/10 #MasterChefAU

— Luke Dingle (@Rakuli) May 22, 2017

Channel 10 have confirmed to news.com.au that it was powerful magnets, not a fragile balloon, causing the ice cream to float.

“Christy’s floating ice cream was an incredible and complex dessert comprising of more than 50 steps and dozens of ingredients,” a spokesman said.

“The floating element to the dessert was an idea Christy and the MasterChef team worked on for several weeks, with the effect created by powerful magnets underneath the plate and on the board below.”

So should you make the ice cream float at home — and there’s a recipe you can follow — don’t expect it to magically levitate out of the kitchen towards your dining table.

Originally published as MasterChef Australia’s floating dessert didn’t really float at all