This Upsetting Kids Baking Championship Episode Still Haunts Food Network Viewers

The marriage between Reality TV and competitive cooking is one of the many great cultural mash-ups of the 21st century. They have high levels of relatability, develop character arcs like soap operas, and have all the unscripted drama of live sport. We remember people, back stories, high-points and low-points from our favorite shows for months (the original "Iron Chef" remains one of our favorite classic Food Network shows), and some controversies continue to make headlines years later. One great example is the upsetting "Kids Baking Championship" episode from 2021, which still haunts Food Network viewers nearly five years after it first aired.

While cooking shows are getting increasingly creative in their vision and setting — for example, Food Network is highlighting sibling rivalries in its new "Baking Championship" spin-off – in some cases old is very much gold. The Dessert Imposters round in the "Kids Baking Championship" is one of these, where young contestants have to bake mind-bending desserts which taste sweet but look like famous savory dishes. From meatloaf and beef skewers to pizza, sushi and tacos, contestants have had a lot of fun with this challenge over the years.

But the dessert imposters episode from Season 9, titled "Three Square Meals", left a bitter taste after one contestant was given what many viewers thought was an unfair challenge. While her competitors got to reimagine other savory food items as desserts, 11-year-old Miabella Ramirez got handed the unenviable task of transforming French toast into a sweet imposter. Ramirez was eliminated but found sympathy online, with many viewers complaining that since French toast is already sweet it was too hard to convert into an imposter dessert.

One fan of the show took to Reddit to air their displeasure. "The problem is that every contestant got a savory meal like hamburger, sushi, biscuit[s] and gravy while the meal the girl got was to make an imposter of a sweet dish French toast and toppings," they posted. "It is almost impossible to make an imposter of a sweet dish with another sweet dish." Another user concurred wholeheartedly. "I would have had no problem if this curveball was given to an adult in a cooking competition. Sometimes you are just dealt a bad hand. I think it's just poor taste to do something like that to a child."

Impossible as the challenge seemed, Ramirez gave it a good go — using sponge cake soaked in milk instead of toast. Unfortunately for her, the judges — Valerie Bertinelli and Duff Goldman — found the cake base to be too soggy and thought Ramirez should have created imposters of fruit and bacon rather than use the real deal. Basically, it just wasn't a French Toast recipe you'd want over and over again.

There were some fans who agreed with the judges. "I don't think it's any harder to make a strawberry out of chocolate or cake pop or whatever than it is to make a tomato or an onion or lettuce like the other kids did," one user wrote, while another Redditor felt that Ramirez was a great cook who made some bad choices.