The party kicks into gear, and Zac best sums up the explosion of contortion, sword-eating, and fire that follows when he quips, "Talk about the 'Black Forest Is Burning!'" He thinks his team's bold flavors of saffron, curry, and pepper caters to the crowd better than the other teams' boring mango panna cottas and chocolate-basil cakes. Gail approaches Morgan's team first with fellow judges Johnny Iuzzini, Gale Gand, and Hubert Keller. Heather H. explains the showpiece, which is basically a square chocolate column with a chocolate sphere on top and some cutouts, all of which she claims is designed to play into the shapes in both the room and the LDE's costumes. Morgan presents his mango panna cotta with açaí fluid gel (ew?), passion fruit sorbet, and milk chocolate crescents that evoke the apparatus the LDE acrobats use in their aerial routines. Heather puts forth a triple chocolate chai tea mousse torte with round shapes like the sphere of their showpiece, and Eric placed his lemon caramel roulade with pomegranate sauce and candied kumquats on a crescent-shaped plate. Finally, they flambé the almond cream with cherries cooked in star anise. It kind of looks like disproportionate fruit on the bottom yogurt. On fire. In a shot glass. Meh.

The judges think Heather H.'s showpiece stood out impressively and appreciated Morgan's thoughtfulness with his dish considering he has immunity. Cut to a really awkward conversation between Morgan and one of the LDE guys, who says that, since the desserts are inspired by his troupe, he wonders what he tastes like. Morgan humors him, then the guy gets a little touchy-feely, and I suspect Morgan took an extra-long shower that night. Back to the judges, who think Eric's dessert was whimsical, but not very sexy. They do appreciate the sultry, exotic chai flavor in Heather H.'s dessert. When they get to the flaming dessert, Johnny gets a piece of star anise in his shot, thanks to Eric's vision impairment earlier, and they are none too pleased.

Onward ho to Team Breakdown. Zac tries to couch the love-it-or-hate-it aesthetic of their showpiece by saying none of his team is accustomed to doing showpieces. It's a tulle-infested, Mardi Gras mask-embellished hot mess of a showpiece, so I'm not sure how well that ass-covering will go over. Then again, this show is a tulle-infested, Mardi Gras mask-embellished hot mess... Zac describes his banana crème fraîche cake with red curry frosting, saying how it conveys the naughty/nice, sour/sweet, spicy/sweet juxtapositions they were going for. Heather C. presents her spiced black pepper pineapple with chocolate sherbet and meringue shards. Malika offers her sweet saffron-infused panna cotta with feuilletine crunch and spicy candied ginger. Zac introduces the flaming dessert by saying they decided to reinterpret his quickfire dessert (the one that didn't quite win, mind you) into a "Black Forest Is Burning" dark chocolate crème fraîche cake with flambéed cherries. By the time the judges leave, Heather is barely keeping it together because she once again doesn't think her dish is good enough.