MasterChef is one of most popular reality cooking shows, but Fox’s MasterChef Junior has become a pretty big hit as well.
In the fifth season of the show, 12-year-old Jasmine Stewart of Milton, Georgia was named the winner of the competition show on last week’s finale.
Stewart, who was initially eliminated from the cooking competition and then brought back, defied odds by being named the champion. The sixth grader won a trophy and the whopping $100,000 grand prize.
Stewart’s winning meal was a three-course feast that included an appetizer of scallops and white fish with a green papaya salad, a lobster tail and coconut curry main dish and a sticky rum cake with pineapple chips for dessert. Co-hosts Hell’s Kitchen Gordon Ramsay and pastry chef Christina Tosi judged along with guest judges celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck and lifestyle mogul Martha Stewart, who actually wanted the recipe for the sticky rum cake.
Tosi was so impressed, she said she could open a dessert shop and only sell the cake.
Stewart told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Some of the highlights of the show was winning of course. But I did love it when I got an apron. I never thought I would even make it on the show, let alone be getting an apron and get to wear it.”
Stewart also told the newspaper that she gets her cooking inspiration from her parents. “My mom loves to cook Southern food, and kind of homestyle cooking that makes you feel warm inside, and my dad loves to cook a lot of elaborate breakfast foods — things that wake you up in the morning and make you super-excited to start the day, like tomato pancakes or homemade French toast or crepes.”
After winning the competition, Stewart said, “This is the biggest moment of my entire life. Who would ever think a little girl from Milton, Georgia would ever win ‘MasterChef Junior’?”
Big moment indeed! #Blackgirlmagic for the win.