- [Ned] It's the grand finale. It all comes down to this. - [Zach] The most difficult thing we have ever attempted on this show. - We can start an alcohol
counter for Eugene. - It smells like an English muffin. - I think I just made a cookie. - Reminds me of a good cereal. - It does look like an ice cream pie. - Never made it, never ate it. (pops cork)
No, no, I've eaten but. - But I've never made it.
- It's one of my favorites. - [Zach] Today, we're making cheesecake. (dramatic music) - Have you heard? Our new movie, "Behind the
Try", it's finally out! - It's a raw, real, vulnerable look at what it means to be a Try Guy. - We're revealing it all. - Oh my God.
- Go to tryguys.com/movie to buy it now. ♪ Behind the try ♪ ♪ Try guys ♪ - [Keith] Theme song pending. - [Narrator] The Try Guys
are back in the test kitchen for the season finale
of "Without A Recipe". This challenge, cheesecake. ♪ What you trying to bake ♪ ♪ Cheesecake ♪ ♪ What you trying to bake ♪ ♪ Cheesecake ♪ - [Narrator] Each baker
will have two hours to complete the cheesecake of their choice and present it to our panel of judges. - This smells incredible. - I don't trust anyone
who says smell my hand. - It smells amazing. - Hi, my name is Jimmy Wong. I'm an actor, host, and chef and I've made quite a lot of
culinary things in the past, and I love making cakes. Hi, I'm Nicole Rucker. I'm the owner and baker at Fat and Flour, a pie shop in Grand Central Market. I'm qualified to judge today
because cheesecake is a pie and I am an award-winning pie maker. Hi, my name is Caroline Juwono. I'm head baker and commissary
manager for Go Get Em Tiger. I personally eat everything and cheesecake's one
of my favorite dessert. - You said you eat anything? - Anything. - I want you to keep that
in mind during the judging. (laughing) - So I've been in the culinary
industry for 12 years. I love butter. I love cream. I love eggs. To be able to work in a company that serves really good food, really great pastries and coffee, it's kind of a dream. The perfect cheesecake
should be not too sweet. You can actually still taste the tang from the cream cheese itself. Should be dense, yet
light at the same time. Anything can happen in the kitchen. So don't be afraid to
be creative, have fun, and as far as without a recipe... Good luck. (laughs) I can't imagine any of us
know how to make cheesecake. And if anybody does
successfully make cheesecake, they cheated. Three--
- Two, one. - Cheesecake!
- Okay, okay, okay, okay. - I can't think of something that I would rather eat less than cheesecake. What the (bleep) even is it? Now, I know that cheesecakes often have graham cracker crusts. - A graham cracker crust. - Here is the graham cracker crumbs. And to this bowl, we're
gonna add some sugar, and I'm gonna mix it up a little bit. - I guess you bake it. But if it's, hold on, hold on. - I'm not quite sure
about the baking process. I've seen Matt make
cheesecake quite often. But I love cheesecake. - No, you're gonna put
raisins in the crust? Well, I'm gonna, we're gonna find out. You've been waiting for it. Daddy's favorite rides again. It's back, baby. Cinnamon raisin ready
to reclaim the title. Cinnamon raisin just didn't make sense for any of the other
dishes in this season, except for this because
there is such a thing called rum raisin cheesecake. I'm gonna make an oatmeal raisin cookie and I'm gonna build a
cheesecake cake on top of that. I do not know how to do that. - My vision for my
cheesecake is a butter pecan ice cream inspired cheesecake. I will add actual ice
cream into the cheesecake. - Ooh, Rice Krispies, Cornflakes. Sure, why the (bleep) not? Today, I'm taking it back to basics, baby. I'm making a monster cheesecake. I'm talking M&Ms, pretzels, gummy shit, peanut butter, maybe
some leftover brownies from the other episode. In the past, I've just tried to throw in all of my favorite things
and it has never worked. Which is telling me that
eventually it might. - I have kept all my alcohol under wraps this entire season. And I've decided I'm gonna put all of it in the last episode. That's right, I am taking every alcohol that I think I can put into this cake and putting them all into it. The berry boozy cheesecake. But I'm gonna let loose, I'm gonna relax. I'm gonna have fun. And I'm gonna get real (bleep) drunk. You got me Guinness? I haven't gone wrong with putting beer in the more bready part of a dessert. So I'm gonna put the beer in. Y'all, we can start an
alcohol counter for Eugene. This is alcohol number
one in my cheesecake. - I'm gonna toast my pecans
in a little bit of butter in the sauce pan. Gonna freeze this 'cause why the hell not? - Oh, that's what the
food processor's for. (pounding) - So I'm gonna use Cinnamon
Toast Crunch cereal and classic oatmeal cookies. Now I thought about making
my own oatmeal raisin cookie, but that didn't really work out super well for me last season. (bleep) you! How dare you (bleep) pile
on in my moment of weakness! So I thought, you know, let's only bake one thing
at a time per episode. - So we've made pie dough. We've made dumpling dough. We've made pizza dough. It's all the same shit. Flour, water. I'm gonna do pie dough and then I'm gonna put
shit into the pie dough. - I think pie crust is
a little bit fragile and might get soggy from all the creamy cheesecake filling on top. - You're using electricity
when you could just... - Three, two, one.
- Mine's not on. - Wow, look at it go. - There's nothing more satisfying than pulverizing something solid. - On, off.
- On, where's on? - On, or maybe I have
to have the lid back on 'cause it doesn't want me to kill myself. (screams) Hey, safety! - Whoa! Cinnamon Toast Crunch, I almost forgot. There's a little daddy inside all of us. - I always say cinnamon dries stuff out. And that's true, but this
is gonna be a cheesecake and it's always wet so
that can't get it too dry. I feel like if I put the raisins in, they're just gonna get all gunked up. We gotta try it though, don't we? - Rice Krispies. What else did I (bleep) crush? Oh, graham crackers. Yeah, yeah. - I think I made powdered raisins. They're gone. - So after this is combined, we're gonna add melted butter here. - Okay, butter. - Lucky for me, Ned
already cut me some butter. - No.
- So sweet of him. - No, no, no, no, no, no. - But what do you do with the butter? - I'm just gonna put it in there. And I'm trying to study
Rachel's facial expressions. - That's always a good plan. - Butter's not incorporating very well. This is my graham cracker
Guinness beer crust, which actually smells pretty (bleep) good. Maybe I should exercise restraint. Nah. - Oh yeah, now we're
getting the good stuff. - Maybe the butter was
wrong, it's just so chunky. - Can I add water? What the (bleep), milk? I need milk, what is milk? It's cow water. It's the same shit. - I'm gonna go out on a limb and say this is too much butter. - I think so too. - [Ned] More graham crackers. - Yeah, you just gotta go the other way. - This was much better
consistency 20 seconds ago. It's doing that weird flakey thing. I feel like this is wrong. That crust is supposed
to not be so sugary. But I don't care. I'm gonna win the crust competition. - All right, so I like the
consistency of my crust. And now it's time to put
it in my little tin here. I guess I need to spray it with stuff. - Do you? It's full of butter. - Just a little on the side there. - (coughs) That's plenty. - And then we're gonna put this inside. So I'm gonna take the
measuring cup and actually leave about a quarter
inch up the side there while you flatten out the
crust with the measuring cup. - I think this is right. You just mat it down and
you just hope it works. Oh, you're going up to the top. - Oh yeah, oh yeah.
- Oh, I was thinking of just doing the flat bottom. How do they make, they always
make it so perfectly flat. - Maybe they do it like this. - [Keith] Ooh. - I haven't won a single one yet. - Yeah. - [Ned] But I mean, last
season, it was just, it was weird if I didn't
come in first place. - Oh shit, shit, shit--
- This feels wrong. - [Zach] Feels good. - It's getting so warm, so melty. - I think I'm just gonna put this in the oven for a few minutes and watch. And we'll see what happens. - So it is essential to parbake the crust because you don't want soggy crust. - Let's do it.
- Think it's oven time. - Goodnight.
- Goodnight. They're growing up so fast.
- Let's have some wine. - We're gonna bake this
up for 10 to 15 minutes until the crust is
buttery and really crusty. - Just put 15 but we'll
do the math ourselves. - [Narrator] While Keith and Ned wait for their crusts to parbake, Zach and Eugene just
choose not to do this step and continue shaping their crusts. The guys now have one hour and 15 minutes to work on their fillings and toppings. - So I can tell right now the crust is actually baked very nicely. You can see there's golden
brown edges on the crust. - It's still solid. You know, I did that and it kind of pulled away from the side
and it kept its shape. Feels like that's a good sign. - I think I just made a cookie. - [Keith] You did. Look at this. - For the filling, we're gonna use the Philadelphia cream cheese. I think the most stable cream cheese. It's got a lot of gum in there, so want to make sure your cheesecake stays nice and tall. So we're gonna use two pounds. - I know that it's gonna
be a bunch of cream cheese. Maybe this evaporated milk, this condensed milk
will make an appearance. I love a good sweet condensed milk. - I got rum, whiskey, gin, tequila. - Cream cheese, sugar, syrup. - So I'm gonna do a little
rum raisin situation. I'm gonna get some raisins and some rum. And you know what? A little cinnamon. - I actually have to
prepare my butter pecans. So one of my favorite things to make is homemade butter pecan ice cream. You kinda just spoon butter
all over some toasted pecans and then you separate the
pecans from the butter and then you kinda reincorporate them back into the ice cream. - We've made ice cream. That was gooey, sticky shit. I'm gonna take everyone's
failures of yesteryears and learn. I'm going to learn where they stumbled and I will find it and
I will follow it to... - You almost have it. He almost has it.
- And I will follow it, and I will follow it to victory. - He's even bad at
delivering the bad cake news. So this is gonna bode well for him. - How many cream cheeses do you think? - Going four. I feel like it's mostly cream cheese. - You want that tall cheesecake. - I love to finish my
own dessert, so. (laughs) I like something that is
just a tiny bit smaller. - I think I'm gonna make
a chocolate cheesecake. No one seems to be doing that. So I'm gonna do cocoa powder, maybe melt some peanut butter chips. Let's just start (bleep) around, guys. Brown sugar, white sugar. - I'm gonna try not to pour the entire bottle into everything. - Look, we're being ourselves, but we're learning through it, okay? - We were like babies
and now we're toddlers. - Dope toddlers.
- Still tripping around, still falling on their faces, but now we have neck bones. - [Both] Now we have neck bones. - We actually use room
temperature cream cheese, room temperature sour cream, and room temperature eggs. - I'm wondering if there's
any egg or egg white, like a custard might have. A little egg, 'cause egg is a binder. A good clue will be if
there's eggs in here. Oh, there's two bowls! Okay!
- Okay, okay! Okay.
- We're onto you. - We're back, baby.
- It's a lot like an escape room. You look around, you see what you got. - There's a camera there,
there's a camera there, there's a camera there,
but there's no flour. - So we have here our cream cheese. Right now we are going to
paddle them to the KitchenAid. I'm just going to make sure that this cream cheese is nice
and creamy and smooth. Now we're gonna add four eggs. - Let's do five eggs, six eggs. - And that could make it yellow. - On color alone, I'm thinking no yolks. - Egg whites are all you need. - One of the things has a
photo of cheesecake on the box. - [Keith] That's a hint
if I've ever seen one. - This is jello. - [Zach] I'm gonna guess that I need that. Ooh, vanilla. - And with the vanilla as well. - The big thing with cheesecake is you want smooth consistency, you want homo, homo, homo, homo--
- Making a gay cheesecake. - Homogenized consistency. - You're gonna add the sugar to this. - [Ned] Bring on the sugar. - Who wants rum? Who wants the whiskey? - You got the number?
- Everyone wants whiskey! That's what I was gonna do. (coughing) (laughs) - It seems that the raisins
have drank the alcohol and are trying to return to
their previous status as grapes. Let's just keep adding booze and raisins.
- Uh-oh, too hot. - Too hot this time. - I need to start over.
- You're starting over? You don't have much time, man. - Eugene, look at me, I
learned from mistakes. - Me too, I just did one
glass of whiskey and not five. - The last ingredient we're gonna add is gonna be the sour cream. It really does add some
tang into the cream cheese, so it doesn't taste as heavy. - I'm not a big sour cream person so I don't think that's right. - You can also use some creme fraiche or even just regular heavy cream. - Creme fraiche is fancy, right? You want the creme fraiche? - Yeah, sounds great.
- They also have condensed milk too, which could be good. - Look at the way this pours. Honestly, I think this is about the viscosity you want when you pour in your cream cheese.
- Oh yeah. - Cheese into your cheesecake.
- That's nice. - I do love mascarpone. - What is that? What is that? - I don't know, but
that also sounds fancy. - Oh yes, mascarpone, do me. - Everybody time out.
- What? - This tastes like cheesecake. - Really?
- Yes. - That does taste like cheesecake. - That tastes like cheesecake. - Wow.
- Now will it firm up like cheesecake? That's a question for xanthan gum. - And I'm just gonna put
a touch of xanthan gum 'cause I remember from
Keith, it was very powerful. - Xanthan gum was my downfall one time. - This might be the only ice cream I kind of can't eat. - Xanthan gum.
- It's too much. - The expert was like, a
little goes a long way. I'm making a whole cake. So I'm just gonna put in
an eighth of a teaspoon. - For baked cheesecakes, I
do not recommend you to add any gums or gelatin. - I don't really know what gelatin is, but I'm gonna put it in there. - Gelatin and xanthan. Probably redundant, probably awesome. - Dude, we're painting outside the box. - [Zach] I'm melting down some chocolate, some peanut butter. - Mmm, look at that rich butter nut soup. - Some are a little darker
than I might've liked. - Orange with chocolate. That just seems right. - Take a moment, take a moment. What have we learned so far? - You're right, Eugene. - You should add more.
- M&Ms. (laughing) Marshmallows! Mini M&Ms? I'm just gonna have to take a moment. I'm gonna have to do
a little TO on baking. Mini M&Ms taste weird. You would think they're
just the same thing. M&Ms but smaller. You're wrong. The ratio is totally off. You got less chocolate,
too much sugar, it sucks. - So I have raspberries,
blackberries, and blueberries. - We almost forgot the pretzels. So my plan, Eugene, is to
have a delicious flavor with then whole chunks of cookies inside. - I don't necessarily
suggest you put cookies in the actual cheesecake filling. The cookies will absorb moisture from the cheesecake
itself and become soggy. - I see you're rocking with berries. - You guys ever do this
just when you're a kid? Put sugar all over a strawberry? I figure a really good way to get as many alcohol in as possible is to
soak everything in liquor. - Oh, cool.
- Yeah, so. (cork pops)
- Oh my God. You (bleep) ass. - Alcohol number three. Let's do raspberry vodka. (hums) This is (mumbles) or liquor, alcohol. Am I drunk? I'm gonna do gin blueberries
and tequila blackberries just because blackberries are
kind of, they're so random. - It probably has milk, cream, sugar. Oh wait, that's what ice cream is. So I'm gonna put a big old
butt load of ice cream. - [Keith] Wow, that's clever. - The cheesecake batter should look like the consistency of melted ice cream. - Well, it's definitely getting goopy. All right, now that all my burned bits have solidified to the bottom, I'm trying to decant
some of my brown butter. Now I'm gonna add some
brown butter to my mixture. - So I'm going to try
to make a rum caramel. And all I know is you fry sugar. - Honestly it's not as
caramely as it could be. Let's, I think I'll
just keep cooking this. - Oh my God, it's already melting. (bleep) - What are you doing?
What are you melting? What are you melting?
- Trying to make caramel. - They are grapes! They're (bleep) grapes again. It's the heat inflating them. They're like little balloons. 'Cause one raisin fell out and
it's back to raisin status. This is like a third
grade science experiment. Watch before your very eyes. The dehydration of a
rehydrated berry fruit. - This is rock candy. This is unusable so I'm gonna try again. - Those raisins taste like butter. - It's butter, it has to be butter. - What? Oh, okay.
- The thing missing in this. - Thank God, I thought
you meant for the batter, 'cause I'm like, too late.
- I think it's butter. - But people don't like raisins. People do like butter. So I think it's a win. - I don't know if put
the butter in too early or if it should have butter. It's still clumping. - This didn't work, so I guess I won't put the butter part on. I'll just put the raisins in. - Okay, so I'm gonna put
just a little rum in. (bleep) Caramel chocolate. (laughs) I would like to put this in the freezer so that it's gonna freeze and then I'm gonna do the crumbles on top. For a last bit of garnish, white wine soaked lime zest. - So I think I added a
little too much cream cheese. I'm not gonna lie. I got some lumps in here. I'm afraid that if I keep mixing it, I'll do something bad to the texture. - There is no gluten in the filling. So you can't really overmix it. - So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna put it in a saucepan
and slowly heat it up. - What?
- Oh, we gotta preheat the oven, bro. What temperature do you think? - As long as it's below 350, I think. - What temperature kills germs? - 200. - Let's do 200, great. - So we have our baked crust here. - Ooh, this is correct. I put in everything a
boy could ever ask for. - Wow, look at me go. - I did way too much whipping. - That looks like it's a consistency. - This is gonna be awesome. The marshmallows are
gonna melt down the side. - I have my butter pecan
ice cream cheesecake. - I'm just adding a little
bit of pretzel garnish for around the side. It's not a Zach concoction without it. It almost looks like Thanksgiving. - At Ned Fulmer on this. This is Instagram worthy.
- Dude, that's beautiful. - This cheesecake is going to go into a 275 degree oven for about an hour. So we are going to cook this
cheesecake in a water bath, and what the water bath does is it creates steam into the oven so your cheesecake actually
will not have a dry crust and it also prevents it from browning too much on the top. - Okay, I'm gonna put this in the oven. I'm just gonna go for it. An hour at 300. - We have this set to 250, Eugene? That's great, seems great.
- Cool. - [Zach] Cheesecake
number one is going in. - All right, 300 degrees for an hour. - [Zach] Oh, yours is so
much more jiggly than mine. - [Man] Three, two, one! Okay, hands up, bakers. - Oh shit. (bleep) - Chug it! Or a healthy sip. Yeah, okay. - (cheers) Whoa.
(cheers) That was everything but the kitchen sink. - Wow. Oh my God, the kitchen sink!
- We forgot the kitchen sink! (laughing) - [Narrator] After experimenting with different times and temperatures, the guys are now ready to
remove their cheesecakes from the oven. - This is honestly the best looking Thanksgiving dessert I've ever seen and it tastes nothing like Thanksgiving. - I put a stick into
mine and I pulled it out. The hole remained. - Ooh, let me do that too.
- Which, for me says it's done. - Mine's definitely wet inside, but it's going to, it's gonna cool, it's gonna solidify. I feel confident. - Still goopy.
- Still goopy but solid. - I'm not gonna poke it
'cause I want to keep this surface immaculate. - [Narrator] Tomorrow,
after the cheesecakes have been in the fridge, the guys will nervously watch as the art team slices into the cakes. - Come on, come on, easy, easy. (gasping) - [Keith] It's beautiful. - Wow.
- It's gorgeous. - Definitely doesn't look like cockroaches are crawling over the top. - Why would you say that? It literally doesn't. - [Zach] Okay, this is my spooky treat. - Trick or treat. (gasping) - [Zach] Oh, it kinda
spilled over the top. We're getting caught. (gasping)
- [Keith] Beautiful, Zach. - Nice job. - A nice rustic cheesecake. - Rustic.
- Rustic. - [Keith] Yeah, very rustic. - Now, Keith's does not have a crust. - No outer crust.
- Just the bottom, baby. - [Zach] Much like Keith,
what you see is what you get. - Beautiful, kind of.
(gasping) A nice short little boy.
- Interesting. (moaning) - Wow, yeah, you know what? That's not bad, that's beautiful. - [Men] Yeah! - [Eugene] All right, and here's mine. - I think you got, oh, it looks fine. It looks like it's gonna be okay. - [Men] Wow. - What fell off on the other side? - Little bit of crumble.
- Turn it though. - Little bit off the top.
- Is it okay? - [Zach] It's got a
little haircut, it's fine. - [Keith] Oh, it's fine. - Great job, guys, we all made cheesecake. - We did it. - [Narrator] The art team will now put the final touches on the slices, and then the guys will present them to the panel of judges. - As always, we'll be
judging these cheesecakes on four criteria. The presentation, the
creativity, the taste, and of course, the most
important question, is it a cheesecake? - I present proudly,
Daddy's Favorite Cheesecake. Daddy's favorite rides again. Last season on "Without A Recipe", I dedicated the entire
season to my father's favorite flavor combination,
cinnamon raisin. He eats a bowl of raisin
bran every morning. He's done it since I was born
and he does it every day now. But he loves oatmeal raisin cookies. So I wanted to bring the idea of oatmeal cinnamon raisin to cheesecake. - This explains a lot about you. (laughing) I've never seen raisins
on a cheesecake before. So I'm excited to see how it pairs up. - It smells like an English
muffin to me, which is exciting. - How fun.
- Like a cinnamon raisin English muffin. - What a fun surprise for all of us. Sounds great.
- It definitely smells like daddy. - Hell yeah! (cheers) That's a great, I mean, I
want to put that as a byline. - I think you nailed the ratio. Just from the look of it. This is my type of portion. - I'm so excited. (soft playful music) - [Keith] Going for more? - The crust is very good. Really good, and it has a very
pronounced oatmeal flavor, so as advertised, I love. Your raisins taste good. Did you cook them in the caramel? - My attempt was to make
caramelized raisins. They ended up being more
butter sugar raisins. - They're definitely caramelized. - Okay, good. - And the fact that you added xanthan gum to a cheesecake using Philly
cream cheese is hilarious because Philadelphia cream cheese has the most gums and stabilizers of all the cream cheeses. - Well, hot dicks. (laughing) - I think it all came
together actually pretty well, and I'm surprised that the raisins pair with the cinnamon so well. - I love the texture on the crust. Compared to the really creamy texture of the cheesecake itself. I do wish that the raisins were plumped up a little bit more. - It reminds me of a good cereal almost, if that makes sense. - Holy cow.
- Try a raisin. - I did, they're great. I'm really surprised too. - A lot of people hate raisins. It's definitely risky, which is exciting. - Is it cheesecake? - Definitely. - 100% cheesecake.
- Yes. - Even if I do not win this episode, the fact that you enjoyed it. I have worked so hard to
make these flavors work. This is my fifth try. This is huge for me. I feel like a victor--
- You haven't won yet. It's not-- - Well I know, but I'm just saying, I'm saying this is a huge victory for me.
- We're still judging. - Now, it might be
Christmastime, but if you ask me, well this year has felt more
like a constant Halloween. So I want you to go back inside, find the child within and dive the (bleep) in to
Zach's Spooky Cheesecake. It is a chocolate cheesecake
with some peanut butter. You got some Oreo chunks, some
peanut butter cookie chunks, and of course some mini M&Ms. On the outside, you have a cereal crust. Again, kids love all this shit. - It does not look like
your normal cheesecake. - [Zach] Sure don't, how
boring would that be? - [Jimmy] Exactly. - What is the cereal crust component? - We made a pie crust, crushed
up some graham crackers, crushed up some Rice Krispie treats, crushed up some Cornflakes, maybe even some Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Couldn't tell you, blacked out. (laughing) - Yeah, the Oreos inside, in a fancy restaurant, some might say this is
a terrazzo cheesecake. - I was gonna say that. I was afraid you wouldn't
know what that meant. So.
- Come on. - I'm glad that we're on the same page. - Is there any pumpkin in it? - You said Halloween, which
excited me to get pumpkin. - Well, thinking more about the candy. What you eat on Halloween.
- I just want you to know I'm disappointed before I even took a bite 'cause there's no pumpkin.
- Well I'm disappointed in your closed-minded attitude. (laughing) - All right, it's time to taste. (soft playful music) - Nice contemplate, look at that. - [Keith] A slight nod. - It's raw.
- No. - 100%.
- It's raw? - The crust is kinda gummy on the bottom. - Chewy.
- Yeah, a little gummy, - I will say that I loved the
presentation and the thought. - Big L word. - It is dense. I do like the orange zest in it. I think it brings somewhat of another characteristic to the cheesecake. - Is it creative? - You know when there's a kid in the class and he's just kinda nuts
and makes weird art-- - I know myself, yes.
- And the teacher goes, sweetie, you're so creative, but in a condescending tone. - This is called a read. - It's so creative. - It's not terrible. The crust is raw but--
- The crust is real raw. - The flavor, I got a M&M in mine and I got some peanut butter. - That orange comes through. (laughing)
It tastes like an orange cheesecake.
- It's a screamer. - Is this a cheesecake?
- Yeah. - I think it is. - [Jimmy] It's a cheesecake. - Judges, in the history of this series, I have been known to be a little wild with my alcohol infusions. So I proudly presunt, present, I'm drunk. (laughing)
(mumbling) Here's my I'm (bleep) Drunk Cheesecake. (laughing) Graham cracker crust has a Guinness beer. Cheesecake itself has a bourbon whiskey. Strawberries steeped in champagne. Blackberries have tequila,
raspberries in vodka, blueberries in gin, the
chocolate infused with rum, and there's also a lime
zest white wine drizzle. And just a rose on the side. Just a little refresher. - Cheers.
- [Women] Cheers, ding. - [Eugene] Mmm, five
alcohols and one rose. - Tastes like rose. - Nice. (soft playful music) - The alcohol isn't as present as the description made it. - I disagree with you so, I can't disagree with you more on that. - The alcohol is not as strong
as I thought it would be. Does that make me an alcoholic? - Perhaps. (laughing) - Not perhaps.
- Think seasoned is the word. - Your cheesecake texture is the best of the day so far.
- I will say, I like the texture a lot.
- Super smooth. Very sexy smooth. - Oh, thank you. - I think the crust, the taste of the crust I actually like, even though it's kind of a little soggy 'cause of all the alcohol,
but I like the taste of it. Actually, I think the
crust actually tastes better than the cheesecake. - How about creativity? - I think it was a bold choice to try to infuse as many
alcohols as possible, especially since you
typically never mix alcohols. Unless you're making a Long Island. So maybe this is like a
Long Island cheesecake. - Yeah, I'm actually quite proud of the cheesecake part.
- It's very light. - Judges, is it a cheesecake? - Yes, it is. - For sure it is a cheesecake. - Yes.
- Yes! - Three, Eugene. How about that?
- Judges, are you a little tipsy? - Totally.
- Probably, yeah. - Thank you, judges. - Judges, I love butter pecan ice cream. Reminds me of summers
with my grandparents. And for this cheesecake, I wanted to make a Butter
Pecan Ice Cream Cheesecake. It's got toasted butter pecans on top with a nice brown butter glaze, a little vanilla and lemon zest inside, and then I wanted the texture to be a little melty like ice cream because I have put ice
cream inside the cheesecake and it is a hybrid of cheesecake and butter pecan ice cream. Please enjoy. - I call bullshit on all of it. to be this texture? - Yeah. - It is unlike any
cheesecake I've ever seen. - Thank you. - It does look like an ice cream pie. - [Ned] Excellent. - But you told me that you baked it, so I'm a little, my
brain's a little confused. - I suppose we should dig in. - I'm already there, I already did it. (laughing) (soft playful music) - I think the flavor of the
actual cake itself isn't, it's not bad. - I do like the pecans. It does, it reminds me of a pecan pie. Again, the crust ratio to cheesecake is actually not bad. - I don't see any relation
to ice cream whatsoever. I think the texture is a failure. In the cream cheese department. It almost seems separated and curdled in the center to me. - Ah, see what you mean.
- It's wet and kinda curdled. Yeah.
- Yeah. - I mean, it doesn't seem like it was baked enough in the center. - I did find some cream
cheese chunks in there, which kinda throws me off. - I do think that there
was a little bit too much on the pecan status. It almost looked like it was a pecan cake. It was just, there was a lot of pecans. But they did taste good. - Talk to me more about the flavor.
- I ate a lot. Look how much I ate.
- Is that lemon zest coming through, are you--
- Not really. - Yeah, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. - I do like the creativity-- - Thank you, thank you.
- That you put in here. - I don't think that I've
seen butter pecan cheesecake. Is it a cheesecake? - Well, you said it was an ice cream cake, so why don't you answer that question? - Not only is this a cheesecake, this is a cheese experience. Half cheesecake, half
butter pecan ice cream. 100% nostalgia for those
perfect summer days. Think different. Think butter pecan. - It's a cheesecake, it's a cheesecake. - Hell yes. - It's a little undercooked
but it is a cheesecake. - Is it a cheesecake? I mean, yeah. (cheering)
- That's right, that's right. (dramatic music) - First up was Keith's. Raisin cinnamon daddy's chosen cheesecake. - I think the texture is great, actually. It's very smooth, it's dense, it's rich, and it tastes really good. - The flavor of the
oatmeal and the texture and the saltiness of the crust, it was well baked. The crust, it was the best
baked crust of the four. I think the cinnamon
sugar sprinkle is lame. For presentation points, not
my favorite way to garnish. - All right, next up we have
Zach's Halloween horror. I think if he took all of the aspects he put in down by 50%-- - [Nicole] And then not put orange zest, and then baked the crust all the way. - Right, there could've
been something here. But as it stands, you're
almost biting into something that is just so densely packed with all the things you
wanted to put into it that you kind of lose the essence of a cheesecake as a whole. Okay, next up we have Eugene's
nine liquor cheesecake here. - He definitely gave us the most in terms of making cheesecake look pretty. It's actually the best texture filling of the entire offerings. - [Jimmy] It almost
felt gimmicky, I think, to use that much alcohol. But it was a bold move by Eugene, and I guess on brand for him as well. - [Caroline] I actually did
not taste too much of it. In the crust especially. It just made the crust soggy. - Our final entrant is Ned's butter pecan ice cream cheesecake remix. You said you tasted a chunk of cream cheese in the--
- A chunk of cream cheese. - Yeah, and you saw a chunk.
- I saw a chunk of cream cheese, yeah. I would say, yeah.
- A comedy of errors. - [Nicole] The ice cream
sticks out to me as being kind of genius but also it didn't happen. - [Jimmy] It definitely fell apart. It fell apart real hard. (dramatic music) - So guys, I think baking a
cheesecake without a recipe is pretty much impossible to do. So I applaud all of you guys. And it came out not bad. - Not bad.
- Not bad, not bad. - Not bad. - Merry (bleep) Christmas.
(cheers) - Well contestants, it's that time. Four cakes, only one winner. So let's begin with fourth place. - The fourth place cheesecake, it came with a lot of caveats and excuses and it was clear to me that the fourth place cheesecake had no plan. And that cheesecake was made by Ned. - Wow! So I didn't have a plan, huh? I didn't have a plan. That's what you think, you
think I didn't have a plan. And that's how it went wrong? No, I'll tell you what went wrong. I had a plan. My plan was just not very good because I don't know what I'm doing. - If you sat down at the factory and the server put that
garbage in front of you, you would be like, what is this? And you would send it back--
- You want to talk to my manager?
- To the manager. - We don't know where it went wrong, but we had about 80 different
hypotheses as to where. - I had this idea like, oh, it's gonna be melted like ice cream. It's gonna be so good. It's gonna just kinda
melt in their mouths. (bleep) bullshit. (laughing) - You can keep that bottle, Ned. - All right, you guys
ready for third place? - God, this (bleep) year, am I right? (laughing) - All right. Third place goes to... Zach. - Call me Thanos, mother (bleep), 'cause first, second, third, fourth, I completed my gauntlet. I'm calling this season a victory! - A perfect record.
- A perfect record. - The final two cheesecakes on display. One by Eugene. Nine liquors went into this cheesecake. Adorned with fruit, chocolate, and berries of all kinds, this cheesecake had an excellent texture, a half pipe of a ramp of a crust, and overall, was a very good bake. On the other end of the arena sits Keith's daddy's home cinnamon raisin-- - Daddy's favorite.
- Daddy's favorite. - Daddy's home. Daddy's home.
- Daddy's home. - Daddy's home. And you can't believe what
you did with this cheesecake. It's got a great crust,
an excellent texture, and a lot of flavor as well. Both of these cheesecakes could rise to the top of the pantheon. Both of them have so many
wonderful attributes. Only one of these will take
the first place finish. And to the first place
winner, I will say this. Daddy's home! - Oh my God! Daddy's favorite! - Daddy's favorite! (cheering)
- Oh my God! Oh my God, this is so big. - Keith, daddy's favorite
dance, daddy's favorite dance. (cheering) - [Everyone] Daddy's
favorite, daddy's favorite. - I can't believe this. This is so big, let me just take a seat. Oh my gosh.
- You guys don't know how hard he worked to get here. - I put so much work
into last year's season and I didn't have much to
show for it and it haunted me. After this victory, I am daddy's favorite. - [Men] Happy Holidays and Happy New Year. - 2020's almost over, mother (bleep). Let's make the next year,
hopefully marginally better. - You know what? How could it be worse? Well, you'll show me, won't you? - We'll see. Go check out our movie
at tryguys.com/movie! - [Narrator] Thank you for joining us for season two of "Without A Recipe" and congratulations to daddy's favorite. - I think that's the dough head. (laughing) - Is it, dough? - You might be taking a big whisk. - Whisky business.
- Wow, we sound like-- - You're doing whiskey business. - I know, oh! Couple of old neck boners here. (laughing)
I hate that the Try Guys had to pin a comment about how they will not tolerate attacks on Nicole as a person and how it is uncalled for and how criticism of Nicole should be redirected to them for as constructive criticism for how they edit. It’s great that they defend their guests, but sucks a that they have to. And not that it’s the same people doing it, but it’s interesting to see comments joking about having Gordon Ramsey on and yet people thought Nicole was too critical.
Anyway, I thought she was hilarious. I like when there is a judge with a more critical vibe, I think it adds to the humour and they are better able to get across just how bad it came out then when someone is trying to be more charitable with their critiques.
Edit: Zack has also recently tweeted about it and his comments reflect all my concerns about the reaction to Nicole well: “Respectfully, anyone who calls our Without A Recipe judges “mean” has never tasted what we bake lol.
We love sassy judging. If you don’t, that’s a note for how WE produce + edit, but please leave our wonderful experts out of it. We’re all on the same team and just having fun <3 Men are “mean” in our videos all the time. Viewers only ever seem to have a problem with the women in our videos.
We don’t need you to defend us. I know it comes from a well-intentioned place but I promise you no one’s feelings have ever been hurt during a Without A Recipe. It’s all just fun. Edit’s shape things. Let’s keep that in mind before we leave mean comments.
You know let me also say the quiet part out loud.
Men are “mean” in our videos all the time. Viewers only ever seem to have a problem with the women in our videos.
Perhaps that’s something worth reflecting on. “
(spoiler)
Keith absolutely deserved this win!!! I loved this video!
I just still don’t think people understand that no matter if you liked her or not, commenting rude shit about anyone based on a YouTube video is simply unnecessary. She’s a real person and she’s prolly going to read those comments which is def why the try guys made that pinned comment. Especially looking back to the try DIY VIDEO fiasco, the try guys clearly don’t like it when fans attack people featured in their videos. They’re grown men 😂they don’t need y’all to defend them & their feelings.
(Also ffs there have been plenty of ‘critical’ bordering on rude judges. People loved Matt as a judge and that man was hyper critical)
I think the difference between Nicole compared to Matt and Roy Choi is the delivery of the comments. Matt and Roy’s were delivered more playfully and at the right timing but Nicole just ragged on the guys always and that would always be the first thing she would say and every time someone tried to compliment them, she would almost try to prove them wrong.
Something that rubbed me the wrong way with Nicole wasn’t her original critiques but it was the fact that whenever someone said something even a little nice or positive about the dish, she would try to prove them wrong by giving another comment. I just don’t think that was necessary.
I think people being mad at Nicole is dumb as hell. When the blonde hair / glasses lady was
SAVAGE to Keith all season like she had a personal vendetta against him, they just accepted it and found it funny, and she was way meaner than Niccole was on this episode.
the pink lady was a riot, loved her
I watched the video before I read any comments on anything. I was uncomfortable with her and said out loud how rude I thought her comments were. Neds face during critique broke my heart lol but we don’t know her. I’m sure she was just trying to go with the flow of their humor and jabs and just missed the mark a little.
Matt was way harsher than Nicole, and Nicole is an actual expert. But she's a sassy woman, so fans will hate her. I like they got judges who don't kiss their ass for being mildly famous.
Nicole was good. Maybe cut her edit better, but she was enjoyable.