CRIME SCENE KITCHEN Post-Mortem: The Season 2 Winners on That Crazy Final Bake and What’s Next

[Warning: This post contains spoilers for the season 2 finale of CRIME SCENE KITCHEN.]

CRIME SCENE KITCHEN crowned its second championship duo on the Monday, August 14 episode, but it came after a bit of a twist: none of the final three pairs was able to correctly nail the flavor profile for the last bake.

But thanks in part to a successful first bake, the judges were able to crown the season 2 winners—Amber Croom and Yassmeen Haskins!

Hours before the episode aired on Fox, the duo spoke with Give Me My Remote about the finale and what comes next.

What was going through your head when they revealed the final cake and what the flavor profile was?
Amber Croom: Of course it is. Of course. Yet another time we did not go with our first mind. You’d think we would have learned by now. And clearly we have not. [Laughs.] Yass started laughing. I think I’m just like [makes a sighing noise]. [Laughs.] Does this mean we got to do another bake? We gotta start over?

Was a tying-breaking bake actually a serious concern? What was the thought process when it was all going down?
Yassmeen Haskins: My process was, “Oh, it’s gonna be another bake. Let’s go so we can win this. Let’s wrap it up. I’m ready. I’m ready.” Like there was no second thought about it. Like, [I thought], “There’s another bake. Amber, get it together. We’re gonna bake. It’s fine. We’re gonna win. We’re gonna bake, we’re gonna win. We’re gonna go home. Give me the check.”
Croom: And I was just salty. I was salty. I’m very competitive by nature, anyway, so I was just real salty. Especially because they threw so much. But we knew we knew something wasn’t right. Like, some things just weren’t making sense. And I’m not a fan of that. Like, you know, one of the biggest things we always say is make it make sense. And it wasn’t making sense. We knew we were missing something. Because we just couldn’t remember the contents of the drinks. We don’t drink a lot of cocktails like that, on a regular basis. So we didn’t have nothing to pool from. It was just like [heavy sigh]. And then, dang. I was just like, I really wanted to get this one right. So that was the other side of me.
Haskins: Yeah, we wanted a second like aha moment, like the cutout cake—
Croom: We set the bar really high for that.
Haskins: Yeah, I really wanted that aha moment. We really thought about the decorations for this cake. We had a whole template made. And that drink, that drink just kind of threw us. Amber said ginger. We say ginger in the bake.
Croom: Now mind you, I don’t know if they showed that. We haven’t seen the finale, so I don’t know if they actually played that part of us talking about that. But yeah.
Haskins: But, yeah, it just felt like we knew what the cocktail was, we were trying to remember the cocktails, but ginger just felt really far off. You know what I mean? It felt fall, it felt like it did not go with this tropical decor for this cake, and so [we second-guessed] “Should we go with ginger? I don’t know. Let’s talk this out for a second.” And that’s how we just…yeah. We did not get it right.

You had extra time to explore the kitchen in the final bake. How did that help or hurt your process?
Croom: I don’t think it threw us or helped us. Well, I wouldn’t say it didn’t help us, because I feel like having that extra time allowed me to stand at the island and really see all the design elements that were there. And really try to figure that part out, because it was a lot. And so I feel like that last minute it was really just us looking finally at the rest of the clues. And really [going], “Okay, those are flowers. What is that made of? That’s fondant. Is that fondant or modeling chocolate? Okay, that’s that. This is a wafer paper leaf…smell this, taste this. The extra minute helped in that part of it. But, you know, we still got tripped up on some of the clues.

When they were about to announce the winner, what was going through your mind?
Haskins: Oh, I might have been empty. My tank may have been empty. No; no, maybe—it was. It was definitely empty in that moment. We gave everything that we had in that cake. And what was it? Three hours? And we had, by that point…congratulated one another and celebrated that this whole journey we made it to the very end. And so it was, like, man, bump that, we did that? Trophy, no trophy…Amber and I, we just did 90 days together. And that’s what it felt like: 90 days locked up. But to have our names come up—because I’m still thinking that we’re going to do another bake. I’m not thinking that this Confectionator is going to say our names. And so when it does, it’s like wait, that’s my name and it’s printed out. That’s Amber’s name printed out. And we’re like we’re actually telepathically kind of saying, that’s us, like we won that? Like, unreal, just completely unreal, raw, emotional moment.
Croom: It took a second. It really did take a second to register that it was us. And so the reactions that I saw in the promo that they sent us is very accurate. Like, Yass looks like she swallowed a bug. And I look like I’m ready to fall out on the floor, but I got this two-piece suit on, and I’m not about to get it dirty. So I’m not gonna hit the floor. We don’t do that. The reactions were genuine, because it was anybody’s game. And so that’s the one thing that this has taught us, especially because they were going off of both bakes. And since we had such an emotional first round. I wasn’t sure, but, like she said, we were super proud. But when he says Amber and Yass, and then we see it, you know, come up, everything flowed out of us.

You both were incredibly emotional post-victory. How much have you been able to reflect on what this win means and what are your hopes for the future? 
Croom: I can speak on the first one. I don’t know how much it’s going to affect us. I don’t feel like we’ve been able to really ponder it,  because we haven’t seen it. You know, like we lived it. Yes, but we haven’t, like sat down, watched it, and live in that moment in its totality. And I feel like that’s not gonna really come until after tonight, that we really…oh wow, all the emotions, all the feels, I can really digest everything now. And I’m not sure what place that’s gonna put me in, honestly
Haskins: Going forward, because Amber and I have now collaborated and we started our own business, which is Beye Beignets, we are hoping to find investors. That is a really, really important part of this. Two, rest and relaxation. Like, we’ve done the work. Everybody has now seen that we’ve done the work, and we can continue to do that work. But, also, we want…[to] create a model for younger people who want to put themselves through school through Beye Beignets? Maybe it’s internships, maybe it’s front-of-the-house management.

We have a lot of thoughts…We want other bakers and other people who are in the hospitality industry to know that you can reach across the street or around the corner and talk to somebody who makes and creates the same stuff that you do. Yes, they’re your competition, but how can you put a spin on that and say, “No, we can build together. You can still do your own thing. I can still do my own thing.” So Amber and my motto is that when we introduce ourselves together, the Electric Lady stands for your favorite pastry chefs on the west side and the east side. And so that means that you have access to not one pastry chef but two.

Everybody has a favorite executive chef or catering chef, but nobody has a go-to baker…And so going forward, if I’m not available, then let me refer you to my sister. And so if we can create like a collab, a cohort of sorts, of “This is the list of all the pastry chefs you may need for your events,” who can customize [to fit a customer’s needs is] an amazing thing. Because what happens…[a pastry] chef goes with you through most of the journeys of your life. From your baby shower to the baby naming to the gender reveal to your wedding, when you lose a loved one [or a] family member, you call that baker. You might change to a different cater or something like that, but we want people to really understand who we are. And that’s how we want to move forward with it.

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