MasterChef recap: Death by chocolate The ominous chocolate cake on MasterChef's 'Love' week. Have you noticed a certain spring in your step this week? The feeling of a warm ray of sunshine like a lover's embrace? A birdsong serenade, or a light breeze falling on your cheek like a hundred tender kisses? Love is in the air, my friends, and this most glorious of weeks is "Love Week" in the MasterChef kitchen. This means that the contestants will cook again as usual, but also the judges will say the word "love" quite a lot. As the worst performers from Sunday's challenge, Rishi, Neha and Vern were facing elimination on Monday night. Ah, but if only things were that simple. In MasterChef nothing is as it seems. Rishi has an immunity pin that he can use to excuse himself from the challenge and thrust Noelene headlong into the elimination. But will Rishi use the pin? The answer is hidden within a dense web of intrigue that shrouds sleight of hand with tactical cloak and dagger, all intertwined with the deep mysteries of the human condition. So Rishi uses the pin, and it's all a bit of an anticlimax. But really, we knew he would from his half-arsed attempt at simulated packing on-camera before leaving the house. Magnanimously, Noelene steps in to the challenge. She isn't outwardly annoyed but you can just tell that Rishi has just moved up a couple of places on a revenge list that Noelene almost certainly keeps somewhere. Enter Kirsten Tibballs. Neha refers to her as a "dessert queen at a first-class level," which is I guess one way of putting it. A "professional chocolatier and patissier" might be another. She lifts a shining sliver cloche to reveal, well, something that just looks like a big lump of chocolate. Everybody gasps for some reason. Clearly they never expected this professional chocolatier to reveal something made out of chocolate. The lump of chocolate turns out to be a Louros chocolate entremet containing white chocolate cremeux, paillete feuilletine. Florentine, pain de Gênes and glaçage au chocolat among other things, which all sounds very impressive until you realise that more than half of those are just made up words. The contestants will have 3.5 hours to recreate the entremet. Neha says that this will be a Herculean task, and while as a figure of legend Hercules wasn't known specifically for his baking, I'm guessing that's the first time that phrase has been applied to something that is quite literally a piece of cake. Time starts and right out of the gate Vern has erroneously mixed sugar with his milk powder and chocolate and he's freaking out. Neha is also freaking out, although this comes as no surprise as she has mentioned this fact in every single challenge of the competition thus far. "Freaking out" is actually just Neha's natural state. The only bastion of control is Noelene, who stands motionless at the back of the room like a giant sphinx, exhibiting the kind of stoic calmness that can only come from cultivating a deep hatred of every person she's ever come into contact with in her entire life. Noelene tells us she only has to beat one person today, and that she doesn't care who that is. Usually in MasterChef the term "to beat" someone means to cook better than them, but this time there's an coldness behind Noelene's eyes that indicates she might have other ideas. There is some chance that this episode may end with Noelene, enraged and raining blows upon a tiny and helpless Neha until she withdraws from the competition. Vern and Neha have pulled away to a formidable lead. From the balcony, Samira is screaming at Noelene and from the floor, Noelene is screaming back at Samira. It's not really a pleasant sound, so if you noticed a vein in your neck starting to bulge while watching last night's episode, that was probably why. Noelene tells us that this is the fastest she has ever moved in the competition, although her healthy pace looks more like a cake walk. Regardless, Samira's relentless nagging has paid off! Noelene has caught up to Vern and Neha and so it's game on, moles. Now we get a chance to meet the contestants in a little more detail. Vern tells us about how he lost his mother to cancer and frankly that's just an incredibly sad and touching story and I'm not crying and this is how my eyes always look so everybody should just shut up and lets' talk about Neha. There are scenes of Neha in her kitchen at home and she tells us she is passionate about fusing Indian and Australian cuisine, but she just needs to work out how to do it. This is a little like me saying I'm passionate about playing the cello, even though I can't play the cello. On to Noelene next, and we discover that with her children all grown and moved out of the family home, MasterChef is her way of coping with an empty nest. It's a brave and admirable challenge, but as we are introduced to her youngest son Noelene takes this opportunity to tell us of her great disappointment at his choice of football team. The scene ends there, but I suspect that Noelene then went into a 30-minute speech about other things that disappointed her about her son, her other children, the camera crew, various people that she had met that day, and also all human beings in general. Noelene is just a ray of sunshine. Back in the kitchen Neha knows her mousse isn't right but time is running out and she needs to move along. She throws her cake into the blast chiller and prays to the blast chiller gods that her cake will set. In Greek mythology, the blast chiller god is actually Boreas of the Anemoi and not Hercules, so religiously at least, Neha is clearly now hedging her bets. Glazes are poured and cakes are shaped, and Vern garnishes his cake with a bell that belonged to his late mother in a move that is just daring the judges to behave like heartless monsters. But he needn't have been worried. Vern has done an exceptional job and as Kirsten cuts into it there is rapturous applause from the balcony. He wins praise from all the judges, although Kirsten mentions a few minor imperfections that she was able to detect after first having her heart replaced with a lump of coal. Noelene is up next and she is also very proud of her effort. The balcony once again erupts into spontaneous applause and cheering. All in all, she has done well, although George refers to Noelene's glaçage as a nappage. In the chef community this is actually a vicious insult, but Noelene manages to hold herself together. Neha's dish is last to be tasted and the tension is palpable. Kirsten cuts into it and to be honest, it looks pretty much the same as Noelene's and Vern's cakes but this time instead of applause and cheers there is a deathly silence. Either the contestants on the balcony have exceptionally keen eyesight and are able to see tiny differences in a chocolate cake over a distance of more than 10 metres, or the editors have decided that the other contestants' applause for Neha's cake was just an unimportant triviality. But the editors are right. It is a disaster. Neha has left the baking paper on her florentine layer. "It happens," consoles George, and let's be honest, who hasn't left a bit of baking paper on their florentine layer when knocking together Louros chocolate entremet for a quick snack after work? Sadly for Neha, an errant piece of baking paper in an otherwise well-executed dessert is the difference in this challenge, and another journey in the MasterChef kitchen draws to a close. As the black town car of disappointment whisks Neha out of the driveway and back to her family, we are all left to ponder the truth that in life, as in love and in chocolate, all things are bittersweet.