“MasterChef New Zealand” ended engaged couple Sam Dolbel and Collette Lochore’s run on the show. They became the fourth pair to be eliminated after their dessert disaster on Monday.

Fresh from the oyster challenge of the night before, the contestants were asked to cook an entree for 185 guests at Russell’s iconic Duke of Marlborough Hotel. They could choose to make a main or dessert, with Sam and Collette choosing to recreate the hotel’s lemon and passion mascarpone cheesecake.

The pair started with confidence, saying that cheesecakes were their forte. But just after a while, Collette, a former beauty queen, struggled with her lemon curd.

They also had a difficult time delivering when the calls for the cheesecakes started coming out, with Sam suddenly declaring, “At this point I just don’t care. They can wait. I wait at restaurants.”

Apart from the MasterChef judges, the best and worst dishes of the challenge were judged by the Top Six teams from the oyster challenge. And unfortunately for Sam and Collette, none of the judges and their fellow contestants liked their cheesecakes.

“The filling is eye-watering acidic, like ‘take the roof of the top of your mouth’ lemon,” judge Ray McVinnie observed of the couple’s cheesecake.

He added, “The flavours were all out of balance. Your dessert was so acidic that it was unpleasant to eat the whole plate.”

In the end, the judges concluded that a commercial kitchen was definitely not for Sam and Collette, declaring them to be the fourth couple to leave the show.

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