THIS WEEK'S KITCHEN ESSENTIALS:

Quickfire: What would Willy Wonka do?
Elimination: Welcome to a night at the improv.
Padmaism: "I would lick my bowl if we weren't in front of the camera."

U-G-L-Y, you ain't got no alibi — The house rises and shines. Well, they shine as much as they can. With self-avowed metrosexual Ryan gone, some of the housemates are feeling a little hit with the ugly stick.

Andrew: I'm waking up this morning and looking around and obviously the room got a lot uglier. Ryan, pretty boy, left.

Antonia frets about the one little mistake that could send someone home at this point in the competition. You mean like leaving fish scales on or running out of food or a having a filthy work station? Oh, wait.

Jennifer gets on her chef gear and says, again, that she is doing this for Zoi.

Jennifer: I can't be in the middle anymore. I need to be on the top. Everything I've got, blood, sweat and tears.

OK, OK, we get it. It's all very noble and should certainly help you — shall we say — get some when you two are reunited. But let's move on.

Never skip dessert — The cheftestants walk into the Top Chef Kitchen and what greets them? Desserts. A whole table full of sweet, sugary confections sits so close, yet so far away. Now I don't have a big sweet tooth (I have more of a bacon and cheese tooth), but even I want to grab a fork and gorge myself into a sugar coma.

The accompanying Quickfire Challenge is — you guessed it — to create a delicious dessert. The presence of guest judge and "pastry icon" Johnny Iuzzini brings this season's overly gelled hairdo count to an all-time high.

Then host Padma Lakshmi pulls out an advance copy of Top Chef: The Cookbook. My eyes glaze over at yet another gratuitous product placement. Wouldn't it be easier to just get a flashing neon sign that reads: "BUY THIS!"

Turns out whoever wins the dessert battle will be the only chef from this season to have a recipe in the cookbook. No, this doesn't mean they'll have to open up a rift in the space-time continuum. The season was taped in advance of the cookbook's March 20 release date. What it does mean, however, is that Padma is probably holding up a book with nothing but blank pages.