Just Desserts, Episode 4: Gluten for Punishment

Given the rash of bad behaviour from the pastry cheftestants and gluten's status as a medically-established cause of Irritability Disease, I decided to do a statistical analysis of the latest Just Desserts debacle to determine whether an overdose of gluten could be the cause of our competitors' woes. Dear readers, once you have examined the evidence I'm sure you will agree that the conclusions are incontrovertible.

I based my evaluation on the events surrounding the Breyers All Natural Ice Cream Sundae Quickfire Challenge, as I believe most of the snarkiness (apart from one notable example, to be discussed separately) erupted afterwards. My hypothesis? That gluten in one's frozen desserts can lead to poor decision-making and the sullen grumps. Here's this episode's tally of  who was naughty and who was nice, together with each contestant's respective quickfire ice cream flavor.

Naughty

• Yigit: chocolate chip cookie dough (gluten-rich). Demonstrated appalling judgement by serving the judges a non-Vesuvial dessert.  
• Malika: cookies and cream (gluten-rich). Whined and fussed about who-knows-what, demonstrating a level of self-pity unbecoming in a pastry chef.
• Heather H: vanilla fudge twirl (gluten-free). Just plain embarrassing.

Nice

• Zac: cherry vanilla (gluten-free). Remained calm and composed despite the two crazies with whom he had to work.
• Morgan: mint chocolate chip (gluten-free). Seemed rather nice in this episode, even though I'm not usually a fan. 
• Erika: chocolate (gluten-free). Always classy.
• Danielle: Rocky Road (gluten-free) Didn't make an impression, which (given the variety of unstable personalities on this show) is a good thing. 

We were left with poor Seth, who never got out of the starting gate, and Heather C. who, given a second chance at glory, spent the entire time in a blue funk with a little black rain cloud over her head.  Suspecting that the bad mojo of the unclaimed flavor was the culprit (the gluten doing its damage from afar, as it were) I visited the Breyers All Natural Ice Cream Official Website to see if by process of elimination I could identify the transgressive flavor. It came as no surprise to discover that the most popular variety missing from the challenge - the dreaded and mysterious eighth ice cream - was probably vanilla fudge brownie, a gluten-filled disaster just waiting to happen.

Do we see a pattern here? One hundred percent of nice, even-tempered, reasonable cooks used g/f Breyers to make their sundaes. Seventy-five percent of whiny, difficult, petulant, and crabbed cooks had gluten in their ice cream.

A mere coincidence? I think not!

Next up: I take refuge in the thought that my two favorite Ben & Jerry's flavours, Cherry Garcia and Pistachio Pistachio, are gorgeously, gloriously, gluten-free.