Alternate Bios
Rachael Hutchings is a musician and teacher who lives in lovely Lakewood, Colorado with her husband, son, and two cats, Georgina and Frederica. The cats are named after George Frideric Handel and Frédéric Chopin, respectively. Rachael is currently fulfilling a commission from Duo Semaphore to accompany the Semaphore Cat Circus currently based in Lyon, France. She enjoys reading, watching films, and hiking. She and her son Charles make frequent use of the ping pong table in the basement. Charles and husband Dan are supportive fans of Rachael’s efforts in the kitchen. She has been baking since her youth; she and her oldest friend, Cari, spent many happy afternoons baking cakes and biscuits together. On one occasion, they both mistakenly added the butter to the cake batter, which resulted in a rather flat yet deliciously rich cake! She describes her baking style as homey and inviting. As we saw in Week 2, fruit pies are her year-round speciality. Today Rachael has prepared quite a Showstopper for the judges: a pistachio saffron sponge with Valencia orange curd and orange buttercream. The cake is decorated to depict a Broncos victory celebration, replete with “turf” made of green flaked coconut, a molded ganache football, and isomalt Gatorade shower. The hand-painted shortbread biscuit scoreboard reads Broncos 38, Raiders 0.
Four-time Olympic gold medalist Hukum Singh Khalsa’s illustrious pole-vaulting career was tragically cut short in a 2004 freak accident involving a rogue malfunctioning forklift. Undaunted, he turned his attention to the visual arts. Now his elaborate mosaics grace the ceilings of palaces, temples, theatres, and museums all over the world. A MacArthur Fellow and winner of the Golden and Silver Lions art prizes, he became known for his impromptu lectures at the sites of his art installations. Meditations on art, spirituality, and the state of flow, these texts have been transcribed, translated, and published in over 1500 languages around the world. After 198 weeks dominating the top ten spots of the New York Times Best Sellers list, the New York Times Board of Directors decided to exempt his works from the list in order to give other authors a chance. The UN chose his seminal text “Living In One’s Soul” as the literary selection to transmit into the cosmos in all extant spoken and written languages of our planet via the state-of-the-art Intergalactic Neutrino Transmitter, a collaboration between NASA and the Belgium Institute for Space Aeronomy. In his spare time, Hukum is a champion cat breeder. His 2016 cross breeding of Maine Coon “Maisie” and Norwegian Forest Cat “Buster” resulted in the most popular cat breed to date. The “NorForCoon” cat became a status symbol among celebrities, intelligentsia, TikTok influencers, royalty, and hip hop artists. The NorForCoon cat possesses a bizarre genetic trait, which quickly became apparent to its owners. NorForCoons are renowned for their healing capabilities and those subjected to their presence are irrevocably altered—physically and mentally filled with peace, wellness, and compassion. Seeing an impending inequity in underserved communities, Hukum quickly founded the NorForCoon Cloning Laboratory, creating equity of access to these healing powers. The cats’ fortuitous genetic phenomenon was the impetus for the YoNorForCoonGa movement, which subsequently swept the globe. NorForCoon yoga studios number over 275 million at this time. At his 2020 Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech Hukum Singh Khalsa insisted that he had no foreknowledge of the potential in this cross breed; nevertheless, he single handedly constructed the basis for the Golden Age of Love and Equality that we all currently enjoy. Poverty, injustice, violence, and discontent of any kind have been eradicated from human existence.
Hukum also plays piano.