What’s sugary and creamy like a frozen dessert, spongy on the inside like a birthday cake and covered in candied yams?

Give up?

Foodies and judges at the third annual Clash in the Kitchen benefit for fire victims Aug. 4 in Jackson were as much in the dark when Vicksburg chef Jay Parmegiani served it up alongside potato-themed creations from four fellow culinary artists from across Mississippi.

The loaded baked potato dessert won the Roca Restaurant & Bar owner this year’s Best Chef title, his second top finish at the event that raises money for the Mississippi Firefighters Memorial Burn Association.

“We had to do something with potatoes,” said Parmegiani, 33, who won the association’s first cookoff in 2009 and took both the overall competition and people’s choice honors this year.

“So, I started playing around with the idea of a loaded baked potato,” Parmegiani said. “I said, hey, no one’s gonna do a dessert.”

Three weeks before the sold-out chef’s challenge at Dulling Hall in the capital city’s Fondren neighborhood, general manager Rob Mordica suggested a quick change of plan to the dish — a russet potato pound cake stuffed into a sweet potato shell, topped with sour cream-flavored ice cream and cinnamon-tinged butter, accented by purple potatoes dusted with cinnamon and sugar and maple-glazed bacon.

“Originally, I was going to do it in a tart shell,” Parmegiani said. “Rob walked by and said, ‘Why don’t you put the batter inside the skin?’ So there was a little bit of collaboration.”

The competition expanded to five chefs this year — Parmegiani; Tom Ramsey, a Vicksburg native and last year’s overall winner, of Ivy & Divine Culinary Group in Jackson; Derek Emerson, co-owner of Walker’s Drive-In in Jackson; Craig Noone, chef and owner of Parlor Market in Jackson; and Delta-born chef David Crews, executive chef and owner of The Carlyle House in Ruleville, in Sunflower County.

About 150 people attended this year’s event, said Amanda Fontaine, executive director of the burn association. Ticket sales and proceeds from a silent auction at the $40-a-seat benefit will finance a proposed $2 million lodge across from Crossgates River Oaks Hospital in Brandon, which houses one of four Joseph M. Still Burn Center clinics in the southeast. Once built, the facility will provide a free place for family members of burn victims to stay while visiting at the center.

Judging presentation and taste for the overall category were Eric Sibley, head chef at Monmouth Plantation in Natchez; Bill Latham, co-owner of Jackson restaurants Table 100 and Babalu; Dan Blumenthal, head chef at Broad Street Bakery in Jackson; Patrick House of Vicksburg, December’s winner of the weight-loss TV reality show “The Biggest Loser,” and Grady Griffin, director of education for the Mississippi Hospitality and Restaurant Association.

Parmegiani’s “creativity and ability are head and shoulders ahead of the rest of the competition,” Griffin said, calling the sweet potato-based creation “absolutely delicious.”

“His colors were great and the texture was perfect,” Griffin said.

Parmegiani, son of Jacques Parmegiani, longtime operator of Jacques’ Cafe In The Park, attended Vicksburg High School and earned a degree in 1999 at the College of Culinary Arts at Johnson & Wales University’s Miami campus.

He said it’s possible he can re-create the unique potato cake dessert at Roca — by request, as is custom with his charity dishes.

“I can’t take full credit, though,” he said. “It was my people in the kitchen.”