‘Is It Cake?’ Review (Netflix Original)
After a tough day of teaching, there is nothing I love more than simply shutting off and scrolling through a series of random videos on Facebook, Instagram or Tik Tok. Time seems to fly by in these moments of pure relaxation and before you know it you’ve spent three hours watching someone build an automatic farm on Minecraft or a video on how to do an impression of Miss Piggy from The Muppets. There seems to be a trend, especially on Tik Tok of people cutting up things to see if they are real objects or simply made of cake. Some of these videos are genuinely baffling and showcase some incredible talent! As someone who has grown up in a household where there are constantly cakes being made or awaiting collection, I know first-hand the incredible things that can be done with cake but even then every so often I am totally in awe of how incredible these bakes are. You would be amazed at how realistic some of these bakes are which leads to total frustration when you thought someone’s thing was very clearly cake when it’s not!
This is the entire premise of the new Netflix show Is It Cake? where nine gifted bakers create hyper-realistic cakes to try and fool a lineup of celebrity guests. The contestants have to select a product and try to make it out of cake and then disguise it amongst other objects with the hope of the judges not being able to tell which object is cake and which is not. While watching you can’t help but share your views on the bakes and in fact, everyone in my house was shouting at the television and the thing is we all had totally different answers. The family-friendly subject matter alongside the over-the-topness of the host makes this a show you can’t help but get sucked into! The unusual hybrid of baking and game show doesn’t sound like it should work but the team behind this show have made a way to make baking shows even more exciting! In a recent review of the Netflix Original show Baking Impossible I talked about my dislike of cakes that look incredible but there is very little of the masterpiece that you can actually eat. For me personally, cake is there to be eaten! While it is fantastic that a cake looks like a work of art I think that its fundamental purpose is to be eaten and so not only should it be edible but taste amazing. Luckily for me, Is It Cake? focuses on edible masterpieces where not only the look is judged but also the taste. If two or more bakers have managed to trick the celebrity judges then the taste is taken into consideration which I thought was a very nice touch.
Every episode in this series is structured the same way. It opens with all the bakers deciding which object is cake and which is not and the quickest to classify them gets to choose their other two opponents. It’s nice seeing the supposed masters in realistic cake making actually showcase how well they can identify cakes as it really showcases their talent. The three bakers then select an object to recreate but also throughout the episode they also select the decoy objects that are used to throw the judges off the quest to find the cake! As previously discussed if the judges don’t manage to find which is cake then the taste of the cake is brought into question. The overall winner then has to try and identify which bag of cash is cake and which is real money which gives them a bonus cash tip! Helping them through this baking journey is the wonderfully eccentric host Mikey Day who uses a sword to cut up the cakes, appears via a wonderfully theatrical turntable and provided many hilarious moments throughout. Usually, I’m not a fan of a show that has hosts that know nothing about the subject they are presenting (Mikey has no idea about cake) but this became a joke in itself as the contestants were taking him totally imaginary terms and phrases. There was also a moment that I would never seen on Netflix where one of the bakers was given his high-school graduation diploma live on TV which was very unique.
Overall, Is It Cake? is a show that everyone in the family can get involved in from expert bakers to very young children. The host helps to bring the theatrical fun which contrasts beautifully against the almost unachievable talent being shown by the bakers.
