There’s an awesome reality show on Roku TV called Eye Candy, hosted by Josh Groban. It’s one of the shows that Roku bought from failed streamer, Qibi, so the episodes are only eight minutes long. It features celebrity guests like Rachel Dratch, Tiki Barber and Jamie Chung working with everyday contestants. Two teams compete to guess whether items coming down a conveyer belt are cake or real. The winning team then has a finale where they enter a theme room like “90s bedroom” or “classroom” and try to find the cake items among the props. They also show clips of the cakes being made and airbrushed to look like plants, toys, tissue boxes and more. It’s a lot of fun and you can watch it for free here. (Not a plug I just have a Roku on my bedroom TV.)
Eye Candy came out on Roku last August. As far as I can find it won’t get another season, but Netflix is here to fill the “cakes that look like real things” void. There’s a new show called Is it Cake? that takes this concept to the next level. It’s hosted by Mikey Day from SNL. Cake artists compete with each other to fool celebrity judges, who have to guess which items are cake. The baker with the most realistic (and tastiest, I’m guessing) creations will win $50,000. The show is out on March 18th and there’s a new trailer, which is below. Here’s part of People’s writeup on this.
[Netflix] has a new show coming this month called Is It Cake?, which combines the food phenomenon with a good old fashioned reality baking competition series.
Hosted by Saturday Night Live star Mikey Day, Is It Cake? brings together nine of the world’s most talented bakers to compete to create hyper-realistic cakes that look exactly like everyday objects.
The bakers — Andrew Fuller, April Julian, Dessiree Salaverria, Hemu Basu, Jonny Manganello, Justin Rasmussen-Ellen, Nina Charles, Sam Cade, and Steve Weiss — all are ready to play, coming in to the competition having made a name for themselves in this niché field.
“What I do is the weirdest thing in the world,” Manganello says in the trailer, which dropped on Monday. “Like, there are people saving lives and I am making cake look like other things.”
They’ll need the skill, too. In order to win, their creations will need to be good enough to deceive a panel of celebrity judges like Karamo Brown, Loni Love, Michael Yo, Bobby Moynihan, Fortune Feimster, Rebecca Black, King Princess, Arturo Castro, Day’s SNL costar Heidi Gardner and Meme queen Brittany Broski.
The top three best bakers will go on to compete for the final prize of $50,000.
I will watch the hell out of this! I love reality competition shows. Some of my favorites on Netflix are Blown Away, Nailed It, The Big Flower Fight, Interior Design Masters, Glow Up and Crazy Delicious. There are so many baking competition shows that I’m surprised we haven’t seen a “cakes that look like real things” show yet. Honestly I was going to bag on Netflix for copying Qibi’s concept but there’s plenty of room left in the realistic cakes space. It must have been tricky to find enough talented bakers to compete on this show too. It looks crazy technical and hard to do.
Here’s the trailer:
I just went down a rabbit hole looking up the Instagrams for these contestants! Here are a few and the two I didn’t embed (for space) are Sam Cade and Hemu Basu.
photos credit: Netflix and via Instagram
Oh, Nailed It is my jam. I love that show 😂
I also recommend School of Chocolate. A totally different vibe than most baking shows and no one gets eliminated.
I’ll definitely watch this new show. It looks amazing. But I really wish they’d have a show where the bakers cannot use fondant, isomalt, gum paste, etc. They can only use things you actually want to eat.(I know those things are technically edible but no one – I don’t think – wants a mouth full of fondant 😬)
I haven’t seen School of Chocolate yet I will give that a chance! It sounds really good thank you for the recommendation.
It’s really good. And I was so judgmental before the first episode and thought the host (hotshot young guy) was going to be a mean jerk, but he was very sweet and really focused on teaching the contestants how to improve. Sort of the opposite of a cruel, insulting Gordon Ramsey screamer.
I also loved School of Chocolate. And I had the same (unfair) initial judgement of the judge. But he ended up being really supportive and wanting everyone to learn and succeed.
And, while there was a bit of drama between some of the contestants, it didn’t feel scripted or excessively magnified in the editing. Even contestants that had personality clashes found ways to work together when they needed to.
Oh yes, I really enjoyed School of Chocolate.
Amaury Guichon has a YouTube channel where he makes the most amazing things out of chocolate. Last week it was a race car.
I agree about the fondant, etc. As I watched these various clips, I kept thinking–but will that even taste good? If it’s tough for a knife to slice through, how could it taste good? And some look to be equal amounts filler (icing, fondant, whatever) and cake.
Love the idea.
I think the “cake room” idea is originally from a Japanese game show where it’s chocolate instead of cake. I remember seeing some videos on YT a few years ago that were hilarious because contestants had to test whether they were right or wrong by tasting the items 😀
I wonder how good Mikey Day will be as host. He always had a great, very lovely energy on SNL, so I hope it translates well to a format where he has to balance out all contestants (can’t stop thinking about his candy cotton party sketch with Liam Hemsworth, a true classic).
I loved that sketch! Had Kenan Thompson and Alex Moffat too, IIRC, as the stakeout cops. It wasn’t Liam Hemsworth, though, it was Chris Pine. Pine’s whole episode was quite good–even his musical monologue is a worthy rewatch and that’s incredibly rare.
This baking trend/style confuses my brain.
THIS!!!! I keep thinking it’s very creative and I applaud that but if I ate a chili dog or mashed potatoes that tasted like cake I’d be mad! 😠. I mean, a purse, shoe, book….I get. It’s cute and fun as part of a theme but my brain would really struggle eating mac and cheese that tastes and/or feels like cake! That seems like it’d be unpleasant.
They should have Yolanda Gampp on the show. She started doing this in 2015 on How to Cake It.
I used to love the show Face Off, which was similar to Project Runway, but for makeup and special effects artists. I think there were 5 or 6 seasons. Highly recommend.
That looks like so much fun. Definitely watching it..
There’s also a new show on Netflix called Making Fun. Not a competition, but a group of builders make crazy items imagined by kids. Example: a unicorn-bicycle that farts glitter. A T-Rex that drops tacos out of it’s mouth. It’s creative and feel-good. We really need more shows like these.
Other than Loni Love I’ve never heard of any of those “celebrity” judges. I guess I need to get out more. Anyway, I think those “Is it a cake?” videos are fun to watch on Facebook so this sounds like a cute show.
I knew almost none of these celebrities either–I think Rebecca Black is only known for that godawful “Friday” song that went viral like a decade ago. Bobby Moynihan was on SNL–he’s best known for his “Drunken Uncle” bit, though IMO he’s funnier in other sketches. Other than them the only one I’m familiar with is Heidi Gardner, also from SNL.
I did google King Princess, because that’s a hell of a name. She’s a singer/songwriter apparently.
I love Mikey Day’s energy on SNL and he seems like a truly nice guy from his interview on Seth Meyers, so I hope this is good!
Completely agree. Love him & I love cakes that look like things that are not cakes
I love the competitions on Food Network, especially the seasonal ones (Halloween, Christmas, etc.). I don’t watch Chopped because I have an irrational hatred for it, nor do I watch anything with punchable Bobby Flay.
I am all the way in on this one. Top Chef is my favorite, but this is going to be hilarious and also amazing.