I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised that the newly released second season of Netflix’s reality competition series Is It Cake? has rocketed up the US Top TV chart, where it currently sits in the #2 spot — behind only The Witcher.
The concept — people guess whether objects are real or in fact made of cake — is one of the dumbest in Netflix history, if you ask me. But nobody did, in fact, ask me, because Season 1 of Is It Cake? landed on Netflix’s Top 10 TV shows list in 75 different countries around the world when the show launched in March of last year, ultimately spending four weeks on the streamer’s Global Top 10 English TV list. So, of course, Netflix was going to serve us more cake.
Hosted by Saturday Night Live’s Mikey Day, the show brought on an all-new lineup of contestants and guest judges this time around for this competition that’s equal parts a baking show and a game show. This season’s Is It Cake? bakers include a former two-time Cake Wars champion, plus a baker who makes cakes for celebrities like DJ Khaled, as well as a woman who wrote a book on decorating hyperrealistic cakes.
In the words of the show’s host, they’re all the “Michael Jordans of baking cakes that look like everyday objects.”
Is It Cake, Too? The game
Here’s how the competition for the new season (styled as Is It Cake, Too?) works, per Netflix:
“Ten of the best hyperrealistic cake artists in the world will compete against each other to fool a group of judges and collect a cash prize. Each week, the contestants will first be tasked with identifying a cake among a group of objects (like a full-scale replica of Day’s college dorm room). Those who guess correctly will then move on to the main event, which will require them to create a cake that replicates everyday objects in just eight hours.”
Once they’re done with that baking project, a panel of celebrity judges will have 20 seconds to choose which cakes are real and which one is the visually identical decoy object. “Every episode, one baker who doesn’t trick the judges will be eliminated and one will be crowned the winner based on how good their bakes both taste and look. By the end of the season, the last baker standing will be crowned the Is It Cake, Too champion.”
Like I said … reeeeally dumb.
The judges and the prize
The guest judges this season include a ton of familiar faces — like Anna Camp, the D’Amelio sisters, Chloe Fineman, Chris Redd, Chrishell Stause, Flula Borg, Joel McHale, and Kate Flannery, to name just a few.
The top baker in each Is It Cake, Too? episode wins $5,000 and has the chance to take home an additional $5,000. If, that is, they can guess between a real bag of cash and one made out entirely of … wait for it … cake. If they’re wrong, the $5,000 gets added to the $75,000 final pot, and by the end of the season, the winner will collect their share of the total $120,000 prize.
