Here's one of my guilty pleasures: watching Is It Cake?, a competition for hyper realistic cake artists who try to fool the judges with their art. It's a guilty pleasure because while I love to bake I can't eat cake because of all the sugar that's usually involved. All three seasons are presently available on Netflix, but I think season three is my favorite.
It's a fun show, and the usual cut-throat nastiness of competition productions is completely missing. I don't know if it's just the nature of cake artists, but the contestants are all supportive of each other and cheer each other on. Trying to guess what is cake and what isn't is insanely hard, too. I'm right only about half of the time. The combinations of cake, filling and icing are also amazing. In this season one of the contestants made a strawberry and fennel cake -- I would never have put those two flavors together, but everyone seemed to love it.
What I like most about the show is the inclusiveness; there are all shapes, sizes and colors of contestants, each with their own backstory. This season's cast included a Sikh young man from Canada and a Venezuelan native who immigrated to the US, and both were enormously talented and wonderful guys. Also, the winner is special to me for reasons I won't say because it will spoil the grand finale, but I was super happy about them winning. Anyway, if you want to watch something fun, try an episode.
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