‘Crime Scene Kitchen’ Is the Baking Show I Didn’t Know I Wanted

It really doesn’t seem profitable that Fox would create a show for me and me alone, and yet it has. That show? Crime Scene Kitchen. One episode in the baking competition gem has already started to correct an oversight prevalent in this entire television genre. In Crime Scene Kitchen, baking isn’t an art so obscure it feels like magic. It’s cold, hard, sugary science.

Crime Scene Kitchen is Fox’s latest installment in the network’s always out-there reality lineup. Someone baked a mystery dessert in the show’s kitchen and left behind a mess. That collection of cracked eggs, pastry creme, and pie tins are the “crime scene.” Teams of bakers are then given the opportunity to investigate that baking residue and sent to bake. The teams who correctly guess and recreate the dessert are safe. The rest are judged by celebrity judge Curtis Stone and cake artist Yolanda Gampp on the taste, presentation, and execution of their incorrect sweet treats. As convoluted as this premise sounds, what’s on the line is anything but silly. The winning team will take home $100,000 and the knowledge that they’re the best investigative bakers around.

As host Joel McHale acknowledges in the series first episode, combining a baking competition with the gravity of an active crime scene is a patently insane idea. No one listens to a murder podcast and immediately thinks: “cake.” And yet it’s that very juxtaposition between serious and sweet that makes Crime Scene Kitchen such an addicting and realistic show.

That’s because the very concept of baking is deceptive. Baking’s very existence points to frivolity. No one in the history of the universe has ever needed a cake. They may have wanted one very much, sure, but baked goods covered in sugar and molding chocolate are never a need. How nonessential baking is has always battled against its lack of forgiveness. More than anything else in the kitchen, baking is a science. Beat fudge too intensely and it will turn into a dull, cracked mess. Don’t beat it enough and it will never set no matter how long it sits in the fridge. Baking is full of these strict rules, unspoken laws that can cost you an entire afternoon of work and a lot of money if you miss even one step. Crime Scene Kitchen understands baking’s strict adherence to order, and capitalizes on that obsession, while never forgetting to keep things light.

It’s through its focus on exactness that Crime Scene Kitchen differs from other baking competition shows. Obviously shows like The Great British Bake Off and Cake Wars are lovely to watch. The Great British Bake Off in particular has delighted countless fans while making Americans ask why our reality shows are so very mean. But there’s a degree of mythicism involved in them as well as most baking shows. Masterful desserts seem to appear out of thin air, perfectly frosted and expertly filled. That’s never the case in Crime Scene Kitchen. Because it’s essential for these teams to work through clues before deciding what they need to bake, the show actually explains the endless processes essential to a successful bakery. In seconds a contestant will rattle off to their teammate all the differences between American buttercream and Swiss meringue buttercream while trying to decide which one is correct. Just listening is impressive. It’s also a level of precision that could never be achieved if we were talking about an investigative cooking show.

For too long television has presented baking as the sweeter, less important little sister to cooking. Cooking competitions are allowed to be serious and severe. You expect cursing and too-intense stakes on Top Chef and Iron Chef. But Crime Scene Kitchen makes an excellent argument that our collective reverence has been misplaced. As someone who has been reduced to tears over a cake layer that fell mid bake or a frosting that never tasted quite right, that’s validating. Anyone can Ratatouille a sauce into being palatable. Knowing how to alchemize a group of random ingredients into something you know will be delicious two hours later takes patience, precision, a great sense of taste, and a shockingly great memory for obscure rules. As fun as baking is it’s about time we also realized how impressive it can be.

Where to stream Crime Scene Kitchen