Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Is It Cake, Too?’ on Netflix, A Second Season Of The Most Deceptive Cooking Show On TV

When Is It Cake? premiered on Netflix in 2022, the premise seemed simple and silly enough: a group of skilled bakers baked cakes intended to look like real-life objects in order to fool a panel of judges. The second season, dubbed Is It Cake, Too? features the same premise, with a more substantial grand prize, even more celebrity guest judges, and another batch of incredibly talented bakers who cause some delicious deception.

IS IT CAKE, TOO?: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Host Mikey Day sits on a couch on a set made up to look like a living room. “In 2022, millions of people sat in rooms like this and questioned their reality. Is this cake? Is that cake? Am I cake?” he asks, before grabbing a knife and cutting his hand off at the wrist to reveal that his hand is actually cake.

The Gist: Ten bakers who specialize in maker hyper-realistic cakes (“The Michael Jordans of baking cakes that look like everyday objects,” Day calls them) assemble to compete and see which of them can create the most deceptive, most realistic-looking cakes and trick a panel of celebrity judges in the process. Over the course of eight episodes, the baker with the most successful track record for cake-trickery will win a prize of $120,000.

To kick off the episode, Day tells the ten bakers that in order to even be able to compete in this episode, they will have to win a non-baking challenge. The bakers have to identify – from a distance – what objects in the living room Day was just sitting in are made of cake. The first five bakers to correctly identify an object made of cake will get to compete, and the fun in this is watching how incredulous even these bakers are when they’re shown some masterful cakes make to look like flower vases and candles.

The five contestants who are competing in this episode are Liz, Danya, Corterrius, Jarid, and Miko, and they have a whopping ten hours to bake anything they want. There are no parameters in this challenge, but the one catch is that they only have one decoy to use for the judges to decide which object is real or not. (Usually the bakers get two decoys.)

The judges for this first episode are Chrishell Stause from Selling Sunset, Workaholics star Blake Anderson, and comedian Maz Jobrani, and they’re tasked with determining whose cake looks the most realistic. Each of the contestants has done an impressive job, and Liz, who made a dungeness crab, and Danya, who made a plush slipper, fooled the judges. Miko, who made a basket of mangoes, Jarid, who made a pot and vegetables, and Corterrius who made a plate of Sunday supper, did not convince the judges. After a taste test, Liz is declared the winner, while Jarid was eliminated. It hardly seems fair since each cake was highly impressive, but alas, these are the stakes of Is It Cake?

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? There’s an aspect of Nailed It! to the show, given the way the contestants are trying to replicate something intricate and elaborate, but unlike Nailed It! the competition here weeds out the best of the best bakers, not the best of the worst.

Our Take: Is It Cake, Too? is still the same fun show it was in its first season, and a lot of the fun relies on the competence of the competitors, who are truly a talented bunch this season. There’s rarely a moment where you worry, as a viewer, that someone is going to fail because they have no idea what they’re doing, instead, the excitement comes from just how skilled these bakers are. It’s like watching a Top Chef finale, in that it feels unfair to send home any talented chef who has put their best foot forward and made something impressive. But alas, that’s the point of an elimination show. Throughout this episode, as we watched Miko, Coreterrius and Jarid create their cakes, their fellow competitors seemed wowed by their skills. Ultimately, the fact that they were on the bottom was as much a matter of chance (the judges appeared split on how to vote for each of them) as much as a matter of skill.

Is It Cake, Too? is successful sophomore season of a show that easily could have been a dud with less talented bakers. Instead, it’s worth watching thanks to the fact that it respectfully showcases a group of people with a very particular set of skills who seem to love what they do.

Parting Shot: Day invites the remaining five contestants to the floor and exclaims,”When this cake wall turns around again, you all are going to the gym!” They holler and cheer as he jogs around the set, and I guess that means we’ll be eating some cake kettlebells next time!

Sleeper Star: The first episode sets up contestant Liz Marek as one to watch, as she has her own web series and has written cookbooks about baking realistic cakes. She is revered by many of her competitors, but she also offers her expert advice to them, which adds an interesting dynamic to the show.

Most Pilot-y Line: Not to be too on the nose, but the show’s catchphrase is “Is it cake??” so it wouldn’t be right to ignore that constant refrain throughout.

Our Take: STREAM IT! Is It Cake, Too? is like The Great British Baking Show if that show only involved showstoppers. On top of all of the cakes that actually look delicious to eat, the skill and precision the bakers show to replicate real objects is masterful and impressive to watch.

Liz Kocan is a pop culture writer living in Massachusetts. Her biggest claim to fame is the time she won on the game show Chain Reaction.