Never Let Me Bake Cake Again Meme

Interview

Do the 'Is Information technology Cake?' Cakes Actually Gustation Good?

And all your other fondant-covered questions answered.

By Olivia Harrison March 18, 2022

Equally a blistering competition show with a championship that is a question itself, Is It Block? unsurprisingly piques a lot of curiosity. Betwixt salivating over all the realistic creations, continuing with your face up one inch away from your Idiot box set and tearing up over the wholesomeness of the contestants' bonds, you lot may observe yourself asking a lot of questions while watching the new serial — questions across only "Is that really cake?" We enlisted 1 of the show's executive producers, Dan Cutforth, to help stave off your hunger for answers. Here, Cutforth shares the inspiration behind the show's concept, how the iconic cake wall works and even where that gold kitchen utensil throne is now.

Tell us almost how the concept of the show came about. Was it actually inspired by the Is It Block? memes that blew up in July 2020? That'southward exactly how it came about. Like anybody else, we were seeing those social media posts and were entertained by them. Then we literally brainstormed the show. On the very start call, Jenn Levy [VP, Nonfiction at Netflix] just loved it, and next thing you know, we're doing the prove. So, it came together incredibly quickly and unusually so.

What was it well-nigh those Is It Cake? memes that really grabbed you and fabricated y'all think they could be translated into a show? We've done a lot of cooking and baking shows over the years, and this hitting a lot of what tends to work about those kinds of shows, specially baking. It'due south very visual and information technology requires a cracking bargain of accuracy — a stressful corporeality of accuracy. All of that together feels like a expert basis for competition. Having also had the feel of creating Nailed It!, which came almost through very similar inspiration, we knew that something like a grabby social media phenomenon, if you can build the format in the right way, tin interpret really, really well.

How did you become well-nigh finding contestants? Did you lot search via social media? Baking has become a huge thing on social media, so that was an easy place to offset. Likewise, over the final few years — as there'south been a blistering nail in this country, probably the last 10 years — there are then many local businesses. There are a lot of people around the land that are making a great living baking hyperrealistic cakes. So yeah, it was non that difficult to discover people who were really practiced at it.

Patrick Wymore/Netflix

Who broiled all the cakes that weren't fabricated by the contestants, and were those cakes actually edible? Were they eaten later they were used? We accept an exceptionally talented culinary team. Monika Stout is the cake artist who creates the hero cakes for us. There are basically 3 rounds of competition, and our contestants only make the cakes in the heart round. What I love near this show well-nigh of all is that the audition really can play along. They get to play the same game every bit the bakers in the first and last rounds. Then they become to play the same game every bit the judges in the centre rounds when the bakers are trying to fool the judges.

Monika made what we call the hero cakes for round one and the cash cakes for the terminal round, and she headed upward an incredible team of bakers. They had what nosotros chosen "the cake lab." It did feel like a mad scientist's lab, where you would walk in and someone would exist painstakingly carving a piggy bank or a shoe or something like that with the real i alongside information technology and experimenting with edible money and all of these kinds of things.

It was always very important to us that each cake not just be some model that someone makes out of food ingredients, but that information technology really be something edible. Then, every cake that was fabricated on the bear witness could be eaten. Some of them, I volition say, you'd accept to excavate through a pretty thick layer of modeling chocolate to get to the cake.

In terms of what happened to the cakes afterwards, of the ones that were non eaten past judges, those cakes got pretty well hacked up with swords and machetes and really sharp knives. And then, there wasn't that much left to them.

Did Mikey Day enjoy stabbing all those cakes? It looked then satisfying. It was one of the most fun elements of the bear witness. Nosotros very quickly realized Mikey needs to be trained on cutting cakes considering it'due south not like shooting fish in a barrel to cut a cake in a way that maximizes how it looks on camera. So, we had unlike techniques depending on the shape of the block. "Cut and spread" was one of them. "Slice and flop" was another. There were all these different expressions we had for how you had to cut the cake to maximize how it would look on TV.

Mikey is then amazing. He's so effortlessly funny and improvisational. He besides has this fascinating, big-kid free energy. It doesn't experience juvenile, but he has this sense of enthusiasm, awe and wonder, and he loved it. I think that doing SNL is very long hours and stressful and intense, and he loved the fun that he got to accept on set every twenty-four hours with this. We're non changing the world here. Nosotros're just making some cakes that look like other things.

Well, speaking of the long hours of SNL , it did seem like the blistering times for contestants to make their cakes were really long, similar eight to 12 hours. What did the other contestants who weren't competing do during that time? For the nigh part, the other bakers were sitting there. So, that kind of served ii purposes. It created this sort of fun Greek chorus/peanut gallery of people commenting on what's going on. Also, not everyone got to compete in every episode, so some of the bakers had to watch 3 episodes go downwards before they got to get in there themselves. But in the process, they were figuring out what tactics they would want to employ. They got to watch the mistakes that other people made, potentially, and they got a chance to really effigy out the game.

How does the block wall work? Information technology served a applied purpose because the longer y'all tin can stare at a display where one of the things is a block, the easier it is to figure out which one it is. So, we wanted to take a device that would create an exciting reveal and exist a moment where you could be like, "Okay, now become." The cake wall was keen for that. The cake wall, essentially, is built on a turntable. At that place'southward a wall in the center of a circular turntable, and what happens is you lot build upwardly the displays backside the wall, flip the wall around, and and then flip information technology away again to replace information technology with a new brandish. That'southward the theory of information technology.

In reality, there were a few quirks to it. In order to lite information technology, we had to have cables that wrapped effectually the turntables. So, you couldn't go on spinning it in the same direction or all the cables would snap. And then off camera, we had to spin the wall back at certain points. The other matter that'southward kind of funny about it is we would have Mikey come effectually on the cake wall, but really, it really starts with a jolt a bit similar when a bus or subway machine takes off. You actually have to hold on to something when the turntable starts or it can get a little chip hairy. We had to be super careful about making sure that it didn't knock over the cakes or anything like that when the turntable came effectually.

It but became this funny signature, slightly retro game-show element of the show. It was all part of the fun, silly tone of the show. In i moment, it's a game testify, and in another, information technology's a cooking show. This is the kind of stuff that people may non even pick upward on, but nosotros really tried to set it upward and so that when it'southward fourth dimension to melt, the lighting weather of the whole set totally change and it's more like what you'd expect to run into in a cooking testify with white low-cal so that the bakers could work. And so, when it gets to the game-show part, the lighting changes again and becomes more than dramatic, and that also serves to arrive slightly harder for anyone to discern which are the cakes.

Patrick Wymore/Netflix

How did y'all figure out how far away the judges needed to stand from the cakes and decoys in order to make the judging fair? We had to sort of effigy that out in the first episode. We did a few tests in test studios, simply yous tin can't really replicate the conditions of the studio until yous have the studio, and we didn't take it lit until the twenty-four hours earlier the first mean solar day of shooting. The get-go day of shooting, we had to make our determination of how far away they were going to be then you lot only cross your fingers that you've got it right. I've been doing this for a long fourth dimension, and it was one of the well-nigh nerve-racking days I've had on set ever. One of the things we had said to ourselves is, "What if the judges are never fooled and the testify just doesn't piece of work?" We don't know. And at that place are different judges every time. We just don't know. Then we got to a different stage, and we felt like, "Have we made this too hard?" And yous can brand yourself crazy.

How did yous come with the episode themes? Nosotros came up with the themes based on the kinds of things that nosotros thought would make good cakes. We didn't want to do something that would be impossible — nosotros couldn't do an aquarium total of fish or something like that. They had to exist real-life objects that are graphic enough or have the correct sort of cease. We likewise only wanted the themes to be super relatable. Nosotros wanted these to be things that people see every twenty-four hours, not obscure things where it would be difficult to know what it actually would await similar.

Who was in charge of sourcing all decoys? We take a actually amazing art department on this show, as evidenced by the Game of Thrones chair they made. They knew what all the decoys were going to be. So, imagine the start round where, let's say, the theme is things that you buy in a department shop. The fine art section has all kinds of unlike clothes and leather appurtenances, all these sorts of things. And then the bakers had to pick one thing to make into a cake, and our art department had to find all the other things that expect like they might exist fabricated out of cake, which is a skill in and of itself. So, our art department had to be ready. If someone wanted to brand a pile of sweaters, so they had to accept all these piles of sweaters gear up to go. There was a warehouse total of all that stuff.

Since you mentioned information technology, where is that Game of Thrones –inspired kitchen utensil throne now? That's an excellent question. I have a feeling information technology might be in our office. Because of COVID, nosotros don't go into our office very much anymore, but I think it might exist over there. Or information technology may just be in storage, waiting for Season 2. I must say that did kind of blow my heed a flake when I saw it. TV almost doesn't practice justice to how incredible that prop is.

Concluding question: Is this interview cake? Let'southward observe out!

This interview was edited and condensed for length and clarity.

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Source: https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/is-it-cake-meme-contestants-can-you-eat

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