Is it cake?
There was a time when that would have been a rather strange question to ask when looking at a shoe, telephone, plant or just about anything else that very clearly wasn’t supposed to be dessert. Yet hyperrealistic cakes have turned that question into an entire entertainment genre, as incredibly talented bakers continue to make us question whether practically anything around us might secretly be edible.
Now Food Network is getting in on the deception, and this time simply looking isn’t going to be enough.
As first exclusively reported by Variety, Josh Peck is set to host “Sweet Deceit,” a new competition series premiering October 5 on Food Network. The series takes the familiar idea of hiding hyperrealistic cakes in plain sight and adds one rather important rule for contestants trying to determine which objects are actually dessert: they have to take a bite.
Hopefully they choose wisely.
“Sweet Deceit” follows teams of three competitors across four increasingly difficult rounds as they encounter edible illusions created by cake artists and attempt to distinguish the sweets from the very real objects surrounding them. Unlike Netflix’s “Is It Cake?,” however, the competition leaves the studio behind and takes the deception into real-world locations.
Once a team thinks it has uncovered the cake, there is only one way to prove it. Contestants quite literally have to sink their teeth into their best guess, putting considerably more pressure behind a decision than simply pointing at an object from across the room. Teams will be competing for a total prize of up to $12,000.
The first season will be divided into two themed batches, beginning at perhaps the perfect time of year for a show built around tricks.
“Sweet Deceit: Trick or Treat” begins October 5 at 10 p.m. ET with eight Halloween-themed episodes. The competition will visit locations including haunted houses, a sinister movie-set morgue, a kindergarten Halloween party and even the Magic Castle, giving cake artists plenty of opportunities to hide something sweet among settings already designed to deceive the eye.
Once Halloween is behind us, the deception gets considerably more festive. “Sweet Deceit: Holiday” premieres November 16 at 9 p.m. ET with another eight episodes taking the competition to locations including a cozy cabin, ice rink and Santa’s workshop.
Peck will be joined throughout the season by a rotating lineup of cake artists specializing in edible illusions, including Jose Barajas, Jonny “Jonny Cakes” Manganello, Andrew Fuller, Ashley Holt, April Julian and Liz Marek. Their job is essentially to make something delicious look so convincingly ordinary that contestants risk trying to bite the wrong thing.
Which might be the most entertaining part of the entire idea.
Hyperrealistic cakes have spent years becoming a strangely mesmerizing corner of food entertainment and social media, largely because there is something incredibly satisfying about watching an ordinary object suddenly reveal layers of cake underneath. “Sweet Deceit” takes that fascination and turns the audience’s favorite question into something considerably more consequential.
After all, it is easy to sit at home and yell that you absolutely know which one is cake.
It is another matter entirely when you have to bite it.
“Sweet Deceit” premieres with back-to-back episodes October 5 at 10 p.m. ET on Food Network and will stream the following day on HBO Max.