Sweet Deceit = Is it Cake? in reverse

Netflix’s Is it Cake? Halloween is back Friday, and it’s the same show as always: bakers attempting to fool celebrities with host Mikey Day chewing the scenery.

Food Network’s brand-new version of the hyper-realistic cake competition premiered last night (Mondays at 9), and it’s not just a lookalike copy.

Sweet Deceit: Trick or Treat flips the format by centering the guessers—three contestants trying to win $12,000—and not the bakers whose work is featured.

After 90 seconds of looking at objects on a table, three contestants choose the one they think is cake. But host Josh Peck (yep, from Drake and Josh) doesn’t get to wield a large knife and hack through objects.

Instead, the contestants have to bite down on the object they chose—whether it’s a leathery book or a lamp’s base. If they’re right, they get cash. If they’re wrong, they get to collect their shattered teeth and go on to the next challenge.

To avoid being a direct copy of Is it Cake? and/or to make the title work, Josh Peck and the contestants don’t say “Is it cake?” but “Is it sweet?”, referring to things as “a sweet” or “sweet.”

After the reveal, we see a quick segment of the baker and their team making the cake. This isn’t a how-to, but a quick demonstration of their artistry and choices.

Both of the first two bakers were on Is it Cake?: season one winner Andrew Fuller, aka Sugar Freakshow, and Jonny ‘JonnyCakes’ Manganello.

Others appearing this season are Liz Marek, who won Is it Cake? Holiday; April Julian, who was runner up to Fulleron on Is it Cake?; Jose Barajas, who worked behind the scenes on Is it Cake?; and Ashley Holt, who’s competed on several Food Network and Netflix shows.

Their work is truly impressive. Even when the exterior is sculpted, painted modeling chocolate and paint—not, you know, cake—the realism is wild.

Yet Is it Cake? and Sweet Deceit both have the same problem for me: the cake-seekers stand 1.5 miles away, while we get macro shots of the objects’ individual molecules. I exaggerate slightly! But the game is easier for us because we get a completely different POV.

Is it Cake? puts the cakes and not-cakes on pedestals in dim lighting far away from the celebrities trying to end the bakers’ games.

Sweet Deceit changes things up, using actual locations instead of a studio. The cake and not-cake objects are displayed in places like an escape room or an allegedly haunted house that’s actually a venue you can rent. (In the first two episodes, someone from production must have gotten a discount on cotton spider webs, because they’re on everything, everywhere.)

At first, I thought this meant there’d just be cake somewhere in the rooms, but no, the cakes/not-cakes are collected together, probably so the contestants won’t go around gumming props and tchotchkes.

The change in location means the guessers examine things from varying distances. Sometimes they’re farther away, while in the final challenge, the guesser gets to stand within arms’ length. The lighting is still dramatic and the zoom-ins give us a level of detail that human eyes might not see in the room.

Sweet Deceit: Trick or Treat will be followed by Sweet Deceit: Holiday, following the same formula as Is it Cake?, which is now a series of holiday specials.

The contestants are coached into a level of enthusiasm that I can best describe as “obnoxiously annoying,” but when they start guessing, they relax into their real personalities.

The cake artist is also in the room, there to give an optional hint and do some shit-talking, which is fun and/or charming.

“It doesn’t feel as good as I thought it would, but it still feels a little good,” Andrew says to contestants after they bite into some non-cake. And that’s what I thought about Sweet Deceit: a little bitter than Is it Cake?. But this is not a Bake-Off-level show that I’ll drop everything to wrap myself in, like a warm blanket of fondant.

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