The Big Picture
Whether your skills are beginner or advanced, The Big Nailed It! Baking Challenge has something to offer this holiday season. Watching the novice bakers learn new skills on this recent spin-off from Netflix’s popular Nailed It! franchise can help you gain confidence and inspiration for your baking efforts this holiday season. In each episode, the contestants upgrade their entry-level baking skills through lessons from experts that they then apply to the Big Cake Bake. Pick up tips and tricks with the contestants along the way, from fillings and frostings, to sculpting cake and chocolate, and molding fondant. Apply what you learn to your holiday treats and improve your current repertoire with recipes ranging from fillings for sculptural layered cakes, cupcake sheet cakes, or sugar cookies and chocolate molding techniques. If your favorite holiday movie is Grinch related, keep the delicious results from what you learn all to yourself. Or if you are in an entertaining mood, create a jaw-dropping sculptural design to impress in-laws and other out-of-towners.
While The Big Nailed It! Baking Challenge isn’t necessarily holiday-themed, it makes great viewing during the run-up to your festivities this winter. It is perfect to watch alone on the couch if you just want to get some ideas for your holiday treat planning, or to throw on for easy background viewing while entertaining guests during the festive season. The upbeat energy of host Nicole Byer and her saccharine excitability promises to keep everyone entertained along the way. The Big Nailed It! Baking Challenge has all the high-stakes elements that you would expect from a cooking competition series with a $100,000 prize at stake. The spin-off from Nailed It! is also experimental in format, and includes hectic challenges and a supermarket sweep-style exit for the eliminated competitor each episode. The chaotic elements in each episode promise to provide viewers with something a little different compared to other, more sedate, baking shows.
Episodes Challenge Contests To Upgrade Their Skills
Each episode of The Big Nailed It! Baking Challenge contains a Baking 101 lesson during which the contestants get to upgrade their skills before taking on the Big Cake Bake for the final challenge. During each lesson, the contestants learn a new or developing skill from the series’ cast of experts: Chocolatier and Pastry Expert Jacques Torres, Baking Expert Erin Jeanne McDowell, and Cake Artist Robert Lucas. Most episodes also feature a guest judge who is usually a comedic personality from the entertainment industry who contributes their own unique energy to the final Big Cake Bake judgment.
EPISODE
LESSON
BIG CAKE BAKE
GUEST JUDGE
1.Baking 101
Cake stacking & frosting
Two-sided cake: business in the front, party in the back, surprise in the middle!
Ron Funches
2.Fruit Follies
Sheet cake makeover & cake fillings
Create a stacked “fruit” cake with fondant and fruit filling
Vanessa Bayer
3.Fondant Fails
Condition, roll out, and drape fondant
Confront your fondant fears and create either a “cake-roach” or a diabolical dentist cake
Patton Oswalt
4.Piping Perfection
Decorate a cupcake garden using a piping bag
Create a big-top themed stacked circus cake
n/a
5.Ya Not Done!
Sugar cookies
Continue to build the stacked circus cakes by adding a really tall tiered center cake (team challenge)
Bobby Moynihan
6.Bakers Blast Off
Chocolate cupcakes & airbrushing
Create an edible rocket cake
London Hughes
7.Defying Gravity
Advanced armature modeling & cake carving
Create a gravity defying dinner-themed cake
Casey Wilson
8.Professor Chocolate
Temper and mold chocolate
Create a chocolate cake tower featuring chocolate straws, chocolate mosaic, and other chocolate adornments
Angela Kinsey
9.Second Chances
Sculpt a detailed doughnut boulder and figurine
Re-do the initial two-sided cake challenge applying all the lessons from the season
Alyse Whitney
10.Finale
Sit down with experts to plan final cake design
To earn the final cash prize, create a cake of your own design that also features two treats
Jack McBrayer
The Show Allows For Grinchy Solo Viewing
If your favorite festive activity is curling up on the couch with a peppermint-themed beverage and ignoring the weather outside, The Big Nailed It! Baking Challenge is the perfect holiday viewing for your Grinchy heart. Grab a notebook and your favorite writing utensil to jot down recipes and ideas for your next personal baking challenge. Since the series is a competition for a $100,000 prize, you are also guaranteed to see moments of petty frustrations vented between the contestants to add to your Grinchy pleasure. These juicy conflicts are a staple in many reality competition series that take the contestants out of their home environments and contain them on a television set with different personalities over time – similar to Netflix’s Baking Impossible or Bravo’s Top Chef.
Such shows inevitably feature moments of friction between contestants for our twisted entertainment. To bring your pettiness up an extra Grinch level, take photos of your gorgeous creations and share them on social media to revel in the admiration of friends and family as you enjoy your baked treats all by yourself! But be warned, such attention has been known to cause a greater understanding of the holiday spirit. Prepare for a growth in heart capacity of up to three sizes!
Aim to Entertain This Holiday Season
If entertaining is the activity that fills your heart with festive joy, you can utilize your new skills to impress co-workers at your office party or when you invite out-of-towners over this holiday season. The up-tempo rhythm of the series, with its surprise challenges and guest judges switching up the energy each episode, also makes it a perfect background show to play while guests chat and mingle over your beautiful baked holiday treats. The competitors’ outrageous flops and fails featured throughout the series will be great conversation prompts if the festive energy ever dips below freezing. And if you are the type to learn from watching the mistakes of others, you’ll be able to help explain how to achieve some of the more complex designs to your guests. Become the baking expert in your social circle by watching The Big Nailed It! Baking Challenge this holiday season.
The first season of The Big Nailed It! Baking Challenge is available on Netflix.
Watch On Netflix
