TV • PAGE 21
THE BULLETIN • JANUARY 7 - 13, 2021
Natalie Sideserf
BY GEORGE DICKIE
Designers immortalize
celebrities in cake on
‘Cakealikes’
Those who like their cake-design contests
with a side of pop culture will want to check
out one of the charter series on the new
streaming service Discovery+
In “Cakealikes,” three teams of cake artists
are tasked with creating realistic, life-size cake
replicas of celebrities such as Lady Gaga, Kim
Kardashian or RuPaul at different points
in their life, so one might be a current-day
likeness while another might have a 1990s
style. The winner, as determined by Tregaye
Fraser (“Tregaye’s Way”), Natalie Sideserf
(“Texas Cake House”), YouTube performer
Kalen Allen and a rotating panel of judges,
receives a $10,000 grand prize and a one-of-
a-kind celebrlty souvenir.
“There’s a lot of ways that you can
approach making a realistic human cake,”
says Sideserf, a cake artist who owns and
operates Sideserf Cake Studio in Austin,
Texas, “and I like to see how innovative they
are. Are they capturing certain textures like
a sweater texture versus maybe like a leather
texture? And how can they replicate that
using an edible material? So I’m definitely
looking for those details, and then of course
the likeness of the person. I always hope that
the cake ends up looking as close to the real
person as possible.”
And that starts with the materials used. The
three teams start with a welded metal frame
in the shape of the celebrity’s pose and then
add platforms as needed. The artists can use
any edible material they see fit, like chocolate
ganache or buttercream frosting, though each
has their advantages and disadvantages.
“A lot of (artists) are using chocolate
ganache for the outside in place of
buttercream, which is going to be more
firm,” Sideserf explains. “Some of them don’t,
and then you never know how that’s going
to turn out. But a big thing that I use on the
outside of my cakes to sculpt them and make
them look realistic is modeling chocolate
rather than something like marzipan or
fondant. Modeling chocolate is more like an
edible clay so you can blend it really easily.
It’s a really, really great material to use, so I
notice that some of the teams will use that.”
And then, of course, there is some good,
old-fashioned outside-the-box thinking, such
as one team’s idea for recreating the shine on
a dress made from a flashy material.
“They actually used oil ...,” Sideserf says.
“It was a speedy option and when you’re
competing you have to be very quick. But it
also really created an effect that looks super-
realistic, like a shiny texture. ... And it was
just like, hey, that’s edible. It totally works.”
BY GEORGE DICKIE
Michael Chiklis
OF ‘COYOTE’
ON CBS ALL ACCESS
What kind of research did you do to play a retired U.S. Border Patrol
agent in “Coyote”?
WebLinks
Continuing on after the death of their
beloved team leader Trapper, Huck-
leberry and the AIMS team head out
on a special mission in West Virginia’s
Tygart Valley on one of their wildest
adventures yet when Season 5 of
“Mountain Monsters” opens Sunday
on Travel Channel. Watch full episodes
at www.travelchannel.com/shows/
mountain-monsters
With help from other designers, Ty
Pennington helps conflicted homeown-
ers decide whether to overhaul their
current home or renovate a different
property to suit their needs in the new
series “Ty Breaker,” debuting Monday
on HGTV. Find out more about what
the famous host and designer has
been up to at typennington.com
We talked to a lot of different people. I mean, we had one of the top
investigative journalists from down in Mexico City. ... But we had people and
voices from both sides of the border explaining people’s points of view, what
they were like on the ground. And we had a border patrol agent who was our
technical adviser on set and he obviously talked to us about not just the protocols
and the practical aspects of things but also the viewpoints, what kind of pressure
that they’ve gone through and the difficulties of the job that they face.
And then we talked to folks in Mexico – over 85 percent of our crew is
Mexican, South and Central American and half the writing staff is Mexican,
South and Central American. So we were very keen to say, “Look, when
we’re telling this part of the story or that part of the story, if something
doesn’t ring true, if something feels false to you, jump on it. Tell us.” ...
We really also wanted to go down there and be at the border. I mean,
it’s extraordinary that in 2020, we shot those sequences on the Mexican-
American border and had six lanes of the border locked up.
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