Netflix’s Nailed It! has become an instant hit, not for its baking masterpieces but rather for its baking fails.
The Netflix original series, hosted by comedian Nicole Byer and baker Jacques Torres, features home hobby bakers who take on the task of recreating generous edible masterpieces for a $10,000 prize. All of the competitors know how to bake, but they are nowhere near ready to create the elaborate masterpieces that the competition requires.
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From detailed cupcakes and cookies to a working volcano creation or Donald Trump cake, contestants’ skills — or lack of — are put to the test in the hilarious cooking reality series, each time with disastrous results.
Keep scrolling to see some of the best baking fails.
Trump Cake
If Kymberli Talton’s cake is any indication of how Donald Trump’s presidency will affect him, it is not going to be pretty.
In a cake that will “haunt her dreams,” Talton created a nightmarish figure of President Trump. Ramen noodles for hair is scary enough, but his slimmed down face, raised eyebrows, hollow and red eyes make it even scarier. Talton said her decision to use red paint around the eyes was an effort to give viewers “the real deal.”
Face Cookie
Contestant Kymberli Talton’s attempt to recreate her own face in cookie form is perhaps one of the most hilarious, and maybe even cringeworthy, baking fails on the Netflix series.
Talton’s problems started when she chose to bake a whole slab of cookie dough in the oven instead of first cutting it into the desired shape. The large amount of cookie dough meant a longer baking time, which likewise meant that Talton wouldn’t have time to decorate.
Quick on her feet and using ingenuity, Talton painted the icing and then placed it on the cookie afterward, resulting in an abstract version of her own face.
Cheesy Self-Portrait
The face cookie proved to be difficult for fashion designer Anabell Pica, whose cookie design was nothing to be envious of.
Pica made a great effort to perfectly shape her cookie before putting in the oven, but she made it too big. Things only got worse from there. Instead of using royal icing to paint her face, like the original cookie and the recipe called for, Pica opted to head to the pantry. The result? A cookie with fondant for hair and Spicy Cheetos for lips.
Ingenuities? Yes. Delicious? No.
Kissing Emoji Cake
Contestant Dana Moon, a woman who was very vocal about being single, channeled her inner Picasso when she recreated a kiss emoji cake.
Instead of using brightly colored yellow fondant to cover the cake, Moon opted to use brightly colored buttercream. In and of itself, her route would not have been a bad option, but she put the buttercream on before the cake had a chance to cool, resulting in a melting emoji cake.
Pirate Donut
In her attempt to create a jelly-filled pirate donut, contestant Amanda Giles created a mess instead.
Trouble first arose when she attempted to make a hole in the donut that wasn’t meant to have a hole, but that turned out to be the least of her problems. Giles had a battle with the microwave, unable to figure out how it worked. She ended the challenge with ore black food coloring on her hands than on the extra-large round donuts she had made.
Princess in a Tower Cake
A knight in shining armor will likely bypass Toni Bryant’s princess in a tower.
With large beady eyes, a mouth that almost looks as though it is stitched on, and hair that looks like play doh, Bryant’s fail at recreating a princess in a tower was nightmarish. Her princess was the least scary part of the fail, though. The dragon’s head was decapitated and the tower looked like anything but a tower from a child’s fairytale.
Hot Tub Cake
As a retired police officer, Sal Venturelli always follows the law, though he had a difficult time following the recipe. In fact, he never even turned on his tablet to look at the recipe, deciding to wing it as he made an animal mud bath hot tub cake.
His failure to follow the recipe resulted in him severely burning the chocolate that was meant for the ganache, not using buttercream to help the wafers around the outside of the cake stay, and having an elephant that looked as though it was made from cement rather than fondant.
Shark Cake
Nailed It!‘s saw competitors making an open-mouthed shark cake, but Maaz Ahmad’s cake didn’t make the cut.
While Ahmad managed to get the shape of the shark and the color of its skin, along with plenty of blood and a surfboard, his sharks teeth were lying flat on top of each other instead of sticking out and sharp, making it not as dangerous. It was also impossible not to notice the way in which his cake was leaning. Ahmad had put stakes into the cake to help it stand upright, but as master baker Jacques Torres pointed out, without rice crispy treats at the bottom of the cake, there was nothing to hold the stakes.
Ahmad named his shark Leonardo, “because he’s leaning like the Tower of Pisa.”
Volcano Cake
Megan Swanson’s volcano cake caused the judges to erupt in laughter.
Swanson’s problems arose when she failed to carve the layers of her cake and instead used mass amounts of buttercream frosting to fill the steps between layers and give the volcano structure. She also had issues sculpting dinosaurs, which host Nicole Byer said looked more like poodles.
She did get creative and use broken up pretzels for sand and even created a narrative with her cake when she had a burnt palm tree with lava on it.
