When I’m watching Nailed It! on Netflix, I there’s always that little voice in the back of my head. If you’ve watched, you’ve probably heard it too. It can’t be that hard, it says. If you haven’t watched the show, the premise is that three amateur bakers try to bake and replicate an amazing dessert and whoever executes it best, a.k.a. whoever “nails it”, wins. After zooming through every season of the show on Netflix, I decided I wanted to try it for myself.
How bad could it be?
Setting up
I recruited three friends to bake with me: Kaitlyn, Lily, and Caitlin. Before the end of last semester, we watched the holiday-themed season of Nailed It! (we should’ve been studying for our exams). When I texted and asked if they’d be willing to bake with me for an article, I was met with extreme enthusiasm (thanks, ladies). Each of us brought something unique to the table:
Kaitlyn: Kaitlyn frequently makes banana bread. Once, she also made a banana bread tin out of tinfoil since she made the batter before realizing she had no pan. Coming in, we considered her a frontrunner.
Caitlin: Caitlin has made vegan pancakes (note: they weren’t supposed to be vegan; she forgot butter and eggs) and a carrot cake with vegan icing that melted out the sides when applied. In high school, she once turned a pair of Vans into a gator, which she feels has prepared her to make a cake pop.
Lily: Lily often acts as Kaitlyn’s baking assistant. She’s an artist, so she had strengths when it came to decorating. Going in, she had never made cake pops but had baked, so if there was going to be a catastrophe, it would only be a minor one.
Morgan: My two greatest baking achievements are watching seven seasons of Great British Bake-Off and filling homemade chocolate cupcakes with marshmallow fluff once. I think I may have been a baker in a past life, but many of my actual baking skills were lost in translation.
We wanted to keep things gator-themed, so when Lily stumbled across this picture on Pinterest, we knew we had to recreate these:
To make things easier, given the limitations of a dorm lounge, we premade two cakes and buttercream before starting our baking project.
Less than 15 minutes later…
We began with so much hope.
We split the two cakes, and each of us began crumbling them in paper bowls. At this point, we realized the true limitations of being college students and trying this – not having a blast freezer, not having big enough bowls, not having enough space. As Caitlin nearly elbowed me while mixing her cake, I tried to form my cake and buttercream into balls, which is harder than it looks. Much, much harder than it looks. Add more cake. More buttercream. Too much buttercream. Back to cake. Not enough cake. It went on like that for a while, a spiral that ended in cake crumbs all over the floor and buttercream smeared on our leggings.
Eventually, Lily, Caitlin, and I had two cake pops each. Kaitlyn had eight because she’s a show-off. We realized that they wouldn’t hold if they weren’t chilled, so we made a call.
Caitlin ran upstairs to put the cake pops in the freezer, and fifteen minutes were gone.
15 to 30 minutes along…
As our cake pops chilled in Caitlin’s freezer, we broke out the Rice Crispy Treats and fondant. Note: only Kaitlyn had ever used fondant before.
Lily opened it and poked it with a knife.
“It looks like Play-Dough,” she said, eating some. She wrinkled her nose. “Doesn’t taste much better.”
While everyone else started shaping gator heads, I turned my attention to the candy melts, which we would use to coat the cake pops. They needed to be melted, and that sounded easy enough. After all, I just had to stick them in the microwave, right?
Apparently not.
After a few 15-second intervals, my candy melts, instead of being smooth chocolate, were a congealed, green gloopy mess. Looking at them, I couldn’t believe I’d messed up something so simple. All I had to do was microwave them. I was starting to realize that maybe Nailed It! wasn’t as easy as it looked.
We shaped gator heads out of Rice Crispy Treats, and all of us seemed to have a handle on that, at least. This is fun, I thought. I can do this. The candy melts were a fluke.
With half an hour left, we got the cake pops from the freezer and began construction.
30 to 45 minutes along…
This is where the wheels came off.
It was becoming clear that Caitlin and I would not have two cake pops as ours crumbled, despite the time in the freezer. It was unclear if Kaitlyn would have one (she assured us that she would). Meanwhile, we all glared at Lily while she calmly covered Rice Crispy Treat gator heads in fondant. It looked like a cake had exploded in the lounge. “Africa” by Toto was playing in the background. I desperately tried to cover my second cake pop in chocolate, unaware of the chasm cracking at the top.
“Oh,” Kaitlyn said. “You’re going to lose it.”
My cake pop was crumbling in my hands.
Because I’m a dramatic person, I screamed as the cake fell from the stick into my hands. My masterpiece had become green, chocolate mush. I was distracted by my failure, but at that exact moment, Lily said, “Kaitlyn, WHAT are you doing?”
Kaitlyn was sticking her cake pop out the window to cool it.
That was when I lost it. I, quite literally, sat on the floor laughing with my cake pop’s remains still covering my hands. Caitlin and Lily were laughing, too, but Kaitlyn was confused.
“It needs to cool!” she kept saying.
“Can we just all make one cake pop?” I asked.
Thankfully, everyone agreed.
45 minutes to an hour along…
We changed the song from “Africa” to “Under Pressure” by Queen. We truly were under pressure. Fifteen minutes seems like a long time, but trust me, when there are Jackson Pollock-esque splatters of melted chocolate and cake debris everywhere, it is not.
With 10 minutes left, Caitlin’s cake pop was inching down the stick as she tried to attach the gator head. She tried to stop its descent with a butter knife and more chocolate (chocolate is always the answer). Kaitlyn had a variety of unassembled pieces and considered them with her head slightly tilted, like they were parts of an equation she needed to solve. Lily, of course, was adding details to her two cake pops (overachiever). I didn’t notice what type of details. I was busy being a disaster.
In that moment, I realized Nailed It! was much, much harder than it appeared onscreen, and they were baking in front of cameras. I was bumming it in the lounge with leggings and no makeup, and I still couldn’t produce a solid cake pop.
With five minutes left, though, I at least had something.
“You have to finish, Kaitlyn,” Caitlin said.
Kaitlyn groaned, “I’m getting there!”
With five minutes left, we watched her assemble her gator, with little Rice Crispy Treat arms covered in more fondant. The seconds ticked down, and while we didn’t have anyone holding us to a deadline, we wanted to be as official as possible.
The oven timer beeped, and Kaitlyn stepped back from the table.
All of us had one finished cake pop.
And the winner is…
Sadly, we lacked a Nicole and a Jacques, so we recruited Caitlin’s RA and two of his friends to judge our cake pops. These were the finished products:
After tasting each cake pop, our judges deliberated, and came back with a winner…
LILY!
I’ve never considered myself an arrogant person, especially when it comes to baking, but any confidence that I would do well on Nailed It! had vanished. Sitting on the floor with chocolate melting all over your hands humbles you as a person. I’ve lost all rights to make fun of those people. However, I had a ton of fun, and this was a cheap and low-key way to spend a Saturday night.
Now, we want to hear from you? Who do YOU think nailed it? Email us at ufl@hercampus.com with your Nailed It! winner, or message us on Instagram @HerCampusUFL.