Meet the Toronto lady whose hyperrealistic cakes fooled judges on Netflix.
April Julian, a Toronto baker, claims she is a terrible liar. But if she has access to the proper ingredients and a kitchen, she can easily mislead you with her hyper-realistic cakes.
Her unusual skill set was precisely what Netflix was searching for in its new program Is it Cake?, which launched Friday. Julian battled against other great bakers to make misleading desserts for a $50,000 reward.
Julian stated on CBC Radio’s Metro Morning that “The thing about cakes that look like cakes, they’re actually, to me, harder to make than hyper-realistic ones because they have to be so perfect.”
“Real life is imperfect, and that’s a lot easier to mimic.”
The Filipino-Canadian began hyper-realistic cake decorating after being requested to construct a running shoe cake. She’s since joined the online fad of deceiving viewers into believing she’s cutting actual items that turn out to be cakes.
Julian has a little creative history beyond high school art. She studies cake reference photographs extensively.
Julian stated “It’s mostly just experimenting, playing with different materials, and figuring out what medium works best for what application,” “It’s really just trial and error.”
Her chicken wing and running shoe cakes have a high shock value, she explains.
“It’s a real range of reactions people cringe, people are angry, people are obviously delighted about the surprise,” said Julian. “I don’t know what it is. It’s just there’s so many cool details to mimic.”
The baker has accumulated thousands of views and likes on TikTok, but she’s baffled as to how Netflix discovered her before she became popular on social media.
Julian, who also serves as the Canadian Civil Liberties Association’s director of education, said, “This is a question that still evades me.” “[It was] just this random thing that came into my inbox that I immediately thought was a phishing scam, and it just turned out to be the real deal.”
Since she cannot eat all of her cakes by herself, many of her desserts are given to customers, as well as friends and family who are delighted to take her newest creations off her hands.
As a tribute to her culture, she’ll create a dish from a prominent Filipino fast-food business.
“I’d love to make a fast food cake mimicking some fried chicken from Jollibee that’d be great.”
