Hello everyone, it is I, your Feisty Indian Aunty who just binge watched Baking Impossible on Netflix and was shocked (shocked!) to discover that I had to wait a whole week before being able to watch the final two episodes. What happened to giving us all the episodes at once Netflix?
Confession time. The last time I baked was about 30 years ago. My children were still kids. I think I might have made a cake for a birthday or two. I haven’t gone near an oven since. Despite my complete lack of interest in cooking, I have always been a great fan of any show that involves people working with their hands, be it cooking, baking, glass blowing, crazy house renovations – name it and I will watch with great gusto. I love watching people working and creating stunning objects. Such still and expertise has always fascinated me.
Baking impossible was crazy. Baking AND engineering? Soft dough and hard steel, put together to create ridiculously outlandish constructions, only to see it destroyed. Why? It feels like all of this was just based on someone coming up with the name “bakineering” and then crafting a show around it.
So here’s how it works. There are nine teams, each one consisting of one baker and one engineer who had never previously worked together. The three judges on the show are Andrew Smyth, the “bakineering” specialist (I don’t know when this became a real thing!) who loves wild creations, Joanne Chang, the baking specialist, and Hakeem Oluseyi, who was an actual engineer.
In every episode, these pairs had to work together to complete a challenge that involved baking and engineering. It’s the science of cake meets the physics, and mechanics, and fluid dynamics.
Their first creation was a sail boat, made of cake, which should move in water. Ridiculous, right? And then there were robots, that were also made of cake, that had to walk! Just imagine soft spongey cake, infused with mechanics, which were trying to walk without disintegrating into a mushy mess.
Every creation was then tested to see if it worked and watching the baker and the engineer work together was amazing. I loved this show as it showed us how such drastically different professions could come together and utilize their individual skills in order to create something new and wonderful. Both are creative in their own ways. Both understand materials differently. And watching them merge this knowledge was really quite fascinating.
The amazing thing about this series is how the baker and the engineer had to utilize conversation, compromise, and teamwork in order to build something that works. There needed to be a mutual respect and appreciation for each other’s trade and experience, for only then could they accomplish what they needed to.
Each side also learned so much from their experience. Who knew that ramen noodles mixed with chocolate could be woven to form Samurai armour. Who knew that sausage skin would be tough enough to protect the driver from being killed during the car racing stress test. I’d like to think that merging of minds helped them become better bakers and better engineers.
As for me, I learned that skills and knowledge can be utilized across a variety of vocations. If a baker can learn from an engineer, and vice versa, it had me wondering what other professions could learn from each other? So often, we pick our work, we specialize in it, and end up being closed off to other ways of doing things. Could there be a show where a doctor teams up with a chef? How about a lawyer and a race car driver? What about an accountant and a dressmaker?
Call me Netflix. I have a lot of great ideas.
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