Nailed it!

At the very beginning of quarantine Zane and Rowan found the baking competition show Nailed It on Netflix. It's a show where everyday people come in and try to bake/recreate different cakes or cookies in a set amount of time. I was not a huge fan because the people on the show were obviously terrible and never did a good job of recreating whatever it was they were supposed to be making, but the judges were always nice to them and everyone's efforts did get celebrated in the end. Between watching that show and other various cooking shows during quarantine Zane decided he wanted to go on a cooking show. So we delved into researching how we could make that happen. It became very apparent, very quickly, that even in the before times, getting onto one of the various kids cooking shows, when you live in the center of the country, was going to be extremely difficult. In COVID times it was going to be impossible.

Our solution was hosting Nailed It challenges with his friends. We had a nailed it bunny cake challenge and a nailed it turtle cake challenge. One time he and Rowan had a nailed it watermelon challenge. It was a fun way to try to come up with new ideas of things for him to bake. They got very creative and had loads of fun with this over the past few months. 

It should be noted that for Zane everything has to be a big production. There has to be a full backstory, with multiple characters, and preferably costumes. This is true for every single thing he does. For example when Rowan doesn't want to help make cookies, but just wants to taste them he becomes Zane's Official Taster. He is given a character name and a special "taster apron." There is a certain spatula that is to be used only by the Official Taster guy. Rowan then has to leave the room and wait for the Official Taster to be introduced by Zane, who is acting both as the baker and the announcer for the pretend cooking show he is on. When really Rowan just wants a bite of cookie dough. This also takes place when Zane and Rowan want to cook dinner. They could just cook dinner and it would be great, but not when Zane is involved. Nope, our house must become a restaurant with a different theme every time. They write up menus that include just the one thing that they are cooking for dinner. There has to be music, we have to be seated by a waiter, our orders have to be taken, there are often staged arguments in the kitchen with their "staff," food is plated and served, then after dinner Zach and I have to review our experience. Sometimes it's really fun, sometimes it's exhausting.

So when I found out that we could do Nailed It at home I knew this would be right up Zane's alley. I got on the wait list in October, set alarms to be one of the first to purchase it in November, the took off work so I could be part of this fun experience, at home, in December. It's been a whole thing. I was prepared to spend large quantities of money on this, as I had told Zane about it before I knew how much it would cost. Turns out it was only $65 which was much less than I had anticipated. I spent weeks terrified I had done it wrong because our package hadn't arrived, but it finally showed up the Monday before the challenge. 

Saturday, which just so happened to be Zane's half birthday, was the big day so Friday we made our cake then Saturday morning we cut it, frosted it, and made the rice krispy treats that would serve as head, neck, arms, and hands for our cake. The package came with all the ingredients for the cake and all the things needed to decorate it during the live event.

I big hurdle in this process was keeping Zane from eating the ingredients. There were not extra so anything he ate we didn't have anymore of to use during the competition. 

Saturday morning was a bit of a train wreck at our house with everyone fighting and getting in trouble as we tried to prep for the big event. The live show started at one and at 12:30 I was yelling that everyone had to just reset their attitudes because I'd spent way too much money on this activity for everyone to be angry. That's the behind the scenes reality of cute pictures you see online. Thatcher went to bed before the live stream started, but while we were prepping our stuff he made his own robots on the dry erase board. He does this all the time now, making his own cookies, or whatever it is we are cooking/baking at this time. 

Here we are, ready to go. We weren't sure what to expect, but had been told in the email that the Jacques Torres, the judge that is a famous french baker, was going to be part of the live stream so the boys were extremely nervous before we started.

Zach was running our camera and we had the show streaming on the big screen TV.

We had forty minutes to decorate our cake which went by very quickly. I mainly helped roll out the fondant while they did the decorating. I think that the boys were hoping that they would get to talk to Nicole or Jacques, but there were at least a thousand people on this stream so sadly we didn't get chosen to be one of the people they talked to. They did get to see him answer people's questions and look at their creations. There was lots of silly dancing and fun things going on while we tried to finish our cake.

Zane had a good time, but again I think he was under the impression he was going to be a big part of the production some how. I can't even begin to imagine what he thought it was going to be, since his imagination literally runs wild most of the time. 

At the end of every Nailed It episode everyone takes a selfie with Jaques. This was our attempt at that, which didn't work well, but you get the idea. 

Somewhere in the middle Thatcher woke up and got to help put the final touches on our robot cake. I think it turned out really well especially since we had never worked with fondant before. We struggled to get everything covered completely, but in the end I think we Nailed It! The boys had so much fun, hopefully we can do it again sometime. It was a fun, unique memory for this crazy difficult Christmas season. 

Of course Gary had to give his seal of approval as well.