Easy-Bake Battle: The Home Cooking Competition
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Easy-Bake Battle: The Home Cooking Competition
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A Lot or a Little?
The parents' guide to what's in this TV show.
What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that Easy-Bake Battle: The Home Cooking Competition is a competition that pits home chefs against each other for the chance to win a $100,000 prize. It's hosted by Antoni Porowski (Queer Eye's food expert) and celebrity chef Kristen Kish (Top Chef, Iron Chef). There's a lot of product placement: besides the kids' toy that inspired the show concept, all the ingredients appear in their original packaging so there are logos aplenty. Also, because the grand prize is a vast sum of money, contestants mention the material benefits of winning quite a bit. Otherwise, the only objectionable content is infrequent mild innuendo (most prevalent in the "date night" episode. This cooking competition serves up family-friendly fare, and kid chefs may be inspired to recreate its easy recipes at home.
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What's the Story?
In EASY-BAKE BATTLE: THE HOME COOKING COMPETITION, hosts Antoni Porowski (Queer Eye) and Kristen Kish (Top Chef, Iron Chef) judge home chefs' culinary creations. The contestants are regular people with a passion for cooking, and they are tasked with creating delicious recipes in a short amount of time with humble ingredients. Each episode features 3 home cooks competing for a $25,000 prize, and the winners go on for a chance to cook for a $100,000 grand prize. The food is judged not only on taste and presentation, but also how easy and fast the preparation is. While there are toy Easy-Bake ovens for contestants to use, cooks mostly use a full-size oven that turns on and off at a set time (like the toy version). Each episode challenges the cooks in different ways -- like limiting them to using only pantry ingredients, or cooking only with a waffle iron. Contestants share shortcut ingredients and techniques. Home viewers can steal the tips to "bake it easy" with their own meal preparation.
Is It Any Good?
Food snobs avert your eyes -- there's not a teaspoon of foodie pretentiousness in the recipe for this cooking competition. The charm of Easy-Bake Battle is its ethos: making cooking seem less intimidating, fancy and expensive seeming for all the home cooks just trying to get dinner on the table. The conceit is clearly aimed at adults who need meal prep inspiration, but a lot of the "hacks" in the show could actually help making cooking feel more accessible to kids too. Kids won't find the convenience/time-saving aspect as compelling, but the show is fun enough just as a competition. The hosts are great -- Porowski's quirky puppy dog personality gets a chance to shine, and it's fun to watch Kish throw away her fine-dining bonafides and delight in a dish with humble ingredients tasting really delicious.
Some grown-ups may tsk-tsk about how Easy-Bake Battle relies on packaged foods and not making everything from scratch, while others will rejoice that finally a cooking show is reflecting real life meals. Adults also may also not be thrilled that kids ask for a toy oven after watching (though grown-ups of a certain age may secretly delight in the nostalgic item being brought back into their lives).
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about all of the brands they see in the show. Why do you think the show creators decided to base a show on a kids' toy? Why do you think the food packaging is shown clearly on screen? How do you think you are or aren't influenced by brands on TV?
Are there any cooking hacks from the show you want to try? Should we try to re-create any recipes at home?
TV Details
- Premiere date: October 12, 2022
- Cast: Kristen Kish, Antoni Porowski
- Network: Netflix
- Genre: Game Shows
- Topics: Cooking and Baking
- TV rating: TV-G
- Last updated: October 25, 2022
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