Natalie Sideserf with a cake she made.
It’s a pickle... but it’s a cake. It’s Yoda... but it’s a cake. It’s Michael Scott... but it’s a cake. Natalie Sideserf, owner of Sideserf Cake Studio, is the master of creating hyperrealistic cakes, a craft that has come into the spotlight thanks to social media.
If you’ve opened Facebook, TikTok or Instagram recently, you’ve likely seen videos of people cutting into objects that look like food or household items - or even animals or people - that are actually cake.
The trend took off on July 8, according to The New York Times, after BuzzfeedTasty shared a collection of videos that had been posted prior by @redrosecake_tubageckil, a Turkish baker and a cake artist, like Sideserf.
Sideserf has been making the cakes that have struck a viral beat on social media for nearly a decade. She started after she graduated from Ohio State University in 2008.
“A friend of mine suggested that I try making a sculpted cake like the ones she had seen on TV,” she told Forbes.
She made an attempt at a cow skull cake and enjoyed working with the materials. She decided to learn more.
Later, Sideserf and her husband moved from Cleveland to Austin where she began working at a bakery.
“In 2012, I entered a cake in the shape of Willie Nelson into a cake competition,” she said. “At the time, I tried looking up reference photos of bust cakes but couldn't find any, so I was going for something that looked hyperrealistic because it had never been done before.”
The result was more than an eye-catching success. Sideserf’s brother posted an image of the Willie Nelson cake on Reddit and it hit the number one slot on the front page.
“At that point I knew I was on to something,” Sideserf said.
Since then, Sideserf has focused on making her cakes as hyperrealistic as possible, frequently experimenting with new materials. She’s been at it at her own bakery, Sideserf Cake Studio, for nearly eight years.
The creation process is not what people might think, she said, noting that sometimes the cakes are so real-looking people think that she’s hollowed out fruits or vegetables to add cake inside. So, while people started to guess at Sideserf’s methods, she started posting videos of her process on her a YouTube channel, documenting the cake making step by step.
She walked Forbes through the process.
First, she draws a sketch of the cake.
“If the design is complex, the sketch will include a ‘blueprint’ of the internal structure of dowels [rods] screwed into cake boards, but many of my cakes might just lay flat instead,” she said.
Then, she stacks cakes with layers of buttercream separating them and uses her original sketch as a stencil to carve the sculpture-like creation.
“The cake then gets coated in a layer of buttercream - called a ‘crumb coat’ - and usually I'll add a layer of modeling chocolate to sculpt the details,” she explained.
After she sculpts, she paints the cake with food coloring.
And the result? A cake that looks nothing like a frosted treat for consumption on special occasions such as a birthday or wedding- they look too good to not be true.
A cake created by Natalie Sideserf
Creations similar to Sideserf’s have become viral, taking over social media feeds featuring the works of different bakers.
“I think the draw is the shock factor of seeing one thing, then a split-second later recognizing its not what you thought it was,” Sideserf said. “This probably speaks to some subconscious psychological reaction that I don't understand, but I notice the response to my cakes can be pretty polarizing.”
Many people love the cakes she makes- but some people that watch the videos become frustrated - which Sideserf actually enjoys.
“If all the responses were the same it would be kind of boring,” she explained. “I love hearing what people both like and dislike about them.”
When the cakes started popping up all over the internet this summer, she responded to a comedian who tweeted a video cutting into an actual tissue box and claiming it was cake- she tweeted that she makes cakes like those that had been popping up all over the web.
“Before I knew it the video I posted in the reply had more than 17 million views,” she said.
Right now, the fascination is with everything that doesn’t appear to be cake, being cake.
Twitter and Instagram have been filled with trend-inspired memes, jokes and even some parody videos including one of a “cake detective” populating under the hashtag “#everythingiscake.” “Old Town Road” singer Lil Nas X and clothing brand ASOS (with a cake created by Serfside herself) even got in on the conversation.
But Serfside said that, often, when she posts her cakes, users pass videos by her cake videos in their feed.
“People immediately think, ‘ok, there's a picture of a pickle,’” she said.
The best part of making and posting the cakes, for Surfside, comes if they actually stick around, as many social media users are with the trend.
“But when they stick around for the next few seconds to see it cut as a cake, they find themselves going down the wormhole,” she said. “We get to see this reaction in real life sometimes when we show people our cakes, and it's always hilarious.”
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