Stressful Baking Shows as Successful, Calming Streaming Content

“On your marks.” “Get set!” “BAAAAKE!” These are the three commands that Noel Fielding and Matt Lucas exclaim at the start of each challenge in the Great British Baking Show. The competitors waste no time pulling out their recipes, aware that they only have limited time to complete their ambitious baking projects. As the challenges progress, viewers can watch the bakers run back and forth between their workstations and fridges while others stir their batter at a speed that is telling of the stress they are under. In the heat of the moment, one baker forgets to preheat their oven while another misses adding crucial ingredients or fails to set a jelly that is integral to the success of their 3-tier cake. In short, besides baking talent, the competition features stress, chaos, and quite often also disaster.

Ironically, what sounds like a very stressful show to watch, has become a form of entertainment known for its calm, uplifting effects.

This feel-good content is available in masses. One can select from at least a dozen different baking shows from different countries that all feature different skill levels as well as baking and entertainment purposes.

Is it Cake? features skilled cake artists deceiving and astonishing the judges and viewers by replicating objects with extremely realistic-looking cakes.

On the other side of the spectrum, Nailed It! delivers hilarious baking comedy in 5 different countries. The idea of the show is to let completely unskilled but certainly confident amateur bakers with a terrible baking track record fail at recipes that require professional skills.

And somewhere in between, The Great British Baking Show is a light-hearted competition of highly skilled amateur bakers who get to prove their skills in a variety of baking disciplines.

Many viewers turn on episodes of baking shows to escape stress in real life. But what exactly is it that makes viewers think of these shows as calming?

What stands out about baking shows is their lack of hostility. Across the different shows, competitors often help each other out and celebrate everybody’s successes as if they were their own. The judges are typically renowned baking professionals in their respective countries yet are down to earth and always up for cracking a joke with the competitors and hosts.

The shows also live up to their name and status as reality TV shows by featuring ordinary people as well as genuine dialogues and interactions. In many shows, the audience gets to find out about the competitors’ backgrounds and aspirations which adds a level of relatability.

Former Morningside student Parker Stoffle prefers to watch the category of calm and light-hearted baking shows because they depict how the bakers deal with difficult situations. “It shows how even someone with a lot of talent in their own field can struggle or forget common things under a time constraint,” he said.

An added benefit of watching baking shows is the amount of knowledge viewers can learn for their own baking endeavors.

Junior Jil Hellerforth likes to watch American wedding cake shows and the German version of the Great British Baking Show – Das Grosse Backen/The Great Bake – for that reason. She said, “I like learning how to make all these foods. It’s crazy how a cake comes together and how much work is behind it but how at the same time it’s simple steps.”

She added that it is nice that the candidates bring their own recipes with them that they have developed and worked on for a long time.

Baking shows are particularly popular during the holidays. Some of them are innately created with a holiday theme in mind while the most successful non-holiday shows are replicated into festive spin-offs.

Freshman Moriah Dixson said she watches baking shows randomly but tunes in more often during the Christmas season. She particularly enjoys the competitive aspect of the baking shows and has watched a variety of different shows – from Cupcake Wars and Nailed It! all the way to the Holiday Baking Championship, Halloween Wars, and the Great British Baking Show.

Stoffle also particularly watches baking shows during holiday seasons when the competitors are asked to create bakes with a festive theme. Among his favorites are Cupcake Wars and the Great British Baking Show.

And Hellerforth said she generally watches the shows on a weekly basis when she needs a break from studying but also watches them more often during the cold months when she spends more time inside.

The success of baking shows really took off in the US during the COVID-19 pandemic when people in lockdown were taking up baking as an activity to keep their minds busy. With their newfound interest in baking, they also turned to the shows as a way to further enjoy their new hobby.

Since then, the success has not lessened and has even spilled over into the sale of cookbooks. The book of Great British Baking Show judge Paul Hollywood and former host Mary Berry even were among the three bestselling baking cookbooks in November 2021.

Whether it is a fresh batch of bakers looking to dive deeper into their newfound hobbies or people realizing their calming potential, the demand for baking shows on streaming platforms is steadily increasing. So is the variety of shows available. While not all shows may be able to get renewed for several seasons, they all add to the variety of light-hearted, stress-relieving content that people seek. As such, baking shows are here to stay.

“Ready? Get set! BAAAAKE!” hosts Noel Fielding and Matt Lucas proclaim at the start of each challenge in the Great British Baking Show. The competitors waste no time before pulling out their recipes because they only have limited time to complete their ambitious baking projects. As the challenge progresses, many bakers can be seen literally running between their workstations and fridges while others stir their batter at a speed quite telling of their stress.

Ironically, what sounds like a high-intensity, stressful show to watch, has become a form of entertainment known for its feel-good and relaxation factors.

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Possible Interviews:

David Elder (because of Food Mayterm) –> why he thinks people see food/cooking/baking as relaxing, if he watches such shows, if yes what is his favorite show

Baking Shows –> rise during pandemic?

Aesthetically, these photos are not the most pleasing but they capture what for me is stand-out American.

Softball and Baseball are typically American sports that I knew nothing about when I arrived in the US. I still know nothing more than that there is a difference between Softball and Baseball.

Active Shooter/Attacker Training seems to be a must-have in America. With the number of school shootings and on-campus attacks, it is reasonable to offer these types of classes and I’m sure they help students feel more secure. The problem is that students should not have to think about these issues. They should not have to think about what objects are best for throwing at the attacker if they are ever trapped in a room with one. Things like the active attacker training for me are a sign of the US’ habit of shifting the burden to solve the problem to students instead of solving its root causes.

One thing that is very American to me is the urge of people to proclaim their values and beliefs to everybody around them. To me, it seems like a lot of Americans support political figures/parties and institutions such as the police like they support sports teams. Banners and flags in the garden, vocal calls to support them, and the use of flags in different colors, shapes, and sizes for anything and everything. For the longest time, I did not know what the flag pictured above even stood for, it just seemed like people supporting a team or something.

I apologize for the photo quality but this was a spur-of-the-moment photo through a window. The plastic bag in the tree is mainly in response to what we talked about in class. The Pick-Up Truck and the red brick wall building behind it are the real American objects for me in this picture.

The wall that features faded white letters of an old business is something that I identify with the US because I’ve never seen anything like it before. It holds quite some charm because it reminds me of the looks of bustling American cities in the past.

The Pick-Up Truck is American because I’ve never seen one in Europe before. Considering the number of dirt roads in the country, I’m not surprised about its popularity.

The big social events in the US – Football games. Coming here I had never heard of the terms tailgating or First Down before but I was educated on both. I was quite surprised to find out that fans will have mini parties before games in the parking lots of all places and I was even more shocked to see people bring big flatscreen TVs with them to watch other games while tailgating. I think sitting in a parking lot and eating BBQ while still enjoying the modern comfort of a TV is typically American because it connects a want for comfort with the non-existent wish for a nice place to have the comfort in.

Something that screams American in my eyes is the sidewalks and particularly the little strips of grass between the front lawn and the street. Madsen once told us the name for those grass strips in class but I can’t remember now. The stone tiles the sidewalk is made out of are also quite iconic because from what I’ve seen, they can be found particularly in suburban parts of American cities.

The sign with the endorsement for a county attorney and the two flags in the background only add to the American flair.

Potential Anecdote/Start of Article:

Picture a typical college dorm room. A little bit of chaos, random flags of alcohol brands, and unmade beds. Nothing unusual for a young adult figuring out how to live independently from their parents for the first time. But then, scattered among the usual chaos appear little pieces of what can only be called paraphernalia that one would never associate with college students.

DIY cactuses, mini versions of lucky bamboos, badly painted canvases, DIY snow globes, bottles of self-created essential oil mixes, self-painted pumpkins from Halloween week, and stress balls in all shapes, colors, and sizes.

What all of this has in common is where these things originated from. Most campuses in the US have some kind of recreational activities organization that hosts events for college students. The idea behind them is to take away from the stress of daily life, offer opportunities to socialize, and maybe even find new hobbies.

Students meet to paint, handcraft, ice skate, sing, laugh, and play bingo.

OR maybe something like:

Sitting at one of the tables in the student government office I am attempting to paint a flame on a tote-bag while listening to the newest chart songs and eating candy. Suddenly, a thought strikes me: Why on earth am I sitting here painting tote bags when I’m a senior in college with a million responsibilities and things to do?

Interviews with MAC council members, maybe associated staff members about meaning of recreational activities for students, how other colleges do recreational activities (National Association for Campus Activities)

Maybe include how students pay for it? I don’t know if I want to go there.

In Cold Blood tells the true story of the murder of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas in November 1959, the dangerousness of the two perpetrators, and the ensuing manhunt by law enforcement. The two perpetrators, Richard “Dick” Hickock and Perry Smith, learned from another prison inmate that the Clutter family was wealthy and allegedly had a safe in their house. Their goal was to rob the family without leaving any witnesses behind and use their loot to live a better life in Mexico. The four family members, Mr. and Mrs. Clutter as well as their teenage children Nancy and Kenyon, were killed through shotgun blasts to the head, rendering the crime particularly brutal. Law enforcement was left searching in the dark because there were no viable clues.

The author of In Cold Blood is Truman Capote. Capote was an American novelist who was most famously known for the novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Besides writing fictional novels, Capote also wrote non-fictional pieces such as profiles and reportages for The New Yorker.  Despite claiming to have collected 8000 pages of notes, Capote didn’t record a single conversation so he wouldn’t “artificialize the atmosphere.” He later said in an interview with the New York Times in 1966 that he had trained himself for several years to transcribe conversations without using tape recorders and could transcribe interviews with 90% accuracy.

Explaining why he was writing the book to one of the murderers (Smith), Capote said in the NYT interview “I had a strictly aesthetic theory about creating a book which could result in a work of art.” In his opinion, reporting could be done as artistically and interestingly as fiction. The way to accomplish that in his eyes, was by combining fictional creative writing techniques with non-fictional reporting in a “new art form” – the non-fiction novel. Before ever learning about the Holcomb murders, Capote had long been looking for the right topic to write a non-fictional novel about. He hadn’t considered crime to be a good topic, when news about the murders went around the US and presented as the perfect opportunity. Murder, Capote thought, was a theme that was perfect for his “art” because it would not “darken and yellow” over the years.

Truman Capote started his research for the book after arriving in Holcomb on December 15, 1959 – exactly a month after the murders had taken place. He was accompanied by his friend Harper Lee, author of the book To Kill a Mockingbird. Even though he later dismissed Lee’s contribution to In Cold Blood as keeping him company, interviewees such as Bob Rupp later said that the interviews were mainly conducted by Lee because Capote wasn’t all that friendly and easy to talk to. Either way, as mentioned above, Capote didn’t record the interviews but transcribed them word for word from his memory so that the conversations would happen less artificially. Most of the interviews were conducted after the murderers had been caught and after Holcomb had calmed down. He did not only talk to relatives of the Clutter family and the people of Holcomb in different instances over several years, but he also interviewed the two offenders and some of the people they met along their way to and back from Mexico. Capote’s research went on for 6 years and he collected several thousands of pages of notes.

For research purposes, Capote went and visited all of the places and hotels him and Smith stayed in after fleeing and returning to the US. He had obtained the names of the places from Hickock who remembered them in great detail.

The part that was most important to accomplishing Capote’s theory of a non-fiction novel was getting the necessary amount of detail and background information to illustrate and complete the story and its characters. Even more creative pieces of journalism, profiles and features, most often require the writer to only establish one or two characters in full detail. For a full non-fiction novel, it was essential to develop a story around the murders that was intricate, complete, and real at the same time. To achieve that, In Cold Blood starts out with the establishment of the main characters and their lives, the people who they associate with, and the things they did in their final day. Then, Capote begins introducing Smith and Hickock and builds their characters. Later, the characters of the investigators are added as well as the people Hickock and Smith met and sometimes planned to murder while traveling.

Capote did not include himself in the story and also left out his own opinion. As in any novel there is a lot of description of and detail about the characters, scenes, and buildings. Capote made the active choice to use certain adjectives to describe things which can be argued to be subjective. However, Capote also observed a lot of the detail himself, such as how the people he interviewed looked and behaved. Therefore, it can be argued that him describing things a certain way does not mean that he included his opinion or made anything up.

Capote was definitely somewhat emotionally involved in the story. He spent 6 years researching and collecting all of the gruesome details of the crime for a project he thought of as his artwork. The book is not just a factual news story to inform people of what really happened but a novel that is designed to draw people in through emotion. Furthermore, Capote said himself in the interview that if he knew what the future held, he would have never stopped in Holcomb but continued to drive which is the strongest sign for emotional involvement.

My reactions to the book were mixed. First, it is written in such detail that I sometimes found myself forgetting what the book was actually about. Secondly, there were so many characters involved that it was impossible to remember all of them when they were brought up again later in the book. On the other hand, it was really fascinating to me how Capote took all of the information he received and spun it into one comprehensive and very readable story. Keeping up with all the people and remembering important pieces of notes years after getting them must have been difficult.

While I think the detail that he managed to write into this story is amazing, I also took it with a grain of salt. I don’t think that all of the quotes and dialogues are accurate, not just because he transcribed them from memory, but also because it’s unrealistic that the witnesses of the conversations who told him what the victims said on their final day remembered everything word for word. Human memory just doesn’t work that way especially not if there have been months or years in between the event and the recalling of it. I also think that his background as a novelist would have led him to want to establish characters a certain way to make them fit into the story. Consciously or not, I think he may have therefore distorted some of the characters and their stories.

Overall, the whole book and what it represents reminds me of true crime documentaries today. They also use a lot of detail and different people involved to reconstruct the crimes. Because people are so obsessed with them today, I’m not surprised that In Cold Blood became a big thing.