‘Easy-Bake Battle’ champions quick and easy cuisine – without the light bulbs
Let’s just get this out of the way up front.
There were no light bulbs used to cook the comestibles on Netflix’s “Easy-Bake Battle” nor does the venerable Hasbro toy appliance make an appearance – at least not in the form that we know it.
No, the title of the culinary competition series that begins streaming its eight half hour episodes on Wednesday, Oct. 12, refers to, as the show’s release explains, cuisine “inspired by Hasbro’s iconic EasyBake Oven.” Translation: simple, easy, delicious meals one can make in little time and with a little outside-the-box thinking.
So expect to pick up plenty of clever kitchen hacks or shortcuts from accomplished home cooks as they vie in two rounds of competition for the chance to win $25,000 in each episode and the $100,000 grand prize at the end of the season.
The series comes from eOne, the production company owned by Hasbro, and features a whole lot of baking – and not the type of baking one might think.
“I don’t mean like cake baking,” explains executive producer Daniel Calin. “This show does both savory and sweet cooking, which I think differentiates it from a lot of the other shows you’ll see on platform and elsewhere. But in the second round, the oven that they use to bake very cleverly in, it aesthetically represents the classic Easy-Bake Oven; it’ll be reminiscent of it.”
So there is a wall oven in the shape of the EasyBake Oven here. It has no special capabilities and again, no light bulbs, just an average oven in which contestants will cook their pasta, steak, seafood and dessert dishes, which are then judged by host Antoni Porowski and rotating guest judges including Kristen Kish and Jacques Torres.
And that’s where the hacks come in. If nothing else, viewers will come away with a few shortcuts and tricks that surely will make their time in the kitchen easier and more productive, just as it did for the home cooks here.
“There’s a whole world of people on YouTube and TikTok and Instagram who had started championing like an easy way of cooking that is like hack-driven and still gets you to really delicious meals,” Calin says.
“These folks are like really busy people like you and I who have complicated lives and kids and a lot of demands coming their way. So in the kitchen they’ve had to figure out how to cook more efficiently without compromising the quality of their food, so they come to the competition with their shortcuts.”