"That’s just innately fun:" Is It Cake? Holiday host Mikey Day opens up on the experience and format of the show

Is It Cake? Holiday is renewed with a new festive season that premiered on November 25, 2025, on Netflix, comprising three tightly packed episodes of roughly 40 minutes. The official Netflix description states that:

Cake artists from past seasons return to craft tasty replicas of ice skates, nutcrackers, and more in this holiday spin on the mind-bending baking contest.

Hosted by actor and comedian Mikey Day, Is It Cake? Holiday season 2 would feature six bakers competing to win the title, along with a prize pool $75,000, distributed through round wins and the finale. 

These six bakers will be judged by a rotating panel of celebrity guests, including Kristen Bell, Lacey Chabert, Michael Urie, Dustin Milligan, Kel Mitchell, Lamorne Morris, Wendi McLendon-Covey, King Bach, and Pierson Fode.

Six All-Star cake artists include three returning bakers and three debutants from the professional baking world, namely: Fernanda Abarca, Justin Salinas, Liz Marek, Melissa Alt, Paul Bosley, and Timbo Sullivan.

The format of the competition remains the same: In each challenge, the bakers recreate familiar holiday objects, the items we see in everyday life, and are familiar with their texture and weight, such as gift boxes, ornaments, statues, animals, etc.

The task is to place several real objects next to a cake designed to look identical, and ask the judges to figure out which one is edible. Sometimes the illusion works because of excellent details, while other times, the difference is evident in weight, sheen, or texture.

Host Mikey Day, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter in October 2025, opened up about his decision to join Is It Cake? Holiday, where he said that:

I thought there would be a fun family dynamic that the show has in terms of the end game, because you’re guessing at the end and that’s just innately fun.

Is It Cake? Holiday host Mikey Day said he joined the show due to its "fun premise"

Saturday Night Live star Mikey Day is returning to host the second season of It Cake? Holiday, where he will be joined by six All-Star cake artists, including three from Is It Cake? alum.

Mickey earlier told The Hollywood Reporter, when asked whether he joined the show due to its appeal or if it just fell into his lap, he replied:

I think the latter. I thought it was a funny premise, but I had no clue just how much kids, especially, would respond to it. 

He always expected the guessing element to be fun because, as he put it,

Even if you don’t care about cake or anything, if you see six objects and you’re like, ‘One of them is made out of cake,’ I feel like your lizard brain is like, well, ‘Let me try and suss out the imposter.’

But he was genuinely surprised by how intensely young viewers connected with it.

I was so very pleasantly surprised when — after that first season came out and kids responded to it so much, they were having Is It Cake?-themed birthday parties.

When asked about how much cake he eats in the show, he revealed that although he tastes cakes during filming, he doesn’t actually eat much.

“Since it’s always around, I don’t eat a lot of it,” he said, adding: “They’re making, like, gym bags out of cake.”

He also admits that he still feels like an outsider to the baking craft, but he admires the craft. What impresses him most is how the contestants combine baking, sculpting, painting, and illusion.

They’re also like illusionists in a way, like duplicating reality. It really makes you think about an object in space and what defines it, and edges and surface and the dimensions of it.

One more thing that surprises him is the long baking times, as the bakers get eight hours instead of the normal two hours in usual baking shows. Even then, contestants often tell him that the sculptures should realistically take “at least three days” to create.

For Mikey Day, It Cake? Holiday's appeal goes beyond baking, as he notes:

There is this strange satisfaction when you guess correctly. You’re like, ‘I’m smart. I understand our world. There are several moments where I’m, like, cutting into a typewriter or something, being like, ‘What is happening? How is this a job?’

Stay tuned for more updates.