Is it cake? We explored campus to find out

Humor by Cassidy Dalva
April 10, 2022, 10:39 p.m.

An innocuous-looking toilet paper roll turns out to be an angel food cake in disguise. A worn-out tire is actually a flourless chocolate cake covered in dusted frosting. The recent Netflix show “Is it Cake?”, based on a genre of viral TikTok videos where bakers prepare cakes that appear to resemble household objects, accessories or even other foods, has garnered significant attention from viewers worldwide. With such striking dessert facsimiles in abundance, students who binge-watched the eight-part series in March are now second-guessing whether the objects and sights in their surroundings are truly just inedible articles. Our team at The Daily investigated five key attractions on campus, settling the debate once and for all: is it cake?

  1. The Econ 1 Blue Books

These always appear to be remarkably thin when observed from the outside, but on the inside, you see at once that the consistency is rather thick, and there’s so many hidden layers! You never run out of room to draw your supply and demand graphs, and it seems there are always more problems that must be solved in its labyrinth. Are those a stack of pages or layers of vanilla filling? Only one way to find out…

  1. Stern Burrito

Okay, this one is slightly less original; burritos are probably one of the easiest non-cakes to make appear cake-like. But that’s all the more reason to be on guard; after all, the aluminum foil wrapping is just a little too lush in appearance – it must be a metallic frosting coating those bean-shaped mounds of chocolate. Nevertheless, cutting into the burrito revealed the disappointing truth: the Stern burrito is not, in fact, a cake.

  1. The Claw

The streams of water erupting from The Claw as eager students kick off spring quarter with some classic fountain hopping would be hard to pull off in the world of dessert-making. But difficulty does not imply impossibility, and our team sensed that something was off. After brandishing marshmallows on wooden dowels and dunking them in the fountain, our deepest suspicions were confirmed: the “water” in the Claw is, in fact, an elaborate chocolate fountain that has been dyed with a patented substance rendering it transparent in appearance.

  1. Our friend’s electric scooter

So sleek, so fast. Watching our friend zip off to Coupa on that lovely vessel, we couldn’t help but wonder if that Gotrax logo had been stenciled on in royal icing. The minute he wasn’t looking, we touched our knife to a miscellaneous wire and took a crunchy bite.

  1. The Hoover Tower

Have you ever actually touched Hoover Tower? Then how do you know it’s not an elaborate tiered dessert blanketed in caramel ganache? We pondered whether to taste a structural beam at the tower’s base, but venturing into the tower’s hallowed chambers, we couldn’t help but appreciate the architectural wonder and feared that our experiment might compromise the cake’s structural integrity. 

Editor’s Note: This article is purely satirical and fictitious. All attributions in this article are not genuine and this story should be read in the context of pure entertainment only.

Cassidy Dalva '25 is a News Managing Editor at The Stanford Daily. A prospective economics major from Los Angeles, California, Cassidy enjoys baking, playing pickleball, and spending time outdoors in her free time. Contact her at [email protected].

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