My family is pretty big on cooking and baking, and as a result I grew up watching all sorts of cooking shows. Julia and Jacques Cooking at Home, The Frugal Gourmet, whatever iteration Martha Stewart was currently in, etc., all focused predominantly on American and European dishes (Yan Can Cook is a definite standout there), the hosts typically were white, and the final dishes were picture perfect in every way. These culinary greats never appeared anything but perfect with any mistakes hidden away well before filming. I think the only TV chef I saw make mistakes was Julia Child, and, though encouraging, the thought of perfection being the only way was incredibly intimidating to me. It was as though perfection was required once you entered the kitchen and on top of that you had to be of the same ilk of these TV chefs for anyone to take you seriously.

Or you could just be Julia and have all sorts of birds in front of you. A famous quote attributed to her is “If you're not ready to fail, you're not going to learn how to cook.”, but does that apply to baking?

In spite of my trepidation about baking perfection, my Christmas season is rung in when the TV switches to a near-constant stream of baking shows. I still love watching people make things and showing how flavors can come together in new ways. When it comes to recreating the dishes I see on the TV myself, though, I tend to get horribly intimidated by the perfect products that are constantly churned out on the shows.

I blame Martha Stewart for my whole perfection complex. My aunt was also obsessed, and when I would visit her, I was compelled to try and make candied violets, coconut layer cake, hand pies, you name it. While my creations were rather delicious they looked like they might be toxic/radioactive/deadly; I was terrible at making it look nice then, and I’m terrible at it now.

Basically, all my baking attempts look like this.

Musing about perfection in the kitchen gets my mind whirling like a mixer itself. One thing that has always intrigued me about the culinary arts is how you only look solely at the product produced but rarely think about the hands that made it. It makes it easy for us to forget that there is still marginalization in the field, which is why the more prominent celebrity chefs tend to be similar to the ones I grew up watching. However, there’s been a shift lately, and the faces on our screens are beginning to reflect the world at large. A lot of this, I think, is thanks to the insurgence of baking competition shows, both holiday-themed and otherwise, like The Great British Bake Off, Holiday Baking Championship, and Sugar Rush.

Shows of this genre call to an amateur baker like me because it puts professionals in a position where they may fail, taking perfection mostly out of the equation. The shows also showcase the wide array of diverse professionals in the culinary arts. For example, in the first season of Sugar Rush, a competitor was a trans bakery owner from Chicago by way of the Philippines. Four popular competitors on Holiday Baking Championship are a Cuban immigrant turned macaroon entrepreneur, an Anguillan immigrant who is now an executive pastry chef, an Asian-American woman who owns two bakeries, and a gay former Broadway dancer from Saskatchewan who now runs a B&B with his husband.

Even one of the judges on the show is Lorraine Pascale, a black former model turned best-selling cookbook author and chef. Other shows like Christmas Cookie Challenge and Cupcake Wars have showcased POC pastry instructors, bakery owners, and executive chefs. Though they don’t always say whether they are LGBT+ or not, the influx of diverse professional competitors on these shows is incredible.

Lorraine Pascale is a goddamn queen of the kitchen.

The other facet that demonstrates the diversity of these competition shows is the inclusion of the home baker. These particular competitors are the ones that I latch onto the most. They are people who have taught themselves how to bake in the comfort of their own kitchen and have excelled at it. That opens the door to a very diverse population competing for prize money, as when you’re in your own home you feel more freedom to experiment and try new things. You can incorporate flavors that some would shy away from based on your own unique background and tastes.

From stay-at-home moms/dads to engineers and college students living in the dorms to grandmothers who have been baking at home for decades, it’s easy to see the myriad groups that comprise the UK represented in The Great British Bake Off. The show exemplifies this as every contestant is a home bakers but there has even been a large influx of home bakers on other shows as well.

In Holiday Baking Championship in the United States, the same home baker won the $50,000 prize and then went on to conquer The Next Food Network Star, while another home baker dedicated his competitive run to his husband and their new baby girl. The inclusion of these home bakers opens the door to new techniques and thinking outside the box that a professional may not necessarily want to try, while also showcasing that literally be anyone can be the next top baker! It gives someone like me hope that I, too, can somehow be this awesome someday, Martha Stewart candied violets notwithstanding.

I have that same expression when I see those crazy concoctions on GBBO, Nadiya.

What would this article be if I didn’t mention Nailed It!, though? This show has been vital to showcasing the other side of baking, the side that shows perfection is just a construct that can’t consistently happen in reality. There is a reason the “baker’s dozen” exists, after all! The reason Pinterest fails became so popular was because of this unrealistic expectation of perfection, but the advent of Nailed It! upends this. It’s become a window into how everyone strives to do their best when baking even if the odds aren’t in their favor. As well as chucking perfection out the door, the contestants are from everywhere in the country highlighting a kind of diversity that I wish was more embraced. You most likely have seen more of yourself reflected in Nailed It! contestants than those on The Great British Bake Off.

My favorite part of Nailed It! isn’t that they are set up for failure (which, to be honest, given the time allotment for each challenge, they totally are), but rather that they foster a learning environment. Even if the contestant completely bites it on a challenge, the hosts make sure that they give constructive criticism so there’s something to learn for both the contestant and viewer to improve upon. The positive remarks from the judges even when the result may not look the best is also incredibly encouraging, and I feel like that is one of the reasons that the show has caught fire.

(If you haven’t watched the new Nailed It! holiday special yet, my favorite contestant is the guy who can’t wait for his husband to go from otter to bear as he ages. He’s on the Shalo-many Fails episode, which coincidentally is also my favorite episode of the season.)

This ability to laugh at mistakes while also teaching something is fundamental to improving your skills in the kitchen and in an incredibly inspirational concept. You can watch these shows and get ideas for what you want to try, but so long as you operate with the ideal in mind, you’re always going to find that you’re improving with each attempt. The way these shows are casting now is proving that you don’t have to be a white seemingly straight professional to excel (or fail) at baking.

It’s growing more and more common on every competition show to see someone that you relate to, which in turn is spurring more people to get up off the couch and into the kitchen. And at the end of the day, isn’t that what baking shows are about? You don’t have to be perfect and know exactly what goes into a genoise sponge by heart, and I really wish that it hadn’t taken me this long to feel inspired to take chances. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I want to try and make doberge cake. I’m sure I’ll fail the first time or two, but that’s how you learn, right?