Sugar Rush is the brand new baking competition on Netflix and thankfully has a relatively new formula compared to the myriad of other confectionary based reality shows around at the moment.
I love an amazing cake as much as the next person and confess that I am mildly addicted to the Great British Bakeoff every year. However, I was quickly getting to the stage of ‘seen one seen them all' but I decided to give Sugar Rush a go.
I am really pleased that I did because it's a pretty cool show.
Four teams of two are pitted against each other and against the clock and all must complete the first two baking tasks within the allotted time of three hours.
Once a team have completed the first challenge they hit the buzzer, time stops and the judges sample the delights that have been created, the other teams keep working until they in turn have also finished and have hit the buzzer.
The judges include Adriano Zumbo who you may know from MasterChef Australia.
Treats tasted, the clock begins again and the team move on to task number two. In the meantime however, once the judges have tasted all four offerings, they deliberate over who did the least successful job and promptly eliminate one team – even though they could already have moved on to task number two.
One team down and with three to go they all scramble around to get the second task completed with the remaining time on the clock counting down. And the judging process begins again.
Once another team has been eliminated, the two remaining pairs are then tasked with making an epic cake and any time they saved on the clock in the previous rounds gets added on as a bonus.
Finally the cakes are cooked, displayed and judged and the winners walk away with a cool $10K for their trouble. What makes this different, aside from the clock element, is that all the teams that complete are at least semi-professional with their own stores or companies so they definitely know what they are doing.
In theory, what you get are quite remarkable confectionaries done to a very high standard in a very short amount of time. It's a great show to watch with kids if you're on the lookout for something more family orientated.
And of course there are the usual holiday versions so you can also watch Sugar Rush: Christmas when you feel festive.
