The Times - Serving Waitsburg, Dayton and the Touchet Valley

Every holiday season I imagine showing up to a party bringing an incredible dessert. Historically I am asked to bring wine or extra chairs to potlucks as my baking skills are notoriously weak.

This year I decided to do a little pre-holiday research by watching two of the most popular baking shows currently available on Netflix. The first, The Great British Baking Show, is a long running competition filmed under a big tent and featuring talented amateur bakers. The tent is not the only difference from other cooking shows.

Contestants on most shows are surprised with the challenges during the episode, this show lets the bakers know most of the challenges before the season even begins filming. This allows them to choose and practice creative recipes before the episodes are filmed.

The one challenge which is not revealed until game day is the Technical challenge. The bakers are given the same recipe, with minimal instructions and often a specific technique few have ever encountered. It is the part of the show I relate to the most as I can see the fear in their eyes.

These home bakers are talented, creative and above all else, extremely kind. They support each other, celebrate each other's successes and generally don't act like competitors in this age of Survivor. They manage to make the contestants on Jeopardy! look cutthroat.

After watching these bakers take on a variety of meringues, pastry doughs, domed tartlets, and mirror-glazed icings, I lost all confidence in my potential baking abilities.

This brings me to Nailed It!, the second show in my effort to find holiday baking inspiration. Nailed It! is also a baking competition between home bakers who are sweet and kind to each other. That is where the similarities between the two shows end.

Courtesy photo

Judges Paul Hollywood, Prue Leith, co-hosts Noel Fielding and Sandi Toksvig cutting into an elaborate cake on The Great British Baking Show.

The seasons of Nailed It! have three new contestants each episode. They come onto the show with high optimism and seriously limited baking skills. They are asked to replicate basic cake and cookie recipes that are elaborately decorated with fondant, buttercream and modeling chocolate. Where the contestants and judges on GBBS talk about the merits of French, Swiss or Italian Meringues, these contestants struggle with how to use a stand mixer. My kind of bakers.

The host, comedienne Nicole Beyer, is high energy and very funny. The co-host is chocolatier Jacque Torres who designs most of the challenges and is constantly horrified by the choices the bakers make while trying to follow his recipes. There is a guest host each week who is brave enough to taste the contestants' creations, to serve as the third judge, and award the winner $10,000.

These shows are much more entertaining than I expected. I binged all ten seasons of the Great British Baking Show and three seasons of Nailed It!...as well as their holiday episodes. All this televised baking inspired me to make a pumpkin pie for a Thanksgiving party this year. Like GBBS, I followed the classic recipe and like Nailed It! I created an elaborate decoration, nailed it!