Alex Guarnaschelli Has Instagram Guessing If It's Real Or It's Cake

One of the more interesting hobbies America took up during the pandemic is guessing whether seemingly normal household objects are, in fact, just a roll of toilet paper or bottle of moisturizer — or if they are actually made of cake. Yes, you read that right. Pastry chefs are creating cakes that look so much like real items, we're second guessing our sanity and loving every minute of it. The fascination started in July of 2020, when Tasty took to Twitter with a video starring a red Crocs cake and — in a pandemic-appropriate moment — a cake uncannily resembling a roll of toilet paper made by baker Tuba Geçkil, a self-described creator of "hyper-realistic cakes." Tasty's tweet garnered hundreds of thousands of likes as the internet went nuts in disbelief.

Fast forward to 2022, and now there's even a new Netflix show called "Is It Cake?" Hosted by SNL's Mikey Day, the series has bakers create works of art that look like everything from hamburgers to chess boards, but are revealed to be cake once Day slices into them. As it turns out, people are even asking the "Is it cake?" question in everyday life, as celebrity chef Alex Guarnaschelli found out after posting a recent Instagram pic.

So, with all this fake cake going around, it's no wonder we're all a little skeptical when presented with a seemingly normal item, wondering if we'll be plunging our hands into frosting if we try to touch it. Such was the case when Instagrammers saw one of Alex Guarnaschelli's latest posts, featuring a photo of what looks like a pork crown roast — or is it cake?

Evidently, the pic was indeed of a real-life crown roast stuffed with ground pork from a human butcher, not a cake — despite the shine that could easily be mistaken for fondant and the marbling that looks a lot like swirled icing. Nevertheless, many of Guarnaschelli's followers still took to the comments to share that at first glance, they weren't quite sure if the big hunk of meat was pork or cake. "Is it bad I thought this was one of those cakes at first? Maybe I need cake..," posted one user, while another joked, "What a lovely meat cake."