Mike Met the Real-Life Is It Cake? Known as Fabled Frostings at El Grito and Immediately Started Planning a Ferrari
Mike Met the Real-Life Is It Cake? Known as Fabled Frostings at El Grito and Immediately Started Planning a Ferrari
Fabled Frostings brought hyper-realistic cake art, big flavors and one dangerous amount of creative encouragement to Grant Park
There are certain moments when you meet somebody and immediately understand that giving Mike their contact information may have consequences.
Meeting Denee and Chris from Fabled Frostings at El Grito Chicago was one of those moments.
Mike stopped by expecting to try something sweet. Instead, he found what can best be described as the real-life version of Netflix’s Is It Cake? except there was no panel of celebrity judges, no dramatic knife reveal and no Mikey Day standing nearby asking everyone to question reality.
There were, however, samples.
That was more than enough.
Denee kept handing Joe things to taste while he was trying to record, which explains the occasional camera shake in the video. This was not an equipment failure. This was a bakery-related occupational hazard.
Mike tried several of Fabled Frostings’ creations, but the blondie was the immediate standout: rich, delicious and good enough to momentarily interrupt the interview. That is generally how we judge food at F’nAround. If Mike stops talking, somebody did something right.
Then he learned what Fabled Frostings can actually create.
That was when a simple tasting became a planning meeting.
Fabled Frostings: Where Flavor Comes First.
Fabled Frostings is a woman-owned and minority-owned Illinois cottage bakery founded by Denee, who serves as its founder and chief creative officer. The company serves the corridor running from Chicago’s North Shore toward Milwaukee and specializes in cakes and desserts designed around the person, event or idea being celebrated.
Denee explains on the bakery’s website that Fabled Frostings came together after years of encouragement from friends and family. Her goal is not merely to make someone one cake. She wants to become the baker people return to for all of life’s celebrationsfrom weddings and birthdays to baby showers and everything that deserves frosting in between.
The company is currently operating as a cottage bakery, with the stated hope of eventually opening its first shop. For now, the model gives Fabled Frostings room to make each order personal instead of treating custom work like it came off an assembly line.
The phrase repeated across the site is simple: Flavor Comes First.
That matters because hyper-realistic cakes can sometimes become a visual magic trick with dessert hidden somewhere inside. Fabled Frostings takes the opposite approach. The design can fool your eyes, but the cake still has to reward your mouth.
Based on the samples at El Grito and especially that blondie the second half of the equation is doing just fine.
What They Make.
Fabled Frostings divides its work into several categories, depending on how elaborate, personalized or urgently needed the cake may be.
Sculpted Cakes.
This is the Is It Cake? territory.
Customers bring an object, symbol or concept connected to their celebration, and Fabled Frostings develops it into an edible sculpture. The consultation considers the visual idea, guest count, event environment, structure and flavor profile. Aside from any necessary supports, the goal is to make the creation edible.
The bakery’s only advertised limits are imagination and physics, which is a responsible disclaimer when Mike is involved.
Sculpted cakes require at least 21 days’ notice.
Tiered and Wedding Cakes.
Fabled Frostings also creates tiered cakes for weddings and other major celebrations. The site directly addresses two forms of cake trauma: dense fondant covering dry cake and an avalanche of overly sweet frosting attempting to hide weak flavors underneath it.
Their answer is to begin with the memory or feeling the customer wants the flavor to create, then build the visual design around it. Tiered cakes also require 21 days’ notice.
Custom Cakes.
If a cake is personalized but does not fall under the sculpted or signature categories, it becomes a custom cake. These typically require seven to 14 days of advance notice, depending on the design.
Signature Cakes.
For people who need something impressive without commissioning a cake shaped like an Italian sports car, Fabled Frostings offers three-layer, eight-inch signature cakes designed to serve approximately 16 to 24 people.
The standard signature cakes are listed at $95, while the carrot cake is $110 because of its ingredients. They require 72 hours’ notice, and the bakery currently lists combinations including:
● Perfectly Purple: ube cake, ube buttercream and mixed berry filling made with blueberry, raspberry and blackberry jam.
● Peanut Butter and Jelly: vanilla cake, peanut-butter buttercream and strawberry jam.
● Mocha: chocolate cake, espresso buttercream and chocolate drizzle.
● Ultimate Chocolate: rich chocolate cake, chocolate buttercream and chocolate ganache.
● S’mores: chocolate cake, toasted-marshmallow buttercream and graham-cracker butter filling.
● Carrot Cake: spiced cake with brown-sugar-glazed carrots, ermine buttercream and cream-cheese buttercream filling.
● Dutch Apple Cake: spiced cake, vanilla buttercream, caramel-apple filling and crumble topping.
Seasonal offerings listed by the bakery include Summer Strawberry, Lemon Crème de la Crème, Pumpkin Spice Latte, Eggnog and a holiday chocolate cake filled with cranberry-orange jam.
Mini Desserts.
Fabled Frostings describes its mini desserts as individual portions with the same focus on creativity and flavor. They may begin with a cookie, cake or brownie base. Orders require a minimum of 12 desserts and four days’ notice.
We can now personally confirm that the smaller format does not mean a smaller reaction. Again: the blondie.
So, What Exactly Is Is It Cake?
For anyone who has somehow avoided the period of the internet when every shoe, purse, roll of toilet paper and household appliance became a potential dessert, here is the premise.
Netflix’s Is It Cake? is a baking competition hosted by Saturday Night Live veteran Mikey Day. Skilled cake artists create hyper-realistic replicas of ordinary objects and place them beside the real versions. Celebrity judges study the lineup and attempt to identify which object is secretly cake. Then Day approaches the suspect with an unnecessarily dramatic knife and reveals whether everyone has correctly identified dessert or just accused an innocent handbag of being edible.
The format came from the “Is It Cake?” social-media phenomenon that exploded in 2020, when videos of ordinary-looking objects being sliced open to reveal layers of cake became unavoidable online. Executive producer Dan Cutforth told Netflix that the viral posts inspired the team to brainstorm the series, and the idea moved unusually quickly from meme to television.
The original series premiered in 2022 and offered a $50,000 grand prize. Netflix followed it with Is It Cake, Too? in 2023 and a third main season in 2024. The concept then expanded into seasonal versions: Is It Cake? Holiday brought back all-star bakers beginning in 2024, Is It Cake? Halloween arrived in 2025, and Is It Cake? Valentines paired cake artists with their real-life partners in 2026.
It works because the show combines three things people never outgrow: dessert, competition and the joy of confidently guessing something only to discover that you have been outsmarted by fondant.
Long Before Netflix, South Park Had a Cake Emergency.
Mike’s first idea for Fabled Frostings was not random.
It came from the 2006 South Park episode “Hell on Earth 2006,” the eleventh episode of Season 10. The episode parodies MTV’s My Super Sweet 16 by having Satan plan an absurdly elaborate Halloween birthday party.
Naturally, Satan decides the centerpiece must be a full-size Ferrari cake because Diddy had not already done it.
Three serial killers are assigned to retrieve the cake. Things go exactly as smoothly as one would expect from that sentence. The Ferrari cake never reaches the party, and Satan is presented with a replacement shaped like an Acura TL.
He does not handle the substitution well.
The official South Park site still hosts the clips, including “Where’s My Ferrari Cake?” and the three-minute “Acura Cake” sequence. The joke is that Satan behaves exactly like the spoiled birthday stars the episode is parodying: the party is supposedly for everyone, but the wrong luxury-car cake is enough to ruin everything.
So when Mike learned that Fabled Frostings makes edible sculptures, the request practically wrote itself.
A custom Ferrari cake with an Acura as the backup.
You know, a South Park Sweet 16.
The F’nAround Verdict.
Fabled Frostings understands something important: a spectacular cake should not force customers to choose between the photograph and the first bite.
The artistry gets your attention. The flavor is what brings you back.
Denee and Chris were welcoming, funny and generous with the samples at El Grito. The food backed up the presentation, the blondie earned Mike’s immediate approval, and learning about their custom work opened a dangerous new category of F’nAround ideas.
When we are ready, Mike knows whom to call.
Fabled Frostings may eventually regret encouraging him but if a life-size Ferrari cake appears in a future video, just remember that we already have a backup plan.
The Acura.
How to Order?
Fabled Frostings offers 30-minute consultations for sculpted, tiered and custom cakes, along with 15-minute consultations for signature cakes and mini desserts. Because most projects are custom, the bakery provides an estimate after the initial consultation; its site states that estimates are generally supplied within 48 hours. Commissioned desserts require a 30% retainer.
Visit FabledFrostings.com, follow @fabledfrostings on Instagram and check their pages for upcoming events across the Chicago-to-Milwaukee corridor.
And if you order the Ferrari, make sure the Acura is standing by.
Mike found the real life version of is it cake with Fabled Frostings
F’nAround Media met Fabled Frostings at El Grito Chicago in Grant Park. Samples were provided at the event; opinions are our own.
Research Links
● Netflix Tudum: How the viral meme became the series
● Netflix Tudum: Is It Cake? Season 3
● Netflix Tudum: Is It Cake? Holiday
● Netflix: Is It Cake? Halloween
● Netflix: Is It Cake? Valentines
