• 11 months ago
Make the real life "Willy Wonka" who makes hyper-realistic cakes of household objects - including toilet plungers, razors and Crocs.

Jonny Manganello, 32, has been baking incredible cakes for the past four years.

He combines his sweet tooth with hyper-realism - making everything from coffee machines and cereal bowels to toilet plungers, rolls and razors and cat food tins.

He uses modelling chocolate to sculpt and mould his creations and has made over 200 cakes.

Jonny, a baker and content creator originally from Detroit, Michigan, US, said: "There are so many different ways to create beautiful art with cakes.

"What I like to do is infuse comedy in my baking.

"Whether that was creating a tombstone cake for my friend who was turning 30 or making a Christmas cake with gingerbread men around the cake in various sexual positions - I just want it to be silly and delicious.

"I'm a big fan of silly and stupid so I love making cakes that belong in the bathroom - like a plunger, razor or toilet paper.

"My recent favourite was the Halloween bucket with the entire thing being edible.

"There's a lot of ways to make edible things take on different textures and consistencies.

"I've spent the most time on my Wall-E cake - that took a week of eight-hour days - and I joked that the cake went stale.

"Baking is a science and an art - people sometimes call me a scientist, others call me a silly real-life Willy Wonka."

Whilst trying to find his feet as an actor in Los Angeles, Jonny began nannying for a family and discovered his passion for baking.

He said: "Baking fell into my lap in a very unusual way.

"I wasn't set out to do this and I didn't even know I could bake.

"I was a nanny for these two kids and we'd watch baking shows and I thought I could do it - a lot of false confidence.

"So I started baking for them and for the family and things started to get interesting when I started posting online."

Jonny follows a complex plan when it comes to creating his cakes.

He said: "First, I bake the cakes and create the filling and frosting - which is usually ganache.

"Then you stack, frost and fill the cakes.

"Then carve in the general shape of the object you're going for - a lot of the tools I use are kitchen staples, like serrated knives, offset spatulas and then some stranger tools - sometimes I find myself at the hardware store.

"Then I use modelling chocolate which is like clay - it's a really pliable sweet dough, so you're usually able to mould it to everything you want.

"Food realism is great as well - using edible printers so you can print out an exact match of an edible label.

"A big part of what I like to do is share the process online.

"I want to show how I make it and people can recreate it."

The baker has even appeared and competed on the hit Netflix show, 'Is it Cake?' - where contestants were tasked with trying to trick the judges.

He said: "I had the most fabulous time.

"Something I've always envied is the style of Great British Bake Off as it's not about the drama it's about the creation.

"We cared deeply about the work and were really only competitive with ourselves.

"It was one of the best months of my life. Everyone who does what I do recognises the absurdity of it. We're all a bit silly."

And despite the endless opportunities to do so, Jonny admits he's not yet pranked anyone with his hyper-realistic cakes.

He said: "I'm not taking full advantage of my skill-set.

"I made a plunger and I was going to put it in my brother's bathroom and see how long it would take him to notice but I never got around to doing that.

"I made a cake in the shape of my ear and I was going to play a prank on my mum saying I had an earache and then the ear 'falls' off but I thought it was too mean."

Category

😹
Fun
Transcript
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01:30 Have you ever wanted to create a hyper-realistic cake at home?
01:33 I love this cereal bowl cake I made.
01:35 And actually, I made a cereal bowl cake kit
01:38 that you can get now in the bottom left corner of this video
01:41 in my TikTok shop.
01:42 And this kit is basically what I wish I had when I first started baking.
01:46 Because when I first started making hyper-realistic cakes,
01:48 I didn't know what tools I needed, what specialty items,
01:51 what ingredients I needed.
01:52 And I certainly didn't have an in-depth tutorial sort of holding my hand
01:55 and leading me through the process.
01:57 So I wanted to create a product that comes to your door,
01:59 that walks you through the whole thing,
02:01 and gives you everything you're going to need
02:03 that you wouldn't know you even needed.
02:06 A couple of cool things.
02:07 One, TikTok is offering free shipping right now, which is amazing.
02:10 Oh, and they're offering $20 off for first-time customers.
02:14 Also, another thing is I love seeing you guys tag me in photos and videos
02:18 of your cake kit creation.
02:21 You're getting really good at making cakes.
02:23 And maybe that's because of the cake kit.
02:25 Who knows?
02:25 Maybe it's my video tutorial.
02:27 Or maybe you were just born with it.
02:29 But yeah, I'm going to try to stitch and duet
02:31 as many of those videos as possible right here on my TikTok channel.
02:35 This is great for beginning bakers.
02:37 Just don't get too good, because I don't want that much competition.
02:39 Make sure you get it now in my TikTok shop.

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