I am trying to think of a situation where you might have watched this last night. Yay, England won, let’s celebrate by watching elaborate cake baking. Boo, England lost, let’s seek comfort in cake. Yay, England lost, let’s celebrate with cake, because we are Colombian, Scottish, Welsh, etc. Boo, we hate football, instead we are going to binge-watch a baking show.

They all work; now I am thinking it is unlikely you didn’t watch Nailed It! last night. Nailed It! it is.

Once upon a time, cakes looked like cakes. If my mum asked me what kind of cake I wanted for my birthday, she meant did I want a chocolate one (yes) or another kind, like maybe a fruitcake (definitely not). There was no choice in shape; it would be cake-shaped.

Times have changed. When my six-year-old was asked what kind of cake he wanted for his birthday, he said he would like an allotment cake, meaning a cake that looked like an allotment. We haven’t even got an allotment, we are on a long waiting list for one, but he is already excited about it, even though he will probably be a parent himself by the time we get to the front of the queue. So his mum spent about a week making a cake that did look a bit like an allotment, with rows of carrots and lettuces, fruit canes, a shed. Quite good – but not to eat (it was dry and bland; I’m safe, she doesn’t read me). Anyway, that is not important, it is all about how it looks, photographing it and posting it.

Nailed It! cashes in on this strange craze. In the first few episodes of the second season, contestants have to copy a cake that looks like tea for the Queen, with a table and tablecloth, a little gilded tea set and a gravity-defying teapot pouring a stream of brown icing tea. There is a cake that looks like a barbecue grill. And fairytale cupcakes, with Little Red Riding Hood, Humpty Dumpty and Jack and the Beanstalk. Sometimes it breaks away from cakes. Pancakes that look like bacon and eggs anyone? Because who wants to have one sort of breakfast that looks like what it is when you can spend a lot of time making it look like a different sort of breakfast.

It is not even always sweet. In episode three, there is a savoury football stadium snack, with guacamole turf and piped sour-cream yard lines. Yes, that kind of football, this is a US show. But hey, there is no reason why you can’t adapt the idea and make something to celebrate the beautiful game: a Russia 2018 cake? A penalty shootout cake?

Speaking of failure, there is a big slice of that in Nailed It! as well. Because contestants aren’t swotty Great British star bakers. These guys – technical software specialist Will from Maryland, Leanne the operations manager from Texas, etc – are rubbish at it. That is the point. What is supposed to be tea for the Queen ends up looking more like a corgi’s dinner, an NFL pitch like the Los Angeles Rams one after an earthquake. It is a celebration of failure, and of people attempting the cake art thing while trying to copy stuff from the internet and not getting it right. Failed It.

Comedy baking then, hosted by comedian Nicole Byer. Plus there is a comedy Frenchman, a chocolatier named Jacques Torres who once baked a cake for the pope. Jacques is head judge, then there are guest judges, including an actual LA Ram in one.

“Fee fi fo … fun!” says Nicole, introducing the fairytale cupcake challenge. And you know what – it is, and she is. Even though every episode is pretty much the same: here is something amazing, over to you guys, that’s really not amazing, ha ha ha.

Oh, here is a slight variation, with extra comedy and drama, for which you don’t even need Netflix: it is on YouTube – a Nailed It!/Queer Eye mashup. So the guys from Queer Eye, the Fab Five – big-time Nailed It! fans, apparently – are doing it. Antoni Porowski joins Nicole and Jacques on the judging panel, because he is the food expert; the others have to makes cakes in the form of … themselves. All very knowing and meta – television eating itself, literally. Also rather fabulous.

Now, inspired by the show – and by heroic failure – I am going to attempt my own penalty shootout cake. At the time of writing I don’t know how the Colombia game went, so mine will celebrate another England World Cup performance. It is going to have a little icing Chris Waddle, spooning it over, in Italia 90. It will be amazing, a work of cake art that raises the bar. That’s it – I will literally raise the bar, so the ball goes in and England go on to win the World Cup, yay!