Why was Danya Smith eliminated in Is It Cake, Too? episode 7? The Virginia native joked about living in her mother’s house forever

Danya Smith was one of the 10 bakers in Netflix's Is It Cake, Too? competition. She managed to secure her place in the semi-finals with her bubbly personality and her hyper-realistic cakes, which fooled the judges multiple times. Smith is from Virginia and currently lives in her mother's house, occupying every room of the house with some of her cake supplies.

She mentioned on the show multiple times that she wanted to buy another place to get some personal space and move out of her family home. However, she was eliminated in episode 7 as her cake cleat did not seem real enough to judges Jeff Dye, Chiney Ogwumike, and Fluta Borg.

They felt that it lacked the leathery shine, and the color of the showlaces was very off as compared to the other decoys. They also joked that the other two did not smell of cake, so it looks like the Is It Cake, Too? forgot to mask the smell of the cake.

Smith was very upset to have been eliminated so close to the finale but felt proud of her performance, as she had never even baked a cake four years ago. She joked that she might live with her mother forever as she had just won $10000 in episode 3, which was not enough to buy a home.

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Danya tried her best to replicate the given cleats to her in Is It Cake, Too? semi-finals

Danya had chosen the cleats herself in the first round after successfully guessing which object was cake and which was real. She used melted chocolate for the plasticy touch after realizing it would be difficult to replicate the fluorescent colors. She also used the showlaces of the decoy products to create a similar-looking pattern for her own fake laces.

Danya planned on taking the Is It Cake, Too? judges to Sicily in 1935 by baking a Cinnamon churro cake with Mexican chocolate ganache, French buttercream, and a crunch toffee layer. Smith knew that the product was not shiny enough, so she decided to add some glow-in-the-dark dust to the natural neon color. Host Mikey Day was also upset when Danya was eliminated and called her his "little sister."

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Is It Cake, Too? contestant Danya Smith holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in sculpture

30-year-old Richmond, Virginia native Danya Smith is a popular content creator known for her 1990s-inspired cakes. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University. Smith worked as a visual artist for many years before starting to bake sweets in 2015.

Her cake for her grandmother’s 75th birthday was so well received that everyone encouraged her to start baking professionally. In an interview with the 6 News channel, Smith said:

"Everybody really liked it and after that, I was just like, oh, let me just keep doing this. And it just kind of spiraled from there."

Now, Danya owns Layers Cake Studio and often posts realistic cake tutorials on YouTube. She hoped that one day she could judge a baking competition and inspire other budding chefs. She has more than 26k followers on Instagram and is now confident enough to take on future opportunities post-show.

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All the episodes of Is It Cake, Too? are now available on Netflix.