Cake Boss
Buddy says he does his baking the old fashioned way and that they must be doing something right, because the bakery has been open almost a hundred years.
His first cake order in this episode is for an “old school” Italian wedding cake. The groom wants a dove somewhere on the cake, but he means a CHAW-co-lot dove or a molded dove. Buddy takes it one step further and asks why not put REAL birds IN the cake? He says he’s only done two cakes like that in his entire life, but that his father made tons of them. He’s excited and so darling as he tells the groom this will be a remembrance of HIS father, but also Buddy's. Sweet.
Buddy teaches his employees how to do flowers HIS way. His roses are beautiful, “Everything I know, I was taught…it was passed down to me.” He gets Sal to explain to the young folks how they used to go to the chicken store to find doves. One baker says she never heard of a chicken store. Me neither.
Danny “The Mule” tells us that his wedding cake had birds.
Buddy attends to another customer. This one has a pregnant wife and he’s planning to make her a lobster tail pastry – sfogliatella - filled with pastry cream. The pastry looks like strudel dough. Buddy and Frankie are stretching, stretching, stretching the dough, as they roll. It’s kind of amazing, and it’s all made from scratch.
Frankie calls around looking for white doves, but can’t find any. He and Danny decide to trap some pigeons in the park. Buddy knows nothing about this and is busy making hundreds of ivy leaves, which are painted in TWO shades of green.
Back to the lobster tail. After the dough was stretched, stretched, stretched (get the idea?) and rolled, Buddy cuts it into individual slices. Then he makes a funnel shape and fills it with cream puff mix. I’ve never seen anything like that. When it bakes, it leaves a big open space for a cream filling. Goodness! I guess the pastry isn’t strong enough to support all that filling, without the addition of the cream puff dough. (Ludo would call it pâte à choux).
Buddy finds out that his guys are trying to catch pigeons and he tells the two dummies to get back to the bakery, while they sputter about how they couldn’t find doves anywhere. Buddy says he doesn’t need excuses, he needs DOVES. I know just what he means. How many times have I said that? Cut the excuses, bring me doves.
Frankie calls around some more and finds 2 white doves.
Buddy bakes the lobster tails for 20 to 25 minutes. Then he fills them with a pink (it’s a girl) cream filling. Wow, I want that.
PLUS, Buddy is packing up a huge selection of their best Italian pastries for the pregnant lady. He and Danny go and deliver the lobster tails and everything else to her. She’s thrilled and can barely wait for him to take the top off the box, before she starts digging in.
Back at the bakery, they assemble the enormous 5 foot high cake, which includes a Plexiglas cage for the birds. The birds arrive. The bakers take a peak inside the box and THEY ARE GEESE or maybe swans. They keep us in suspense about what the Cake Boss will do by going to a commercial quickly.
Preview of next week shows a Humpty-Dumpty cake being dropped down the stairs. Buddy’s not happy.
Oh, they’re ducks. Whatever. Frankie goes off to find doves, while Buddy finishes the stunning cake. Frankie comes back with 2 doves. Buddy hugs Frankie.
All the bakery folks gather to look at the doves. They pet them and put them back in the box and set it in Buddy’s office. Buddy is so proud of himself.
They take apart the huge wedding cake and carry it to the truck. The birds go in the back too. I hope nothing bad happens. Danny rides in the back of the truck and talks to the doves the entire trip.
Buddy and Danny bring the cake into the venue in pieces. They assemble it and put more leaves on. Then Buddy and Danny – in their chef’s whites - bring out the birds in front of everyone and put them in the cage. (I was wondering how they were going to that. I thought those poor birds were going to be in there for hours.)
The couple opens the cage and invites them to fly out. The doves don’t want to leave. It’s funny. The bride calls over Buddy to help. He comes over and yells Getouttahere! He and Danny pull them out and hand them to the couple. They throw the doves up in the air and, thankfully, the birds don’t hit the ground. Now THAT would be a wedding moment that would be talked about for decades.
Good episode. How can you miss when you have birds flying out of cakes? But I still like mama running through the bakery, yelping about anatomically correct cakes.
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