Reege Visits The Cake Boss And Love Is A Many Splendored Thing, Especially If You’ve Been Married 49 Times

Cake Boss with Buddy Valastro

A Funny Regis & Fifty Weddings 

It’s been a while since I’ve checked in with the Cake Boss. I'm sure he’s still going strong. The intro for his show is now Buddy and the crew in an abbreviated production number of “Sugar, Sugar”.  Even Mama gets into the act. Gosh, I hope he still bakes for a living.

His first client consult is with Maria, the Korean Bride. She’s been married 49 times in 49 states and she wants Buddy to make a cake for her last wedding in New York. AND she’s never married the same person twice. Buddy is incredulous. And when she explains it’s “an art project”, he’s even more confused. It’s not just you, Buddy!

Maria says people get divorced too easily. Oh, THAT explains it! She gets married a lot and divorced a lot to make the point that it’s terrible to get married a lot and divorced a lot. She’s obviously a loon and if Buddy takes on this project, he’s kind of one too. He should say, Honey, take a few cannoli for the road and Ciao, baby!

She shows Buddy some pictures and NOW, it ALL makes sense…NOT!!! It even makes less sense. She marries guys in SOME of her weddings. But in others, she marries a tree and the Liberty Bell. Oh, and a horse too. Let’s not think about that wedding night. 

I’d like to see Buddy make a cake that reflects all 50 weddings, but let’s see what he thinks. He puts it well. “What the…Who da…What?

Buddy explains he’s going to do a classic 3 tier wedding cake. (Yeah, that follows...What could be more classic than marrying a horse?) Then he’s going to put figurines of some of her different grooms around the cake. Okay, that’s sort of what I said, but I guess he can’t fit all of them on the cake.

There are a few new young guys in the bakery since I last watched. Is one of them Cousin Ant-knee? I sure hope so. He’s certainly moved up from his cake-delivering days.

We move on to Regis coming to the bakery. He greets all the folks outside AND inside. I notice none of them is getting out of line to say hi. He finds Buddy in the kitchen. With Gelman watching, he tells Buddy he wants to learn to bake a real cake, not just the small stuff. Sister Maddalena gets him set up with a Cake Boss Chef’s jacket. You can have one too.

Buddy whispers to Reege that he wants his help in pranking some of the younger guys in the bakery, including Cousin Ant-Knee. Regis’s eye light up at the idea. (Maybe he’ll whisper to Buddy to include Gelman in the joke.)

They arrange that when Ant-Knee glances at Regis, Regis will say, “Are you looking at me?” Then Buddy will get Ant-Knee with a pie. Reege gets nervous that HE’LL get it in the face. Buddy assures him that’s not the case. I’m worried for Reege. And when he sees Gelman looking particularly happy, he’s really concerned, but he goes along with it. I don’t like pranks. They make me uneasy.

Buddy takes Reege upstairs to show him how to do a traditional buttercream cake. Buddy shows him how to dirty ice a cake and then tells him to do it. Poor Regis can’t even turn the turntable as he’s squeezing out the icing onto the cake. Actually, he can’t even squeeze the icing out. This is looking squirrelly. (And a squirrel would do a MUCH better job.)

Ant-knee comes by and axes what they’re making. Buddy introduces them and Regis goes into his shtick. Ant-knee doesn’t give an inch. He says, “Why are YOU looking at ME?” Then Buddy starts arguing with him and all of sudden Joey comes by and slaps a bunch of icing(?) in Ant-Knee’s face. I don’t think that’s funny. Regis says the whole thing reminds him of a Joe Pesci movie. Okay, the producers have GOT to come up with better routines. Or maybe this is proof of the fact that Buddy and crew come up with them themselves. Kind of dumb. And the worst part is that I think they wasted Reege.

Oh good, they’re not done with him. Regis decorates the cake he iced by piping blue icing around the top edge with a piping bag THAT HAS NO NOZZLE ON IT! Okay, this is getting truly slapstick. A baby could do a better job.

AND he’s getting tons of colored icing on the sleeve of his jacket, which his now good friend, Ant-Knee, points out to him. Buddy says they should bury his cake and build a church over it. Regis says he thought it would be a lot easier.

Buddy is going to make an appearance on Live with Regis and Kelly. Regis wants Buddy to bring a really good cake for the staff. As if there was any other kind…

They get to work on the nut case’s cake. Mauro can’t believe she married the Liberty Bell.  Buddy makes a kind of formal looking white square layered cake with a red design on it that looks like what’s on Chinese takeout boxes. You know…all red and swirly.

For the Regis and Kelly cake, Buddy has Ralph and Juan making Regis and Kelly. What if they look scary?

Hey! I just noticed they’re at this big beautiful new bakery warehouse-type of place. Interesting. A LOT of cannoli are getting fried. Joey’s former fire captain comes to see him at work and wonders if it’s true that he’s really thinking about leaving the FD. He says he can’t work at the bakery AND at the Fire Department. The Captain says he’s got to really think about it. Now Joey is rethinking his whole plan.

Back to the old bakery and Buddy is dealing with the wedding cake. Buddy puts all the bits and pieces on the cake. Next we’re in Times Square where Maria marries (in about 3 seconds) a Deepak Chopra lookalike. I don’t think they meant for him to look like Deepak, he just does. What happens now? Does she get divorced before they cut the cake? I guess not, because Buddy’s just delivering it now.

You know that really could BE Deepak Chopra. Oh, his name is Ram. Ant-knee gets down on his knee and asks if he can be number 51. Apparently not.

Back to the frightening looking Regis and Kelly cake. It’s interesting that they’re making busts, not complete figures. Speaking of busts, Regis later comments on the size of Kelly's (iced) chest. Buddy decorates Kelly’s base with shoes and Reege’s with sports and Irish heritage things.

The bakers arrive at the show and wait in the green room. Danny has come along because he’s crazy for Kelly. He doesn't look particularly alluring. He’s wearing old pants that he made into shorts with scissors. Beautiful and shiny-looking Kelly comes in to say hi and he’s completely star-struck. Danny stands robotically and stares all up and down at her. She says she thinks he likes her outfit. Buddy asks her if they can get a picture of her with Danny. She grabs Danny and smiles for the camera and says that Danny smells like frosting. Someone says he smells like that AND cigarettes too.

Then they introduce Buddy and he’s perfectly at home on live television. They bring out the Regis and Kelly cake. They love it. The shows ends with Regis saying his cake could have been better if only he had had a tip to use. (Isn’t that true of life…without the right tip, nothing works out?)

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Buddy Bakes A Tower Of A Building AND Of Magazines, Plus He “Closes” That Bell

Cake Boss with Buddy Valastro

Magazines, a Mega Screen & Maurizio

Buddy has a couple of huge cakes to make this week. Has he EVER made a cake that flopped? And, except for Bridezilla, was there ever a customer who was unhappy with a cake from the Cake Boss? I don’t think so.

This week Grace takes a call and passes it on to Buddy. Silvia Davi from the NASDAQ wants Buddy to make a ten year anniversary cake for the NASDAQ building in Times Square. Buddy tells us that it has one of the largest megatron screens in the world.

BTW, the only information I could find on MEGATRON was as an action figure. I’m wondering whether Buddy was playing with the kids and had Transformers on the brain. Obviously, he’s tawking about the giant screen in front of the building. Whether it’s a megatron or not, I have no idea, but it IS a really big deal.

Nasdaq had invested an enormous amount in the sign, which will be the largest LED -- light-emitting diode -- in the world and the largest single sign of any kind in Times Square. Produced by Saco Smart Vision of Montreal, it will consist of 8,400 LED panels and cost about $25 million. The panels will allow a single image, or a multitude of images, to move across the sign's surface. The rent for the sign will be more than $2 million a year.

Silvia tells Buddy that she wants the cake to look exactly like the building AND she wants it to light up. Ah, that’s a piece of cake for Buddy….pun intended.

Remember when he had a fire eater light up a cake? Lights are easy.

Oh, wait a second, the NASDAQ lady also wants him to recreate the excitement of Times Square. If the singing cowboy in his underwear isn’t on that cake, I’ll be mad.

Nothing says Times Square to me more than a grown man in his tightie whities singing for his supper and hugging (ew) all the tourists.

Then, just to sweeten the deal, Silvia asks him if would ring the closing bell at the NASDAQ. Now THAT’S cool.

Buddy tells the crew about “closing the bell”. Frankie wants to know if Buddy heard them correctly. Remi says maybe they meant he was going to ring the dinner bell in the kitchen. At least he’d get a free meal.

Buddy tells them to drop dead. Buddy says he going to make “all youse” eat their words, when they see him ringing the bell. He actually says closing the bell again, but I understand what he means. (I wonder if the final scene of the episode will be Buddy ringing the bell or the guys eating their words.)

We see the plan for the tower and the building AND the street. Let’s see if he includes the naked cowboy. Ok…streets. Check. Hot dog stand. Check. People walking around. Check. The underweared cowboy. Not check. (Did you know that he wears TWO pairs of tightie whities? I guess to protect himself as well as us.)

Buddy’s worried about lighting up the NASDAQ tower.

Buddy calls over Sunshine to do the sculpting of the small elements. He’s going to make a vanilla cake with chaw-co-lot fudge filling. They stack the cake which makes the rounds of the tower go up, up and up.

Next Buddy goes to the Hearst Corporation building to see Gayle and Susan Casey. They want a cake for O Magazine’s 10th anniversary. He brings them lots of cupcakes to taste. They’re having 10 different people make birthday cakes. (Wasn’t HIS the one on the anniversary show at Radio City?) Gayle says she wants the cake to be so pretty that when you see a picture of it in the magazine, you just want to lick it. His idea is to do 35 or 40 issues of the magazine made out of cake, stacked on top of each other.

Back at the shop, Cousin Ant-Knee is complaining that there are too many deliveries. He repeatedly says “I’m feeling overwhelmed.” I guess that’s the line the producers gave him to say.

PLUS he says he could do more. He wants to BAKE! Buddy looks at him sideways as if he wants to whack him.

Buddy says he has to prove himself before he’ll share his father’s recipes with him. Ant-Knee says he can do it. Buddy admits he’s a hard worker, so he’ll give him a shot. But Buddy’s worried about who will do the deliveries. Someone suggests Maurizio, “Peewee”, his wife’s brother, his brother in law. How come we haven’t seen him before? He works part-time at the bakery cleaning up.

Back to the O cake, they print the front covers of the magazines in edible icing. It looks so cool. It actually looks like the actual magazines, but in CAKE!

They’re finishing up the HUGE NASDAQ cake, it looks so big that it’s almost true to size. He comes up with a plan for the “megatron” with “Disco” Luster dust. Buddy is excited.

Buddy gives Maurizio a test to see if he’s able to deliver his cakes. He makes him drive in the alley through a bunch of cones. Next Maurizio has to touch a cone with the (large) car, WITHOUT knocking off an egg which is balancing on top of the cone. He does it! And the test cake in the trunk was okay too. Buddy slaps him (hard) in congratulations.

They go back to the millions of details on the NASDAQ cake. Buddy aims strobe lights at the cake to make the luster dust glitter. He arranges them JUST right and it looks amazing.

Buddy stacks all the O magazine cakes. It looks amazing and on the bottom he puts a cake replica of the first magazine they ever published. They have to bring the cake to be photographed for the magazine. Rachel and Celia from O magazine LOVE it. They want Buddy in the picture too.

Buddy says the NASDAQ cake really has to have a Times Square feel. He doesn’t want to see the wires on the strobe lights, so he makes (cake) billboards to cover then up.

They deliver it to the NASDAQ building and guess what? The cake doesn’t fit through the front door of the building! Of course, it doesn’t. Buddy yells, “It don’t fit through the front door!” What will Buddy do?!!! Commercial, of course.

Meanwhile there’s a huge crowd gathered around outside. Buddy and the boys take the cake around the corner to another entrance, which “luckily” had a Buddy-sized-cake doorway.

He shows the NASDAQ people the cake with the strobes. Everyone is thrilled. He meets Silvia and she asks him if he’s ready. Buddy says he’s so excited to be closing the bell. Silvia doesn’t correct him, except she says immediately, “You’re going to close the MARKET.” Buddy says, “Yeah, I’m going to close the market. They don’t believe me,” pointing to his friends.

He sends his guys outside to watch. On the huge building we see Silvia introducing “Cake Artist” Buddy Valastro to officially ring the NASDAQ closing bell. Buddy says, “I’m just a baker from New Joisey and here I am closing the biggest market in the world” The we see something on the closed captioning about the American Dream and he says (to us) that he kept thinking of his dad watching him from above. They count down and he “closed that bell”.

The last scene ISN’T Buddy making the guys eat crow, but the entire crew admiring the spread about their cake in O magazine. Buddy did it again with lots of help. That’s what it’s about – family and cake and the American dream.

Breaking news about the Cake Boss

Buddy, family and crew will be replacing Jon and Kate’s litter on Monday nights on TLC at 9 pm beginning November 30th.

I really hope this doesn’t mean that Buddy will start wearing Ed Hardy clothes or that the sistahs will get strange haircuts. If they just keep cranking out the cannoli, everything should be okay.

Maybe Mauro and Frankie will get a spinoff at 10 pm.

Major Themes, Historical Perspectives And Significant Comparisons, Contrasts And Connections Between The Ace Of Cakes And The Cake Boss

Okay, I’m just having you on. I stole that title from here, but actually it’s not too far afield from how this post turned out. I simply wanted to watch Ace of Cakes and I couldn’t stop myself from comparing it (the show) and him (Duff) to that other baker (Buddy) and HIS crew and show. Is one better than the other? Not necessarily.

Ace of Cakes

Get Your Kicks on Cake

I haven’t watched that many Ace of Cake’s. Let’s see if I can fall for Duff like I fell for Buddy.

Manager Mary Alice talks about doing a human heart cake for a cardiologist. She’s kind of like Buddy’s sister, Mary, I guess.

I'll tell you right off the bat that the Cake Boss website is heads and tales above the Ace of Cakes'. (Of course, we can’t blame them for having to be part of the monstrosity that is the Food Network website.) But Buddy’s has a fabulous section of bios on all the folks. The Ace of Cakes only features info about Duff.

On to the show...Coming up is Cake Decorator Erica making a sewing machine cake, which is so accurate that it even has a working needle and thread.

Chef Adam comes in at 5:30 am to start baking. He likes being there at that time to bring the bakery “out of its peaceful slumber”. Alrighty then. Adam also likes to come and go as he pleases. He says the only thing that matters is the final product.

By 10 am, everything is in full gear. Executive Sous Chef Geof has come in and turned all the lights on. (He feels kind of bad about doing that.) This morning he tells Baker Ben that he needs TEN carrot cakes. Kidding! That’s not nice.

Mary Alice tells us about a human heart cake, which will have a pacemaker attached. The cake is for Heather’s boyfriend Bob, a heart surgeon. Since there are no bios on the site, I don’t know who Heather is. Is she THIS person? Why does Ace of Cakes have writers? Or more importantly, why are they letting the fact that they HAVE writers out of the bag?

Cake Decorator Lauren is making the heart cake, which Duff says is funny because she’s really squeamish. Geof, speaking seriously, says it’s going to be a problem, because Lauren doesn’t want to look at pictures of hearts and there’s no way to do it otherwise.

He says sometimes work isn’t fun and you gotta do what you gotta do. (Let’s remember we ARE talking about MAKING a heart cake, not DOING actual heart surgery.) But I guess the secret of success in ANY field is to take it seriously.

Lauren asks Cake Decorator Elena to look at the body parts for her. Elena doesn’t seem thrilled.

Duff assigns Cake Decorator Erica the task of making a realistic sewing machine for a retiring home economics teacher. Mary Alice thinks that’s sweet. So do I. Goodness! They show a picture of the woman who is retiring after 33 years of teaching home economics. She looks 30 years old. So THAT’S the secret to everlasting youth - teaching the youth of America how to sew and cook.

Erica is very excited by the project and brings in her own sewing book the next day. For some reason, she’s struck by one of the placemat projects in the book. It’s those jeans placemats that have the back pocket on them for the napkin. Somebody else says, “It’s like you’re eating off someone’s behind.”

WHO would have placemats like that? Really? Those have got to be the ugliest things ever…

Don’t ask…but why, oh, why do I have a matching table runner too? Plus I have enough placemats to feed the entire Gosselin clan.

Back to the anatomically correct cake, Adam (?) says they’re getting to the heart of the matter. Yuck, yuck. Lauren says a lot of the folks in the bakery would be pretty good heart surgeons, because they have very steady hands, they would just have to learn the doctor part. She’s funny.

Mary Alice tells us that she has all new telephone equipment. Duff tells us her husband installed them all. Apparently he was taking too long to start the job and the phones were going haywire, so Duff yelled and shouted a bit (we didn’t see that, we only heard about it) and threw them out. It was kind of hard to talk to customers without a phone. The next day they had all new phones.

If this had been the Cake Boss, we would have SEEN Buddy screaming about the phones and his sisters would have been scurrying around to get them fixed. Duff lives in a much more egalitarian world. Just because he’s the boss AND a man, doesn’t mean everything gets done with just a bellow.

Some of the decorators are assembling a friend’s birthday cake. There is a pile of yellow (pound?) cake in a messed-up stack and they are squeezing icing on it from piping bags. The icing is going every which way and it SHOULD look really awful, but actually it looks like scraps of yummy cake with a bunch of icing squiggles. Nothing wrong with that.

Various cakes are being assembled. One of them is a big poufy bed, all in white, representing the Westin Hotel’s Heavenly Bed. The heart cake is coming together. Lauren wonders if people eat hearts. Joe the dishwasher (think Stretch, but 10 years younger) says people eat raw frog’s hearts. Geof disagrees and says that’s not in the vegan manual.

Erica loves making all the dials and buttons for her sewing machine cake, which is weird kind of machine called a Serger.

The heart cake is finished. Ewww. Duff admires all the little blood vessels she's made. Dr. Bob comes in with Heather (I still have no idea who she is) and he’s amazed.

Katherine, Anna and Geof say it’s so hot that something is going to go wrong. They crank up the air conditioning so high that Mary Alice is wearing a goofy crocheted scarf and hat. Other cakes are cracking. The bed cake is problematical. Ben and Catherine are having a hard time working on it.

The next day, the “Heavenly Bed” cake is even more messed up. Cake decorators are summoned to come in and fix it. Duff decides to drive it to New York and then fix it there.

Erica adds every detail possible to her sewing machine cake. It is amazing. Some lady delivers it and the home ec teacher is completely thrilled.

Back to Duff, he’s in the back of the truck, which is taking the bed cake to New York. They’re on the New Jersey Turnpike and Duff takes an exacto knife and starts to cut away the bad parts of the icing and then he cuts himself. (This is all while the truck is moving.) He says he tries to put a little part of himself in every cake, but not usually that literally.

They arrive at the hotel and do all kinds of repairs on the cake in the hotel kitchen, pretending to the hotel manager that nothing is wrong. Actually it’s a disaster, but somehow they fix it (these cake bakers are like super heroes!) and the cake is incredible. It really does look like one of those big, fluffy hotel “heavenly beds”.

So how does Ace of Cakes stack up against my friend the Cake Boss? I like that Duff doesn’t have an ounce of self-consciousness about the whole starring-in-a-television-show thing. Duff totally doesn’t take himself seriously. And, actually, Buddy could learn a thing or two from him about how he treats the women in his life (or at least in his bakery).

Duff treats everyone equally. Women aren’t marginalized. Men aren’t part of a special inner circle in his world. Buddy's treatment of his sisters and wife, not to mention his mother, is very old school stereotypical. He puts them on a pedestal, while at the same time relegating them to a lower social standing, just because they are women.

But, heck, it's Buddy and he's just so lovable that you give him a pass. (I do anyway.) I just hope his son, the little prince, won't be the only one to get a shot at running the bakery in the next generation. I hope, his daughter, the little princess, will be in the running too.

This is what it comes to - Duff and crew are like your super cool college friends. They’re awesome and so talented and, clearly, they’re a lot of fun to be around. They're like the cool Presidential campaign you worked on and got fired up by. But Buddy and crew are like your family. They scream and kvetch and come up with embarrassing moments, but you’ll always go home to them because they’re comfortable and they’ll always be there, even if they are stodgy and old fashioned.

I guess, in this case, familiarity breeds affection and I feel like part of Buddy’s family. Duff and company? I love them as friends. Great, fun friends, but Buddy? I just love him to pieces. So I guess I’d take a fire-spitting cake over a pace-makered one anytime, plus let's not forget about those cannoli.

Buddy Blows It (Up) In The Cake Boss Season Finale

Cake Boss

Fireworks, Falling Fondant & Fathers

The latest Cake Boss begins with a warning about fireworks. That’s funny that there was no warning about spitting flames through a cake or deep frying a cannoli big enough to land a small plane through.

The bakers are driving somewhere at night (in their chefs’ whites). They’re going to Long Island to meet with the famiglia Grucci, the maestros of amazing fireworks. Buddy is really impressed by all the incredible firework displays they’ve done for different occasions - July 4th, the Brooklyn Bridge centennial, inaugurations, etc.

Today they need a cake for Donna Grucci’s father’s birthday. He was the founder of their fireworks company. Dad doesn’t appear to be around anymore. Is this an Italian thing to bake for the departed? Buddy mentions he did the same thing to honor HIS father a few weeks earlier.

Donna's brother, Felix Grucci, says that the company is noted for doing displays in the New York harbor. THAT’S the understatement of the year. This one wasn't in New York, but it was grand enough that it could have been.

Felix would be happy if Buddy could incorporate various NY landmarks on the cake. He’s also happy to provide them with some “pyrotechnics” for “the piece”. They've arranged a little fireworks show for Buddy and Mauro to get them in the mood. Stunning.

Buddy’s idea for the cake is to do three land masses -

Man-HAH!!!-IN, Brooklyn and Hoboken, with the Brooklyn Bridge, the Statue of Liberty and various skyscrapers on there as well. He says there’s going to be fireworks coming out of each element.

He has the team making the cakes and the icing. He makes the Statue of Liberty from a pipe covered with rice krispie treats, which are then covered with modeling chaw-co-lot.

Buddy’s wife calls and reminds him that he has to go to little Buddy’s school tomorrow for Bring Daddy To School day. There’s plaintive music in the background as we see scenes of Buddy’s kids (especially his favored namesake) coming to visit the bakery. He decides to make (have his team make) little cakes for each father and son.

Buddy wants to test what will happen when you mix fireworks with a cake. He sends Frankie out to buy some fireworks. Buddy puts one in a cake and they all go out into alley behind the bakery. He lights the thing and runs away. Nothing happens at first and then it EXPLODES… big time. Perhaps they’re smart to let the Grucci’s take care of the “pyrotechnics”.

They finish making the Grucci cakes. Now on to the icing. Buddy lays a screen on top of fondant and a roller goes over to make a window pattern. He does the same thing to make bricks. For the roof, he uses black poppy seeds to look like asphalt. Oh my, he’s doing TONS of buildings – 9 actually, plus a bridge, a stadium and the Statue of Liberty.

Frankie goes to get little “snap” fireworks. Buddy sneaks behind his sister, Mary, and throws them at her feet, scaring her. She tells MOM! Buddy comes down again and throws them at Mom’s feet. Mom giggles while she tells Mary “He’s done. He’s done.” (I think Buddy can do anything and mom won’t care...unless, of course, he bakes dirty cakes. THAT she will not tolerate.)

The sides are beginning to slide off one of the skyscrapers. The problem is they’ve brought this huge conglomeration of cakes into the 80° oven room to be wired up for the fireworks, because it’s the only room big enough to hold the thing!

Buddy explains that when you take a cake that’s cool from the refrigerator and put it in a hot room, the fondant will start to sweat and then peel off from the sides of the cake.

They glue (with icing) whatever needs to be touched up and they finish all the little derails – boats, sidewalks, taxi cabs and a replica of Carlo’s Bake Shop itself. AND there is even the Grucci patriarch sitting on the cake, holding a fuse as if he’s about to light the fireworks. Buddy says to his team that he’s “proud of youse”.

They go to load it into the truck. There’s a problem. It doesn’t fit in the truck. They have to take a shelf out of the truck, which is bolted from the bottom. When they finally do it, Buddy says, “It was like the gates of heavens opening” and anything was possible.

They unload it to a surprisingly small crowd. Everyone is excited. They love it. Donna says her father would be so honored. The Grucci’s finish setting up the fireworks. They set them off on top of all the buildings (cakes). Incredible. They go off beautifully.

Buddy is reminded of his father and he says both businesses are all about family. He stays to cut the cake and serve it around. Felix Grucci is especially touched. Buddy says, “We did it with all our heart. We know how it feels.” Aww. Buddy is so sweet. The two Italian sons embrace.

Next scene is Buddy at Bring Your Dad To School day. Little Buddy is too cute. The dad and kids decorate the little cakes he brought in. The Cake Boss remembers special times with his dad. We see old pictures and videos.

Remember, this is the finale of season one of Cake Boss (yes, it has been renewed) and Buddy is getting rather contemplative. He says in the last year they’ve taken the bakery to a whole new level to fulfill the goal his father had. In spite of all the yelling and conflict, “at the end of the day” they’re all family.

”There’s a lot of love in this bakery.” Buddy continues. “This is what my father wanted. This is how things were supposed to be. This is where I wanna be. I wanna be there with my son, making this cake, reminiscing about my day…It couldn’t have been a better day.”

I can’t help but think that Pops wouldn’t necessarily agree that this is how things were supposed to be. I think he might have liked to have stuck around a bit longer and spent more time with his big crew of a family. But I guess becoming the “man” of the family when he was only 17 prepared Buddy to lead the family business and become the Cake Boss that we’ve come to love.

Buddy Slants A Cake And Disses His Sisters Plus Only The Boys Get Lobster

Cake Boss

Leaning, Lobsters & Lectures

Even though he wasn't nice to the gals, Buddy is so adorable, I’m going to let him get away with just a gentle lecture:

Buddy, be nice to youse sistahs!

Before we get to that, Buddy utters some famous last words: “It’s going to LOOK like the tower and it’s going to LEAN like the tower.” Don’t make promises you can’t keep, Cake Boss.

A couple comes in wanting a Leaning Tower of Pisa cake. Buddy is going to make every little column perfect. I’VE actually been to the Leaning Tower Of Pisa. It was so long ago it wasn’t even leaning…Badda boom. Actually, it was, but back then you could walk up into the tower. They didn’t allow that for years and, recently, they opened it yet again.

On the base of the Pisa cake, Buddy’s going to put lookalike figures of the couple on a Vespa. He’s using so much piping to construct it, it looks like he’s building a sewer. Buddy says, “She’s a gonna lean, but she’s a not gonna fall.” It’s a pound cake with a buttercream filling. Goodness, that cake is 15 feet tall. Oh, Buddy says it’s 4 feet tall.

Some guy with glasses comes into the bakery and tells the sisters that he has an appointment with Buddy. Wazzup with dis?!! Any bespectacled person can just walk in and see the Cake Boss?

Michael, glasses guy, is the best man at a wedding for the first time ever. He’s throwing a party for the couple on Friday. WHO DOES THAT? Who organizes a cake for an important party 3 days before? What a loser. He tells Buddy he’s planning a clambake on a roof deck(?)

Michael, not terribly fluid with his words, is searching for the words to tell Buddy what he wants. Good luck giving the speech at the wedding! “You know” really doesn’t explain the kind of cake that Buddy should make.

Michael does say the couple has been together for 10 years. Buddy says, “Wow, they’re finally taking the plunge!!!” And so is born the singular idea of a lobster bride and groom about to be plunged to their deaths in a pot of boiling water. Nothing says wedding like a good crustacean murder.

(If this were Julie and Julia, the Humane Society would be hanging around.)

They continue with the Pisa cake using a brick rolling pin, which makes fondant look like bricks. That’s cool. Buddy put columns between each layer and tops them with fondant balustrades. And he puts caps and bases onto each column. He is amazing. I’d like to see Buddy build the Taj Majal with modeling chaw-co-lot.

Weirdo Michael comes back and tells Buddy he needs the cake TONIGHT! This is ridiculous. C’mon, I don’t believe this. Buddy reluctantly agrees to have it ready.

Buddy asks Mauro what was he supposed to say. Danny says he should have said N-O. Mauro says if Buddy agreed to do it, he better start lobstering.

Buddy makes a big silver pot out of cake. He sprinkles brown sugar around to look like sand (we’ve seen that trick before). Then he melts isomalt, “a sugar substitute used in candy making” and pours it over the ice to make it look almost crystal looking. That will be the boiling water. He puts the dried isomalt on top and it looks good. THEN he makes clam shells out of fondant.

He asks cousin Ant-knee to get him some lobsters for inspiration.

The sisters call up to the bakery on the intercom to ask Buddy a question. The bakers refuse to pick up the phone, so the gals can’t understand what the bakery is saying. He says they “take it offensively” when they can’t hear him. They keep screaming at each other. Mauro asks why don’t dey just take a message.

Cake Boss yells that every day he comes to work and gets his balls broken and when he drops dead he’s going to go right to heaven. Meanwhile Danielle is sculpting the Vespa. Buddy looks at the Pisa cake and adds some brown petal dust to make it look a little antique.

Ant-knee walks in with 2 live lobsters. All the guys come over and play with them. Seeing them helps Buddy make the lobsters for the cake.

Suddenly Grace and her posse of sisters come storming into the bakery. She says, “YOU’RE playing with lobsters and WE’RE busy.” They keep yelling about not being able to hear him on the intercom. He decides to take the path of least resistance and yeses them to death. They play the sisters’ voices fast to sound like Minnie Mouse. One of the girl artists looks at the guys like she doesn’t like how disrespectfully they’re being treated. Buddy! These are sisters, daughters, wives…the keepers of the sacred flame. Give them their due!

Buddy gets back to making the lobsters with modeling chocolate. He puts a top hat on the groom and a veil on the bride. He makes flames around the pot with fondant and puts his lobsters on top and places the claw together like they’re holding hands. He finishes the entire cake in 3 or 4 hours. Buddy delivers the cake to the rooftop and the bride and groom-to-be are thrilled. Buddy gives the idiot best man a hard time about getting the date wrong. The cake is huge. And there are only about 14 people there. That cake could serve 200.

Buddy’s sistah, Mary, comes in and says she needs a flower on a cake fixed. She brings the cake up to Tone and asks him if he can help her. He says he hasn’t been taught that yet. She says isn’t that like the first day of school? Then Mary says, “Tone, I love you”, and smashes the cake into his face. The others dissolve into laughter.

Oh my, there’s a preview of them blowing up a cake on next week’s show.

Buddy tells us that it’s a tradition at his bakery to get a cake smashed in your face for your birthday.

Back to the Pisa cake, Buddy has to make the cake lean. He’s worried. He leans it and everyone agrees it’s fantastic. “It was leaning. It was detailed. It was exact.” Buddy says.

They pick up the cake to move it into the truck. It’s raining, so they have to put a body bag over it. The wedding is in full force when they deliver the cake. The people go nuts like he was “frickin’ Bon Jovi”. Buddy was happy that the bride was so happy. “I’m in the business of making people happy. That’s the business of cakes.”

The last scene is a big clam bake for the guys, featuring lobsters. No gals invited. Someone asks what’s for dessert. Buddy says “CAKE!” I hope the ladies were having an even better party...with some crustaceans of their own.

Cake Boss – A Fire Breathing Mother-In-Law And A Jewelry Bedecked Birthday Cake...SORRY! That Should Be The Other Way Around

Cake Boss

A Blindfold, A Bikini and Breathing Fire

We see scenes of the busy bakery. Lewis comes in for a crazy birthday cake. This year he wants a Tiki party – luau, flowers, fire eaters etc…just your usual tame little birthday shindig.

He tells Buddy he wants flames to come out of the cake. Buddy is taken aback…for only a second before coming up with his idea of a Tiki god with fire shooting out its mouth. We see Buddy on the phone negotiating with a fire “breather”. Wow, his job is multifaceted. The cake is for 125 people and will be made of alternating layers of chaw-co-lot and vanilla sponge with a truffle filling between the layers.

Buddy’s cousin Vinny, (does EVERY Eye-talian-American have a cousin Vinny?) strolls in – thick gold chain and all – and needs Buddy to make his fiancée’s bridal shower cake. He’s marrying Buddy’s wife’s sister, Daniella.

Buddy tells us about all the happy couples from Carla’s bakery: His parents, of course, and then in Buddy’s generation, there is Mauro and sister Madddaaalllennna, sister Grace and Joey, Lisa and Remy and Buddy and his wife, Lisa. And now Vinny and Daniella.

They decide on a suitcase theme and Buddy shows him pictures and it’s a done deal - 3 tiers in a pink fondant.

Buddy shows us an industrial mixer from 1925. Awesome. Then he takes a moment to listen to Mauro griping about all the work that has to be done. Buddy says all he’s doing is icing a cake, which is the easiest part. (Naturally the Cake Boss thinks it is).

Buddy says Mauro should be doing it like lightening and that he (Buddy) could do it blindfolded. Challenge proffered AND accepted. If Buddy CAN ice a cake blindfolded AND make an icing rose, Mauro has to hand out cupcakes in a grass-skirted hula outfit.

Mauro goes to grab the, surprisingly at hand, blindfold. What happens in that bakery when the cameras are off?

The entire bakery staff seems to have assembled in short order to watch…almost as IF this was planned...naaahhh, couldn’t be.

They get quite a show as Buddy performs his magic. He handles the turntable with ease and ices the cakes smoother and straighter with NO eyes than I could do with an EXTRA set (or two) of eyes. THEN (just to display his brilliance even more) Buddy holds a flower nail in his hand and darned if he doesn’t make an absolutely BEAUTIFUL rose AND place it on the cake, still blindfolded. Even Mauro has to give it to him.

Frankie brings back a shopping bag filled with hula supplies, including a grass skirt big enough to cover a Tiki god the size of a volcano. Mauro wears it with a coconut shell bra (the size of ear muffs), which is tied on with LOTS of extra string. He goes downstairs to the bakery and hands out cupcakes. Would you take one or would you run screaming from the huge man in a grass skirt? Maybe for cannoli I’d approach, but cupcakes? I’m not so sure. Mauro goes around asking the customers if they wanted to get lei’ed.

Buddy gets to work on the shower cake, which will be chaw-co-lot cake, with hazelnut filling and chaw-co-lot ganache. Fantastic.

Lisa, Buddy’s Mrs., and Buddy’s mom-in-law, Glawria, stroll in and wanna tawk about the shower cake. Apparently cousin Vinny wasn’t authorized to make the selection and they’re both appalled at the idea of a luggage cake. It doesn’t match the theme (jewelry?!!) at all. Horrors! Glawria wants what Glawria wants.

“Don’t these people communicate?” Buddy asks US. “Don’t they know that they shudda and came to me togedda?” Yeah! You tell them! But Buddy only protests feebly to Lisa and Glawria, because there’s no way he’s going to alienate Glawria. She seems to be in the same alpha female vein as Mama. So Buddy is stuck having to make another cake at the last minute. Imagine the groom thinking he could have some input!

Luckily, they can use the same basic tiers. Buddy tells us about Daniella, one of his decorators, who will be making the central element of the cake. Buddy finds a vintage jewelry holder in the shape of a bustier-ed and bustled female mannequin and Daniella will make an edible replica of it. She studied fine arts at school and using modeling chaw-co-lot to her is no different than using clay. I find that fascinating. Sunshine prints out edible decals which get put all over the cake. Gold paint is added for details.

Buddy moves on to the Tiki head. He has to build a wooden dowelled support structure to hold the HUGE head. They screw things in and add Rice Krispie treats underneath to make the head more stable. It is the size of a small mountain.

Buddy is proud of Daniella’s work. She is an amazing artist. To the jewelry cake, he adds a purse and shoe and lots of jewelry pieces, all made out of fahn-dant and modeling chaw-co-lot. It is superb looking.

They add torches to the corners of the Tiki cake platform. Buddy says he wants to test the cake to make sure it won’t melt when the guy breathes fire on it. He takes a spray can of…FIRE(?!!) or is that compressed air that he blows on a gas lighter type thing? Whatever. Frankie is ready with the fire extinguisher and Buddy puts some flames through the pipe that serves as the mouth. He judges it ready for prime time.

They deliver the cake to the Tiki party. The torches are all lit. Buddy greets Lewis with a big hug. Then he brings out the fire breather and the guy breathes - actually SPITS - fire through the hole in the Tiki god’s mouth. To tell you the truth it’s kind of gross. You can’t tell me that there isn’t plenty of saliva all over that cake. I wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole…on fire or not.

The next scene is just as wild. Buddy’s sister in law’s HUGE bridal shower is more elaborate than most weddings. Mama, cousins, sisters, Glawria, of course, and the entire family are there. Buddy brings in the cake. It looks like it matches the (overly) ornate flocked wallpaper. Daniella is thrilled. She tastes the cake and loves it. Buddy and his team’s incredible work take the cake once again. Give me a choice between a spit-laden Tiki cake or a bedazzled purse and shoe, I’ll eat the shoe…everytime.