Cake Boss 3

I found another episode up on TLC (I guess it’s official, I do like the show now).

Luis comes to Buddy every year for a huge birthday cake. This year the theme is Tikis and he wants the cake to be a huge tiki that sprouts fire to match the crazy party itself. Buddy proves innovative and finds a way to create a huge mask with an open math that a fire breather can stand behind and breath fire through for the party’s finale.

At the same time, his cousin Vinny shows up at the Bakery needing a cake for his bridal shower. The cake is going to look like three tiers of luggage, their most popular cake.

Buddy checks in on the Tiki cake to find that the icing process if going slowly. Buddy is annoyed and says it should be the easiest part, he could do it better blindfolded. Which of course means he has to do it. Loser has to wear a grass skirt and coconut bra and stand outside and give out cupcakes outside the bakery. Sure enough, he does it perfectly. I am actually very impressed. Not so excited to see the tiki outfit. (In solidarity they all wear leis.)

They get back to work on the luggage cake and in comes his wife and mother in law. His mother in law decides she does not like it. She wants a jewelry box. The theme is jewelry. Luckily they didn’t get very far so they can still use the tiers. One of the decorators makes mannequin style jewelry stands that look beautiful (she went to an art school and always enjoyed working with clay so this job is great for her). They add jewels and necklaces, a shoe and purse, and put together it looks great.

The tiki case involves some screws and wood. Buddy is worried that the tiki head will fall off. Once they put it all together they want to test it to make sure nothing will melt. Test one goes well, no unexpected fires or destruction.

They deliver the cake and with the fire breather in place, the cake looks amazing.

Then, at the bridal shower, they deliver that cake and everyone loves that one as well. And to answer my question of if it tastes good, the bride to be takes a bite and says it’s great.

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Cake Boss 2

While trying to decide what to watch tonight, I found a couple more episodes of Cake Boss on the TLC network and decided to give it a second shot. In these episodes, they were tasked with creating a cake for the museum of natural history, a cake for a sweet sixteen, a cake for a ballet recital, a wedding cake with live doves, and a pastry platter for a pregnant woman.

I’m not sure what it was about these episodes relative to the other two that I watched, but this time around I found myself enjoying the show much more. The sweet sixteen cake, while obviously cool looking, seemed relatively simple to the other cakes I had seen so far, but what wasn’t simple was recreating the cake in a few hours after the first cake was dropped down the stairs! (The thing that confuses me here is that they had an elevator thing to lower the cakes so why didn’t they use that?) With the entire bakery pulling together, they managed to recreate the $3,000 cake.

Museum Cake

The cake for the museum of natural history was just ridiculous. The size and detail involved (400 lbs!) was unbelievable. The museum was having an opening for a new discovery: the largest mammal ever to live and they wanted him to create a cake to look like the mammal. Sure enough, they made a miniature, cake model that looked just like the display. There was a moment of concern as they carried the cake to the opening (would they drop another one? especially one so heavy?) but all was well. That cake cost $8,000.

The ballet cake was a pretty simple cake made for Buddy’s niece. What was exciting about the cake was actually that it was Franky’s first time ever designing a cake himself and he did a good job despite the pressure.

The pastry platter didn’t interest me too much since they were just standard bakery goods without any fancy design, but it was a nice surprise for the expecting mother.

Finally, the wedding cake with the doves. Despite initial difficulties finding doves (this includes attempts to catch the at the park and accidentally getting ducks from a pet shop), they eventually found two live doves and incorporated them into the cake by having a cage sitting between two of the layers. At the wedding, the couple would release the doves, just like at old fashion weddings. The five foot cake was a hit.

I still wonder if the cakes actually taste good (since we never really see people eat or comment on them), but the show has grown on me. I don’t feel the need to keep up to date, but it is certainly cool to see some of the things they create.

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Cake Boss

I’ve heard good things about this show, so I decided to try an episode. I’m coming into it with the general bias that I don’t really like cooking shows, not even Top Chef, which is surprising since I love most reality tv surrounding competition (with the noted exception of Paris Hilton’s My New BFF).

The show follows the daily work of a cake shop in Hoboken, New Jersey. The bakery is owned by Carlo Valastro and Buddy Valastro and is run primarily by the family. The bakery designs enormous, intricately designed cakes specially requested that cost a minimum of $1,000 but often cost much more.

This episode opens with them showing us how they make checkered cake. What’s bothering me about it is that he sort of addresses the audience as though we have the IQ of a two year old: “Cut the circles in equal rings and then swap the circles so inside a white circle is a black ring then a white ring then a black ring. Do that for all the layers and then stack them. And when you cut them it’s black white black white. Checkers. So its a checker cake. get it?”

Then they have a catastrophe as he is making cannolis and someone left the cannoli cream out! so it spoiled. Because I don’t really care about cake, this doesn’t really make me feel particularly bad for him, but I do get why it’s a big deal.

Then they have to make a very intricate dragon cake. The cake artists have made amazing looking dragons that are…too big. Like five-ten times too big. Now he has to change the whole design of the cake! But you gotta do what you gotta do. The artist is stubborn and maintains that it’s way better this way. Buddy kind of looks like he wants to yell at her. I will admit, it does look freakin’ cool. So cool that I wouldn’t really want to eat it.

We leave the cake shop to see Carlo take his wife on an anniversary date. He made the top filling of their wedding cake filled with her favorite cake filling. It’s sweet, but whether because I haven’t watched enough of the show or because she’s not around much, I don’t really care that much.

In another episode he is hired to make an FAO Schwartz themed cake and a beach themed cake. At the same time, there is a weight loss competition going on at the bakery, guys vs girl. The guys issue the challenge whle digging into boxes of fattening foods, so you sort of wonder how exactly they plan to win. They weight loss will be judged by total body loss percentage, at the guys’ insistence. Which you think is odd, since they are at an automatic disadvantage there. 5 pounds of 200 pounds is a much small percentage than 5 of 100. But don’t worry, the guys have a secret weapon…exercise. Very little, since they don’t want anyone to have a heart attack. Not to be upstaged, the girls decided to join the gym as well. They went the extra step by asking for a motivational trainer.

FAO Schwartz Cake

The FAO Schwartz cake, complete with toy soldiers and a big piano slowly takes shape and starts to look really cool. It has drums, blocks, trains, marbles, teddy bears, cars, etc. Any kid would feel awesome to have that as their birthday cake. (They spilled a few poppy seeds on the cake and being obsessive compulsive, buddy made them pick them off with toothpicks.) I think the kids were too young to even fully appreciate the cake but at least the parents thought it was cool.

The beach cake had beach balls, tiki huts,people (kids, a woman in a bikini, and a fat man), sand castle, water, rocks, sand, umbrellas, etc. It gets a full applause when they bring it to the party. Receptions like that are “the pay off.”

The men decided to lose the weight by eating lighter pastries. And because men lose weight faster they can eat some extra cannolis. Good plan!

The final weigh in…the girls won. As expected, since it was done by percentage not pounds.

All in all, the cakes they make are really awesome to see, but the show can’t hold my attention. I also wonder how good the cakes actually taste.

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