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?)

+ + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + 

Don't forget to enter my latest Cookbook Giveaway. 

Win a copy of the brand new Simply Fresh by Jeff Morgan.

RULES:

Simply Fresh Cookbook Giveaway contest open until Friday, October 14th, 11:59 pm eastern time.

Enter these ways:

1) Send a comment to this post OR this one, including the words, “Simply Fresh”. (Include your email address, if your name doesn’t link to it.)

2) Send me an email with Simply Fresh Cookbook Giveaway in the subject line to FNMusings@gmail.com.

3) Tweet "Simply Fresh" to me at

http://twitter.com/SueonFood 

Enter as many times as you wish. Each comment, email or tweet counts as one entry. The more times you enter, the greater your chances of winning. Contest open to US residents 18 years old and above.  

New Delivery For The Cake Boss

Buddy and Lisa Valastro celebrated Valentine’s Day with a brand new addition to their family – Carlos Salvatore, born yesterday. 7 lb. and 3 oz. Carlos joins big sister, Sofia, 7, and two brothers, Buddy, Jr. 6, and Marco, 3. The littlest Valastro is named after Buddy’s late father, Carlos and also Sal Picinich, a baker at Carlos Bakery for 45 years who died earlier this year.

What could be better than more little hands in the batter? Congratulations!!!

Does The Cake Boss Deliver?

Plus Did The Tongue Map Misguide Me?

We all know that the Cake Boss, or at least Cousin Ant-Knee, delivers his cakes and other baked goods within certain geographic boundaries from Carlo’s Hoboken bakery. But does the taste of the items themselves deliver on the promise of Buddy’s increasing fame?

Recently, I was lucky to enough to taste cannoli AND cupcakes from Carlo’s.

D(aughter) was visiting from faraway and brought them to me after she saw a friend in Hoboken. Her friend actually LIVES in Hoboken. Why is this important? Because, with proof of residence, Hoboken folks are allowed in a separate, smaller and warmer (because it’s inside!) line, while others have to wait their turn in an often huge (and often outside) line.

D arrived home and I practically snatched the box from her. (Sorry, hon!) I studied it carefully.

There was a tiny grease mark starting to show through the box in the upper right corner, portending the good things inside.

Tied around the square cardboard box was an old-timey red and white string that I remember from the Bronx bakeries of my youth.

Even better was what was inside - 2 cannoli, 1 yellow cupcake with a pink rose on top and 1 red velvet cupcake.

I went for the rose-topped cupcake first. (I WAS sharing, but I got first dibs.) I had to stop to admire it. It was so beautiful. It was a perfect rose.

I cut away one quarter of it to examine the inside.

The crumbs were moist, but they held together perfectly. It was spongy, without a hint of toughness. I tasted the cake and icing together and then the two separately. The flavor of the cupcake itself? Just like any excellent yellow cake, but with an interesting twist. It wasn’t overly sweet. In fact, if I could say anything about the cake, I would say maybe it needed one iota more of sweetness.

I moved on the icing by itself. It had a really good mouth feel, but there was something very surprising about it. Like the cupcake, it wasn’t overly sweet.

After watching the Cake Boss, wouldn’t you have thought that all those tons of buttercream that they fling everywhere would be really, really sweet?

Also, interestingly enough, the flavor of the cupcake seemed to disappear the minute I swallowed it. There was no lingering on the tongue. What does that mean, I wonder?

I had some standard buttercream in the freezer and I tasted that to compare. MY buttercream seemed to hit my tongue in the back and the taste stuck around longer than the time it took me to swallow, unlike Buddy’s buttercream.

The Cake Boss’s cupcake left no sensory blueprint whatsoever on my tongue. It was here one second and gone the next. Do you think that’s to get people to keep eating more cupcakes? It certainly went down easily enough.

This got me to thinking and I engaged in some fairly exhaustive study of the science of the tongue. (Okay, it was 15 minutes on the internet, but whatever) AND I discovered something quite sensational.

I have to digress just for a second. (I know, when don’t I?) The last time I studied the effect of food or drink on my tongue so closely was at a wine tasting with the Riedel people. Their stock in trade is that each variety of wine requires a different shaped wine glass to bring out its strengths and individual characteristics.

At that tasting, we tasted different wines in the right, and wrong, glasses and I came out totally convinced that, yes, certain wines have to first reach your tongue at the tip…or the sides…or wherever…to really taste their best. I TASTED THAT FOR MYSELF!

I couldn’t remember where the tongue tastes sweet, so I looked it up. I convinced myself that I tasted my buttercream, which was fairly sweet, at the back of the tongue, but Buddy’s buttercream didn’t seem to light up any particular area.

The Tongue Map says that the sweetness taste buds are at the front, so that didn’t help to explain my tasting results at all. But THEN I found out something else, much more earth-moving and interesting. The Tongue Map is a bunch of rubbish and has been completely disproved!!!

How do I know? Because I found it here, here and here. Actually, I don’t really know what to believe, because I could have sworn during the wine tasting that everything Max said was true. And I know for myself that when I taste something really sour, I taste it on the side edges of my tongue.

As to WHY the Cake Boss’s cupcakes left no discernible mark on my taste buds, I have no idea. Anyone?

Alright, let’s move away from talk of tongues on to the Red Velvet Cupcake and, even more importantly, the cannoli.

I don't love Red Velvet Cake (or cupcakes), but, again, the texture of the cake was perfect. It was moist, not overbeaten or overbaked. The cream cheese icing was rich, but had a slight artificial taste to it – perhaps from the vanilla extract.

I’ve saved the best for the last - the cannoli. Let me put it simply - they were the best I’ve ever had, and I’ve had my share of cannoli - from New York’s Little Italy to Boston’s North End.

Why were these cannoli from Carlo’s Bakery so good? I think the shell is the key. It was fresh and crisp and tasted as if it had been recently deep-fried, but there was no trace of oiliness. HOW do they do that? The shell was crunchy and tasted like a browned cookie.

Also, the filling was perfect - creamy, just sweet enough and in the right amount. Not overstuffed so the filling would come squidging out of the end when you took a bite, but enough so that there were no air pockets.

I had the best of both worlds. I got to taste those yummy creations from Carlo’s Bakery AND I didn’t have to stand in line waiting to buy them. Those cannoli, though, would be worth almost any wait.

The Next Food Network Star - Reality Cooking Show Or Intense Psychiatric Drama?

The Next Food Network Star - Lunch Trucks With Paula

The problem with the beginning episodes of TNFNS is that there are just too many folks to keep track of. I wrote about this season’s first episode when there seemed to be hundreds of them, and, luckily, they've whittled them down somewhat since then.

I have been watching, though, and I’m finding the show to be less and less about cooking and more and more about drama. I have other places to go, frankly, if I want that in my life.

Last night’s episode was a case in point. Herb, the fitness guy, apparently had a traumatic childhood from which he’s only recently recovered. He weeps at every challenge and Susie put it well when she said we see pain from you and that doesn’t exactly make for an entertaining food show. I think we all like to see someone triumph AFTER they’ve recovered, but watching someone make a sandwich with a big dose of tears may not fly on the Food Network.

The problem is that the judges WANT them to reveal things about themselves. They want personal stories that the viewers can relate to. These contestants (they are, in the main, not CHEFtestants) seem to have personal stories either too mundane or too painful to share.

The judges say week after week that Brianna isn’t giving them part of herself, yet her food is mostly imaginative and well-done.

I can’t think of one reason that Paul was chosen initially. He can’t cook; he can’t tell interesting stories; and he actually offends people with his less than winning personality. Plus he has red hair, which, let’s be honest, is always a hard sell on a guy.

They want them to be real and yet when they reveal themselves to be kind of boring or ordinary or just plain jerky, the judges criticize them.

And, actually, sometimes it feels like it is getting TOO personal. Aria, who had been “ahead” through much of the competition, was basically told last night that they were tired of her bubbly, friendly personality, which they loved at the beginning. That hurt MY feelings and I don’t even particularly like Aria. NOW Susie thinks she’s too “one-note”. Aria did what they wanted and now they’ve decided that’s not good enough.

I understand the need for personal stories. I LOVE it when Ina includes her “friends”. But, frankly, I don’t really care if she picked them up from the K-Mart parking lot just before the show. They are simply a vehicle for Ina showing us what a grand hostess she is. Whether it’s real or not, doesn’t matter.

A lot of folks blast the Cake Boss, because the situations are so unlikely and obviously set up. I couldn’t care less. I just love to see Mama yelling at him and his sisters harassing him. The main thing is that IT IS BUDDY DECORATING THOSE CAKES LIKE A MASTER, so if the drama part is a bit fake, oh well.

So what are these potential Food Network Stars to do, in order to stay in the judges’ good graces?

I think they should just say whatever it takes to sound friendly and identifiable with their audience. If they have to make up a pretend family, then ok. Who would ever find out?

Obviously, they can’t say they’ve been knighted by the Queen, but if they tell family tales more from their imagination than their actual photo albums, it’ll keep the judges happy and the audience entertained. AND I suppose it’s human nature to prefer pretend delightful stories to real wrenching ones…on the Food Network anyway.

At this point - last night was episode 5 and they’re halfway through -only one or two stand out to me. Food blogger, Aarti, is my favorite. (Bloggers Unite!) But I wonder when Bob and Susie will realize that this may not be the best way to audition talent for new shows. Plus their therapy bills after this rigorous process may exceed the food budget.

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.

Cake Boss - Mauro For Secretary Of State, Buddy Doesn’t Give Up And One Day Little Buddy Is Really Going To Get It

Cake Boss with Buddy Valastro

Robots, Roller Skates and Relatives

Buddy calls over all the robot fans in the bakery to plan a robot cake. A Hacker Collective (whatever in the world that is) is having a party and they want a working robot for a cake. Charles, the hacker ordering the cake, tells Buddy that hackers don’t steal identities. They take different items and get them to do things they wouldn’t ordinarily do. Buddy says “Like ME with cake?” Chuck agrees. Buddy says they sound nuts.

Buddy is going to make a classic silver robot, but he hasn’t decided how to get it to move. Hey, where’s Tom, his new assistant? That would be weird if Buddy hired a personal assistant last week and then we never saw him again…

Buddy says the robot cake has to be light, so he’s making an Italian sponge cake with whipped cream. He tells us that it has to feed 150 people and that it will weigh around 70 or 80 pounds.

The bakers are also working on Buddy’s niece’s 8^th birthday cake. Tessy (Teresa) is Remy and Lisa’s kid. She’s cute. She wants a cake with a crown and peace signs on it. AND she wants Uncle Buddy to roller skate in with the cake at her roller rink party. Buddy says he’s quite an adept roller skater. Okay, those weren’t HIS exact words. He said, “Come get some! I can roller skate!”

The crew is making a roller skate for the top of Tessy’s cake and covering it with modeling chaw-co-lot and then fahn-dahnt. And they use more modeling chaw-co-lot for the details.

Buddy brings in a remote control truck. He wants to put the cake on top of the chassis. He tests how much weight it can carry by adding 20 pound buckets of fahn-dahnt. The wheels don’t move.

Buddy saws up the truck and removes the back wheels to get to the motor. He builds a box for the cake to sit on and puts some wheels on THAT and hopes the motor will move the whole thing.

Wow! This is Buddy as carpenter/mechanic/engineer. He’s amazing. Oh, not so fast. When they put weight on it, it STILL doesn’t move.

He throws it in the corner and says they don’t got no more time. The people are just gonna get a robot that doesn’t move.

Could it be that the Cake Boss is really stumped? Why do I think he’ll pull it out in the end? He mutters about it all day long. “It ain’t gonna move. I don’t care.” “I’m gonna have a heart attack and kill somebody.”

Finally, Mauro, as the voice of reason, says, “WE (meaning Buddy) gotta think of something.” Then channeling Tim Gunn, which if you were looking at Mauro is a most amusing concept, Mauro says we have to make it work. “Frustrated is okay,” says Mauro, “but you told the people you were going to make it work.”

Mauro says softly, “You have to get more power in there. Is there any way to get more power to those back wheels?” He suggests getting another truck and using THAT motor too. Who would have thunk that Mauro would be quietly encouraging Buddy to think outside the box?

And that’s what Buddy does. He tries again by doubling the motor power. And does it work? They put 80 pounds on it and…”YEAH, baby, that’s how you make robot cake!” yells Buddy. Then he says, “Whoooooo told me it couldn’t get done?” YOU did, Buddy. YOU said it couldn’t get done. It took Mauro to give him that little extra push.

Little Buddy comes by and looks around. He asks all the bakers and cake decorators what they’re doing. “What’s that Dad,” he says to Mauro.

“It’s hot glue.”

“Can I feel it?”

Mauro says, “It’s HOT glue.”

Then “Little” Buddy decides he wants to go on a delivery with Ant-Knee. Little Buddy wants to ride shotgun, but Ant-Knee, to his credit, makes the kid ride in the back.

He pesters Ant with questions. Where are we going? Is it in Newark? Is it in Hoboken? Is it in New York? I would definitely pop him one if he were in my car. They’re going to Joisey City.

Are we almost there? Are we almost there??

Buddy, be quiet, Ant says.

Buddy responds by chanting, “SILENCE, SILENCE, SILENCE."

The kid is hilarious…as long as you don't have to keep the car on the road, while you're busy not smacking him. Ant makes him stay in the car while he drops off the cake.

Back in the shop, Danny and Buddy pretend to be robots as they’re working. They’re pretty bad at it.

The bakery is in full swing. Remy makes a tie dye fahn-dahnt. It’s quite beautiful. Really gorgeous.

Back in Joisey City, Ant gets back to the car and Little Buddy’s not there. He yells for Buddy. He runs around looking for him. He’s getting panicked.

We see Buddy sitting close by talking on his cell phone. As Ant is yelling at him to get in the car, Li’l Buddy keeps saying he had a lot of fun on the delivery. He finishes off by saying that he wants Chinese food. The kid is like a pint-sized (actually quart-sized) Shecky Greene.

Back at the bakery, they’re finishing the robot cake. They cut out different shapes for the gears and stuff and paint the whole thing with silver petal dust.

Toni is making Tessy’s roller blades in shades of pink. They put her name on the cake in sparkling letters.

Buddy gets his roller blades on and rolls around the bakery to get some practice before he has to carry the cake while skating.

They finish up the robot and Buddy decides it needs lights. They put little LED flashlights all over it. He turns out the lights and shows it to the crew.

“At the end of the day, not matter what, we prevailed.” Yeah. Buddy, you tell ’em.

The hacker party has a lot of weird people. Buddy says he don’t know where the hell he is. It’s not a typical party. He turns the lights on the robot cake and rolls it out. The computer nerds are delighted.

“This is how you build a robot, Hoboken-style, baby,” Buddy tells us. One of them wants to know if he can eat the antenna. Yup, says Buddy, it’s modeling chaw-co-lot. The hacker guy says Buddy has taken it into a third dimension.

Lastly, Buddy goes to the roller rink for the party. The whole family is there. We see Buddy wrestling a huge piece of pizza into his mouth. Buddy’s wife and kids are there.

Buddy puts his blades on and warms up. He starts skating like a pro. It’s like magic. “It’s like I’m back in my natural environment. I am skating like nobody’s business. I am a skating fool.” He says no way will he drop the cake.

Everyone is gathered waiting for Buddy. He hoists the gorgeously decorated cake up high in his hand. He skates across the entire rink holding it up strong and straight. He skates all the way to the table.

Just like Buddy said, it was awesome. He says the next thing is they’ll want him to deliver on a bicycle or unicycle.

By the way, Buddy never took off his chef’s whites. (I like that. When he's on duty, he stays in uniform.)

We see Mauro having a rather hard time for the two seconds he’s actually on skates. He gets off them fast.

Buddy says there’s nothing better than family...especially when that family can produce a cake for any occasion under the sun AND deliver it on eight wheels.

Cake Boss - Sweet And Swamped

Cake Boss with Buddy Valastro

Candy, Crash & Crisis

Buddy is making a candy cake for Dylan Lauren, the daughter of Ralph, and owner of Manhattan candy store, Dylan's Candy Bar. Buddy has brought back tons of Dylan’s candy to use on the cake. The bakery folks want to get their hands on it. Buddy says not so fast. It’s for a cake. Buddy pronounces Dylan’s last name like Lore-WREN, but I believe that is incorrect. It’s pronounced LORE-en, with the emphasis one the first syllable.

We see the candy store and it IS awesome. Buddy is meeting with Dylan. She says Candy Land came to them to help celebrate its 60^th birthday. She says it’s a really big deal for them. (I love Candy Land. Aside from everything else, it’s so pretty.) She’s happy because Candy Land was her inspiration for the store.

Buddy is soo funny as he listens to what Dylan wants on the cake. He’s amused because she’s describing the Candy Land characters as if they’re real people. (I didn’t even know Candy Land HAD characters.) He thinks she’s kind of whacked. He says (to us), “We don’t got no Gummy Bear forest in Hoboken, NJ”.

Buddy tells us that his Candy Land cake will be a big rectangle with two circular cakes on top. He’ll put the Candy Land road on, Dylan’s logo, lollipops and the characters that I (and apparently Buddy too) knew nothing about. And then they’ll finish it off with a bunch of candy.

Mauro counts the (29) bags of candy to make sure no one steals any. (I guess he’s “the enforcer”.) The “girls” are going to do the figures, Buddy, Mauro and Remy are doing the cakes. They put two huge rectangular cakes down on a board and cover them with French cream. I wonder if that’s Crème Chantilly, which is just a sweetened whipped cream, often flavored with vanilla. Dunno.

Then Buddy adds chopped up peanut butter cups. (I KNEW there was a reason I holding back some peanut butter cups from my Halloween basket.) They dirty-ice this MASSIVE cake.

Buddy goes to see how the figures are coming along. He says he has great artists working for him. (It takes one to know one, Cakeman.) Daniella is making the Cotton Candy Queen with modeling chaw-co-lot and fahn-dahnt. Toni is making an ice cream cone figure and Christina is making Chocolate, the bunny. Sunshine (Buddy calls her Sunch – cute) is making homemade candy gummy bears.

We see the sisters squeezed together downstairs handling millions pieces of paper. They’re all talking at once. Maddalena says Buddy needs someone JUST answering emails. Grace says they need to tawk to him calmly (not exactly their modis operandi).

They go up the stairs to the bakery and interrupt Buddy. Lisa tells him not to get twisted. Grace, the oldest sister, says he needs to hire an assistant. Buddy says, “Daddy never had an assistant.” Mary says she’s not a secretary, she doesn’t take messages, blabbady, blah, blah. Maddalena says, “Less stress on us will be less stress on you.”

Mary, her voice beginning to raise, “We’re here to help!”’ “I dunno,” says Buddy. Then they all start tawking at once and, finally, Cake Boss says, “Okay, find me an assistant.” Buddy says, “Grace, don’t let the door hit you on the way out.” That is just so…I don’t know…brotherly. You gotta love a family that works together, plays together and eats cake (lots of it) together.

Buddy says how busy he is. We see him consulting with a couple on their wedding cake. (She looks like this may not have been her first time at the rodeo.) She wants a square, clean-cut (what does that mean?) cake, with maybe a red accent.

Buddy decides to make a 3 tiered chaw-co-lot cake with a chaw-co-lot mousse filling. YUM. “The simplicity of the tiers is what’s going to really make the stenciling pop.” He mixes deep red gel color into royal icing. He uses royal icing instead of buttercream, because it dries faster and better. He holds a stencil on the cake and spreads a red royal icing over it and, voila, there’s a beautiful design on it.

Buddy always supervises when they do this, so “it’s done right.” Buddy says he oversees all of the custom cakes and that they do them like an assembly line, to be more efficient. He tells us they get 50 or more specialty cake orders a week. WOW! He says they’re “the bread and butter” of the bakery and “We gotta crank them out”. He tells Stretch (wait, is that Ant?) to get his ass up to the bakery to pick up a cake to deliver.

The sistahs come in. They seem to travel in a pack. They bring up a personal assistant candidate, Tom, a young kid, to meet him. He stretches his hand out to shake Buddy’s hand and Buddy just sighs in an exasperated way.

The sisters think Tom is cute. They squoodge his face together and pinch his cheeks. They say they like him and that he’s smart. One of the sistahs says, “Tom, say something smart.” Tom says, “Your sisters are very beautiful.” They jump up and down with delight.

“If it’s gonna make my sistahs happy, I gotta give it a shot.” He tells TOM he has one chance. He says okay you start NOW. The sisters jump up and down. Buddy says that his sistahs better know that Tom is for HIM, not them! (10 seconds ago he didn’t even want an assistant.)

Buddy gets back to work on the Candy Land cake and in walks a kid, a little mini-Mauro. It’s Buddy Castano, Maddalena & Mauro’s son. He’s wearing chef’s whites and he sees the 29 bags of candy for the candy cake and goes, “OOOHHHH Dad, what’s this for?” Mauro says it’s for a candy cake they’re doing. “Can I have a piece? Can I? Can I? Can I? Mauro keeps saying no. Can I can I can I? NO! “Are you kidding?” “No, I’m not kidding.” “WHY?” Because it’s for a customer.

Buddy says when little Buddy sees the candy his friggin’ eyes popped out of his head. It was like he had never had candy before. This is funny. Little Buddy sees the cake and says, “I don’t think every single spot has to be covered with candy.” Mauro looks like he wants to bop him, but Buddy actually feels bad for the kid. The next thing we see is the kid chewing on something and walking away. (Is that what’s wrong with the yutes of America?)

Buddy (big Buddy) walks into an office (that we’ve never seen before) and Tom is sitting at a computer. He tells Tom that he wants to get him lunch and sends him off saying he wants it YESTERDAY!

The sisters waylay Tom on his way out to dust the windows or something. Uh-oh, I predict mayhem will erupt. Buddy keeps working on the Candy Land cake. It’s starting to look great.

The sistahs keep giving Tom things to do. He’s worried that Buddy will yell at him. Meanwhile upstairs, Mauro snitches some candy and tells everyone not to tell his son. The candy road goes on the cake. It looks great.

Buddy is unhappy when Tom never comes back. He goes looking for him and Buddy starts yelling when he sees him. The sistahs interfere and they all scream. Tom is scared of Buddy yelling at him. Mary says this is just how we tawk to each other. Buddy says he’s going to use Tom like a stick to beat them with.

He calls Ant-Knee to deliver stuff. Oh, so it wasn’t Stretch. Ant is telling us how delivering cakes can be challenging at the very same moment that he gets hit. He calls Buddy. Buddy is amazingly calm and just happy that noone was hurt.

Tom gets into it with the guy that backed into him. He’s worried that Buddy is going to kill him. Buddy comes and gets him and he isn’t quite so calm now. They all start screaming, but finally Buddy says it was an accident.

Buddy notes that the cake is all right, because he himself put it together.

Back at the bakery, they finish the Candy Land cake. It looks awesome Buddy says. The more candy they put on, the better it looks. It IS amazing.

As they deliver it, Buddy says the idea of the delivery is to get the cake into the car and to the venue as fast as possible without any traffic, without any delays, potholes or detours. He should have added without any accidents too. And WHY isn’t he using his van?

They hit something and something falls off the cake. Buddy and Mauro have to go back to the bakery and repair the cake.

Funny, there’s a commercial for Candy Land.

They run back and get all hands on deck. The whole bakery gasps when they see the cake. All the figures tumbled off and ripped off one side of the cake. The top two tiers have to be replaced. Buddy says the party is in an hour.

He tells us he’s going to put the characters and the lollipops on when they get there. They deliver the repaired cake, which looks just as perfect as the first one. Dylan loves it. The guests are amazed. It all goes off perfectly.

I wonder if we’ll ever see Tom again…

And I just realized why he wasn’t madder at Ant-Knee. Ant-Knee is family. If he had been some random person, Buddy probably would have gone ballistic, but family is what it’s all about to the Cake Boss.