Buddy Valastro lets the world eat cake

You’ve known him as the smart, funny, creative guy running Carlo’s Bake Shop in Hoboken, New Jersey on TLC’s Cake Boss for seven seasons. His family — his wife, kids, sisters, mother, father, and in-laws — are all part of the family business.

Together, they whip up the most astonishing cakes — in the shape of Porsches, pianos, giant crabs (with working claws!), dumptrucks, and pretty much anything a client needs to mark a special occasion.

But in recent years, Buddy’s business has gone beyond the confines of Hoboken, expanding cross-country to Las Vegas (Valastro has a partnership with The Venetian) and even internationally — to Brazil, the Middle East (Bahrain) and Eastern Europe.

And next, maybe… Asia?

“I would definitely partner with someone I thought was a great baker out there,” Valastro says, meeting media guests to Carlo’s Bakeshop near the piers of Hoboken. “Honestly, I think Singapore would probably be the first, the reason being that I already have a partner there, I’m partners with The Venetian in Vegas, and they own Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.” Casinos and cakes go together very well, it seems.

“They already have an infrastructure and a way to help me run the business out there, so that would be first.” Valastro, in his early 40s, is now in a position to think like a field marshal: strategizing his next move, sending his cake troops out into battle. “After I did Singapore, perfected it and made sure we were doing the right fare, I would look at other surrounding countries. I think Hong Kong would be a great place, and we have an opportunity to do Macau as well, because my partners have casinos there.”

I can’t help mentioning that the Philippines has lots of casinos.

“I think the Philippines would be a great spot; I think Malaysia also. It could be in any Asian city, but the question is, from a geographic standpoint, where you would build the commissary in Asia, so you could find who has the good trade agreements with each country.”

Going international seems like a breeze to Valastro, who started working in his father’s bakery at age 17, in 1994. That bakery is now a global tourist attraction: Hoboken — already famous for birthing Ol’ Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra — even renamed the corner of Washington and Newark “Carlo’s Bakery Way.” Valastro has gone from local fame to TV fame (from the hugely popular show on Discovery Channel’s TLC) to a dozen US bakeries, mostly served by his large-scale bakeshop. When he visited Brazil to open a bakery there last season, people went bananas: we hear of a mall visit in São Paulo that drew a million fans; they had to lock the doors and turn people away. “Yeah, it’s pretty crazy. But you know, honestly, you have to put things in perspective. We went to a mall in Serbia and 10,000 people showed up.” A much smaller crowd than a million, but still very respectable. “Next week we’re going to Amsterdam, Poland and Hungary, so all these places we travel to, we wind up getting huge success. We’ve had a lot of fans from the Philippines. A lot of Filipinos work for us. Actually the doctor who delivered me is a Filipino (Dr. Banzon). He’s a family friend, he says we’re very popular in the Philippines.”

Season 7 of Cake Boss includes some new challenges for the maestro of meringue: highlights include a Frank Sinatra cake to celebrate the crooner’s 100th birthday; a controversial “naked” cake (think Kink Cakes but more personalized); and a meat-covered cake that requires a trip to the butchers. Between filming episodes of the coming season, which wraps up next February, Valastro crisscrosses the world — down to Brazil and Mexico City last summer, a couple days in Vegas coming up, Eastern Europe for a week (“four countries in seven days”), and maybe squeeze in a family vacation after the New Year. “I’ve been crazy busy,” he admits. Where does he spend most of his time now? “It depends. When I’m doing Cake Boss, the best part about filming is I’m home. When you go someplace for a week, it’s cool. But when you go away and live somewhere for two months, it’s tough. You’re away from your business.”

As we see inside, the Carlo’s operation is a melting pot of employees. “One of the fundamentals of America is people came here from all over the world. We’re proud of that. I love that, and the influence on the food.” And it’s no accident that there are so many baking competition shows now on TV: Cake Boss got people hooked on the sweet stuff. “I think the show has really helped bakeries around the world and inspired people to get into it. Part of our mission on the show this year is to show that, to show me opening a bakery in Brazil or in the Middle East or London — wherever the bakeries go. That’s our international plan now.”

Inside the bakeshop, which supplies his 11 bakeries nationwide, Valastro and his team whip up between 300 and 600 birthday cakes and 50 to 100 special or wedding cakes per week. Today, a Saturday, things are pretty calm: all the cakes have been shipped out to events already. Each room has some activity, though: bakers are kneading dough, pulling out trays of fanciful cookies and cannolis and lobster tails (one of Buddy’s trademark desserts). There’s a woodshop that’s quiet now, but some elaborate cake platform is in mid-construction. (“They say I’m dangerous with tools, but I’ve gotten a lot better.”) One of the hardest cakes was a crab last season: it had to have moving claws. “To figure out the mechanics of a cake, it can take me two or three days. My guys are like, ‘Just don’t make it move.’ But I was so far into it, there was no turning back. My wife would call here at like 3 a.m. saying ‘What the hell are you doing trying to make that crab move?’ But it moved! It moved!”

Valastro shows us a cake room with a huge doorway in back. “When I designed this building I wanted to make it so other people are not going to be able to make cakes like me, because of the sheer size. We can make a cake the size of a car and drive it right out there.” They have done just that on Cake Boss.

As we see on the show, the customer is always right… even if they’re wrong. The weirdest cake he ever made was “probably the cake I made for the zombies.”

The ‘60s rock band, I ask?

“No, it was for like a zombie walk. It was pretty disgusting cake, they wanted a lot of limbs and guts and gore, which, for me — like, you could actually make an amazing cake out of that, but there’s something in my heart that doesn’t want things to be gory, like my mind wants it to be beautiful and perfect. Who wants to eat something that looks like a brain or a limb and tastes like cake?”

Then there was the garbage disposal cake for an Irish birthday celebrant in the sanitation business. Guests fed junk into the cake, which spewed out a toxic sludge into beer glasses. “That was disgusting as well. That was one we probably should have said no to, that didn’t turn out as good as I thought. I mean, there’s cake triumphs and cake failures. The garbage disposal cake was a failure,” he says, laughing.

And after designing and executing thousands and thousands of cakes, Valastro, who is Catholic, says there’s still one that he dreams of making.

“I would love to make a cake for the Pope,” he says. “I think (Pope Francis) is an awesome guy, he’s preaching an awesome message about really bringing people together.”

Any ideas for a papal cake design?

“I thought about doing something cool with the Vatican or a papal hat, but honestly, he’s so not superficial, I would make a cake about what his message is about: about equality, or it doesn’t matter what religion you are, or country you’re from, help people who need help — the poor, the starving, the sick. And I would try to tell that story through a cake, if I could.”

We’ll eat to that.

* * *

Cake Boss Season 7 airs on TLC Channel until December 2015.

Buddy Valastro lets the world eat cake

THE X-PAT FILES Scott R. Garceau

You’ve known him as the smart, funny, creative guy running Carlo’s Bake Shop in Hoboken, New Jersey on TLC’s Cake Boss for seven seasons. His family — his wife, kids, sisters, mother, father, and in-laws — are all part of the family business.

Together, they whip up the most astonishing cakes — in the shape of Porsches, pianos, giant crabs (with working claws!), dumptrucks, and pretty much anything a client needs to mark a special occasion.

But in recent years, Buddy’s business has gone beyond the confines of Hoboken, expanding cross-country to Las Vegas (Valastro has a partnership with The Venetian) and even internationally — to Brazil, the Middle East (Bahrain) and Eastern Europe.

And next, maybe… Asia?

“I would definitely partner with someone I thought was a great baker out there,” Valastro says, meeting media guests to Carlo’s Bakeshop near the piers of Hoboken. “Honestly, I think Singapore would probably be the first, the reason being that I already have a partner there, I’m partners with The Venetian in Vegas, and they own Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.” Casinos and cakes go together very well, it seems.

“They already have an infrastructure and a way to help me run the business out there, so that would be first.” Valastro, in his early 40s, is now in a position to think like a field marshal: strategizing his next move, sending his cake troops out into battle. “After I did Singapore, perfected it and made sure we were doing the right fare, I would look at other surrounding countries. I think Hong Kong would be a great place, and we have an opportunity to do Macau as well, because my partners have casinos there.”

I can’t help mentioning that the Philippines has lots of casinos.

“I think the Philippines would be a great spot; I think Malaysia also. It could be in any Asian city, but the question is, from a geographic standpoint, where you would build the commissary in Asia, so you could find who has the good trade agreements with each country.”

Going international seems like a breeze to Valastro, who started working in his father’s bakery at age 17, in 1994. That bakery is now a global tourist attraction: Hoboken — already famous for birthing Ol’ Blue Eyes himself, Frank Sinatra — even renamed the corner of Washington and Newark “Carlo’s Bakery Way.” Valastro has gone from local fame to TV fame (from the hugely popular show on Discovery Channel’s TLC) to a dozen US bakeries, mostly served by his large-scale bakeshop. When he visited Brazil to open a bakery there last season, people went bananas: we hear of a mall visit in São Paulo that drew a million fans; they had to lock the doors and turn people away. “Yeah, it’s pretty crazy. But you know, honestly, you have to put things in perspective. We went to a mall in Serbia and 10,000 people showed up.” A much smaller crowd than a million, but still very respectable. “Next week we’re going to Amsterdam, Poland and Hungary, so all these places we travel to, we wind up getting huge success. We’ve had a lot of fans from the Philippines. A lot of Filipinos work for us. Actually the doctor who delivered me is a Filipino (Dr. Banzon). He’s a family friend, he says we’re very popular in the Philippines.”

Season 7 of Cake Boss includes some new challenges for the maestro of meringue: highlights include a Frank Sinatra cake to celebrate the crooner’s 100th birthday; a controversial “naked” cake (think Kink Cakes but more personalized); and a meat-covered cake that requires a trip to the butchers. Between filming episodes of the coming season, which wraps up next February, Valastro crisscrosses the world — down to Brazil and Mexico City last summer, a couple days in Vegas coming up, Eastern Europe for a week (“four countries in seven days”), and maybe squeeze in a family vacation after the New Year. “I’ve been crazy busy,” he admits. Where does he spend most of his time now? “It depends. When I’m doing Cake Boss, the best part about filming is I’m home. When you go someplace for a week, it’s cool. But when you go away and live somewhere for two months, it’s tough. You’re away from your business.”

As we see inside, the Carlo’s operation is a melting pot of employees. “One of the fundamentals of America is people came here from all over the world. We’re proud of that. I love that, and the influence on the food.” And it’s no accident that there are so many baking competition shows now on TV: Cake Boss got people hooked on the sweet stuff. “I think the show has really helped bakeries around the world and inspired people to get into it. Part of our mission on the show this year is to show that, to show me opening a bakery in Brazil or in the Middle East or London — wherever the bakeries go. That’s our international plan now.”

Inside the bakeshop, which supplies his 11 bakeries nationwide, Valastro and his team whip up between 300 and 600 birthday cakes and 50 to 100 special or wedding cakes per week. Today, a Saturday, things are pretty calm: all the cakes have been shipped out to events already. Each room has some activity, though: bakers are kneading dough, pulling out trays of fanciful cookies and cannolis and lobster tails (one of Buddy’s trademark desserts). There’s a woodshop that’s quiet now, but some elaborate cake platform is in mid-construction. (“They say I’m dangerous with tools, but I’ve gotten a lot better.”) One of the hardest cakes was a crab last season: it had to have moving claws. “To figure out the mechanics of a cake, it can take me two or three days. My guys are like, ‘Just don’t make it move.’ But I was so far into it, there was no turning back. My wife would call here at like 3 a.m. saying ‘What the hell are you doing trying to make that crab move?’ But it moved! It moved!”

Valastro shows us a cake room with a huge doorway in back. “When I designed this building I wanted to make it so other people are not going to be able to make cakes like me, because of the sheer size. We can make a cake the size of a car and drive it right out there.” They have done just that on Cake Boss.

As we see on the show, the customer is always right… even if they’re wrong. The weirdest cake he ever made was “probably the cake I made for the zombies.”

The ‘60s rock band, I ask?

“No, it was for like a zombie walk. It was pretty disgusting cake, they wanted a lot of limbs and guts and gore, which, for me — like, you could actually make an amazing cake out of that, but there’s something in my heart that doesn’t want things to be gory, like my mind wants it to be beautiful and perfect. Who wants to eat something that looks like a brain or a limb and tastes like cake?”

Then there was the garbage disposal cake for an Irish birthday celebrant in the sanitation business. Guests fed junk into the cake, which spewed out a toxic sludge into beer glasses. “That was disgusting as well. That was one we probably should have said no to, that didn’t turn out as good as I thought. I mean, there’s cake triumphs and cake failures. The garbage disposal cake was a failure,” he says, laughing.

And after designing and executing thousands and thousands of cakes, Valastro, who is Catholic, says there’s still one that he dreams of making.

“I would love to make a cake for the Pope,” he says. “I think (Pope Francis) is an awesome guy, he’s preaching an awesome message about really bringing people together.”

Any ideas for a papal cake design?

“I thought about doing something cool with the Vatican or a papal hat, but honestly, he’s so not superficial, I would make a cake about what his message is about: about equality, or it doesn’t matter what religion you are, or country you’re from, help people who need help — the poor, the starving, the sick. And I would try to tell that story through a cake, if I could.”

We’ll eat to that.

* * *

Cake Boss Season 7 airs on TLC Channel until December 2015.