Cake Boss Buddy Valastro

by Lynette Rice
Categories: Food and Drink, TV Recap, Television

cake-boss_lBuddy Valastro is no Ace of Cakes, but it’s not his pastry-making abilities that got me to tune into the second season premiere of TLC’s Cake Boss. It’s those feisty kitchen shenanigans that keep me coming back for seconds, from Buddy’s mean wonderfully naughty treatment of his accident-prone Cousin Anthony, to the way he interacts with his nutball sister Mary who thinks nothing of cramming a (poisonous!) lily down her piehole. Like the Food Network’s Duff Goldman, I’m sure Buddy is hellbent on creating some cakes for the ages – witness his PVC-heavy Venus Fly Trap confection for a botanical garden soiree – but his show only gets cooking when he and his team go at it (like when his clueless sister Grace temporarily confiscated a diamond ring that was meant for a special proposal cake, leaving Buddy and Co. to dig through every last cupcake to locate the missing rock). And no episode is complete without a screaming Mary Valastro, aka Ma, who didn’t take too kindly to Buddy’s practical joke on Anthony (the pimply-faced homeboy got red in the face, thanks to a couple of bakery heavies who dumped a bucket of crimson frosting on that unsuspecting blockhead). Then again, maybe Ma would have held her tongue, had she known what Anthony was going to do to the bakery’s car in the subsequent (new!) episode.

What do you think of the show? Is Carlo’s Bake Shop a delicious alternative to Charm City Cakes?