Cake Boss: Bartolo “Buddy” Valastro Jr.

If there’s one thing fans of the hit reality TV show Cake Boss will attest to, it’s that there are cakes, and then there are Cake Boss cakes. The difference? A Cake Boss cake is layered, shaped and coloured with such whimsical novelty they’re almost too pretty to cut – but too delicious to resist.

It’s the artistic hand of Bartolo “Buddy” Valastro Jr. – a man who speaks with such Joe Pesci-like bravado that he may seem more street tough than master baker – that produces this lip-smacking beauty. “We really enjoy using our creativity to design custom cakes,” says Valastro, a fourth generation baker who heads the kitchen at Carlo’s Bake Shop, his family’s bakery in Hoboken, New Jersey. “It’s a merger of traditional methods of decorating and using new technologies to do things like make them spin or light up.” Read more