3 questions for Buddy Valastro about his 'Cake Dynasty' and hand recovery: 'I just need 1 more surgery'
Buddy Valastro is "procrastinating" booking his sixth and — hopefully final — hand surgery, but he's firing on all cylinders when it comes to everything else in his life.
The Cake Boss is back with two new TV culinary adventures for A&E: One is Buddy Valastro’s Cake Dynasty, a behind-the-scenes look at the Carlo's Bake Shop owner's business and his family life with wife, Lisa, and their four kids — Sofia, 20, Buddy Jr., 19, Marco, 16 and Carlo, 12 — taking on co-starring roles. The lead-in is Legends of the Fork, which sees Valastro out of his confectionary comfort zone, visiting famous restaurants to learn their recipes for success.
"I'm happy to be doing television again," Valastro tells Yahoo Entertainment. "Since 2009 ... I probably went 10 years straight where I filmed 11 months out of the year. I needed a little break. My kids were at an age where I wanted to be at the football games. Then COVID happened and I had to adapt my businesses to survive." Not to mention heal from the debilitating hand injury he sustained in a 2020 bowling accident. "Now I'm in a good place, my kids are older and I'm ready to get back into it. I can't wait to show the world where Buddy Valastro is today."
Viewers still get the treat of watching the baker bring his big cake ideas to life — like a spooktacular Wicked one, featuring a near-life-size Elphaba and Glinda, for the Broadway show's 20th anniversary. But now he pulls back the curtain on the business side of his operation, which on the day we speak is producing 12,500 cakes. He was on his factory's assembly line at 5 a.m., he tells us, pointing to his batter covered (and notably smaller) chef's whites. He then had a TV call time at 8:45 a.m., followed by interviews all afternoon and a plan to return to the assembly line that night.
"I still go to work every day — and I work damn hard," says the celebrity baker (who's also making his acting debut in a Lifetime holiday movie next month). "I'm dedicated to what I do."
That's the other part of what you see on Dynasty — him rolling up his sleeves and teaching his kids the ropes of the family business in hopes that they take over one day, just like he did for his late dad at 17. And sometimes it involves greasy lessons.
1. How's your hand recovery?
"Thank God my hand is doing well," Valastro reports. "I'm probably not going to be a hand model anytime soon, but I just need one more surgery. I can't straighten one finger out."
To date, "I have had five surgeries on my hand to get it to where it is — and I'm about 95 percent back," he continues. "Honestly, I have just been procrastinating [booking the final surgery], but the doctor said if I do it in a year, it's not gonna really matter."
He credits "miracle workers" Dr. Michelle G. Carlson at the Hospital for Special Surgery, who performed his operations, and occupational therapist Deana Swanson, whom he credits for "really nursing me back. I was scared. I really did not think that I would ever move my hand the way that I am now. I can't thank them enough."
As for whether he's bowled again — since his hand was impaled multiple times while he fixed his bowling alley's malfunctioning pinsetter — the answer is yes.
"Listen, I don't hate bowling," he says with a laugh. "I love machinery. I love the way mechanical things work. I'm pretty mechanically inclined. It was just an accident. It's like when people hang out with lions and then the lion attacks them and the lion didn't know. I feel the same way about the bowling alley machine. I turned away for a second, I put my hand where it wasn't supposed to be and, boom, it caught it."
2. They say don't go into business with family. How have you avoided the pitfalls? And how do you keep your own kids grounded as they grow up in this cake dynasty?
"It started with my dad's dream of having a business all his children could work in," he says of the Hoboken, N.J., bake shop his dad, Buddy Sr., bought in 1964 and he and his four sisters took over in 1994. "When he died, we all wanted to carry on his legacy. We were young, but we pulled together and grew this business. We have a love for the business. When we were younger — I don't want to say we fought more, like, 'Who's going to be in charge?' — but we've come to a place today where my sisters don't want to be in charge. Trust me. They actually feel bad for me... But they know that my idea and my way is for the greater good. And I know I could not do it without my family's support. My family is my backbone. And, listen sometimes, I'll tell my sister to go fly a kite or whatever. And they'll tell me that. But I can't be mad at them. Both my parents passed away, which was really tough for me and my sisters, but we have a bond."
Now his own family is involved in building the business. Lisa, no longer raising babies, is working in the bakery. Sofia is studying restaurant hospitality at college. The first episode of Dynasty sees Buddy Jr. contemplating whether to go to college or start working in the family business. (Spoiler: Jr.'s attending Syracuse University.)
"It's this new chapter in my life. My kids are getting older and I can build this empire with them," he says.
But getting a glimpse inside the spectacular family estate — which Valastro rolls in and out of in his Aston Martin — it's clear his kids don't have a hardscrabble upbringing. So he works to balance that.
"It's important to lead by example," he says of his work ethic. "My kids will be with me [at the factory] and my son will be on the floor, arm deep cleaning out the grease trap. My dad did it to me and now I do it for a couple reasons. One, I want him to show to employees: Look, I would never ask you to do something that I'm not willing to do myself. Two, I want him to know what it's like to be the guy that's got to clean the grease trap, because you have a lot more admiration and respect for that person because it's a s***ty job. It's important to teach those lessons and when my kids are there, they work."
As for scaling back on work himself and his kids potentially taking over, "There's a long term plan," he says. "Look, me and Lisa got married young. We had kids young. I'm only 46. I feel strong and I love doing what I'm doing. When the kids get to be a little bit older and we see if they [follow me into this] business, then maybe that's when I can take a break."
3. What's the latest cake trend we should know about?
"I think we're kinda setting a trend," the guy behind the legendary rainbow cake says. "We're doing this thing called 'Every Buddy's Cake,' which is launching at Walmart this week. It's three desserts in one. They're all manufactured in my factory; we're making 12,500 in a day. So today we're making our "Birthday," we call it — it's got a layer of toffee blondie, a layer of Funfetti or confetti cake and then a cheesecake in this sweetened condensed milk buttercream that I developed that's meant to be refrigerated and is softer that typical buttercream. Then we have a chocolate version that's a pecan pie, chocolate cake and cheesecake with a salted caramel, sweet and condensed milk buttercream. And then we did a fall one which is a pecan pie, apple crumb pie and pumpkin cheesecake with a maple spiced sweet and condensed milk buttercream.
"It's something for everybuddy — get it?" he says with a wink, noting he came up with the name himself in a marketing meeting.
When it comes to making his custom creations — which he gets requests for from around the world (this season, he also makes Neil Patrick Harris's 50th birthday cake) — he lets his imagination run wild.
"I've always thought of myself as a big kid or like a cartoon character because when I do a cake, I dream big," he says. "In my mind, there's nothing that's unachievable. If you said to me, 'Buddy, build me a cake that's going to fly to the moon,' I would really process it. There's a kid in me saying: Hey, we're gonna make this cake and fly it to the moon. And I think that you need that in you to do this type of work."
We point out that one of his most famous cakes in the entertainment space was delivered 15 years ago next month when the then-relatively unknown baker wheeled out a circus themed cake for birthday girl Britney Spears on Good Morning America in 2008. It was one year before his O.G. series, TLC's Cake Boss, debuted and made him a food star.
"I was honored that I got a call to make that cake," he recalls. "Listen, Britney Spears was bigger than anything, and when they said circus theme, there are just certain themes that are just easy cakes. So we made this spectacular cake and I remember bringing it to her and she was so nice. I actually gave her a hug. I don't know if I was allowed to, but I was like screw it. Give me a hug, Britney. I made your birthday cake," he says laughing.
"Fast-forward 15 years and I have done 1000s of hours of TV, I've traveled the world. It's a blessed life," he says. "Sometimes I say, 'Pinch me.' Really. Listen, at the end of the day, I'm a kid whose dad died when he was 17, I dropped out of high school, took over the family business and this is my life. It's pretty amazing."
Legends of the Fork premieres Saturday, Nov. 11 at 9 p.m. and is followed by Buddy Valastro’s Cake Dynasty at 10 p.m., both on A&E.
