November marks the start of the holiday season for many, and that also means a time for great food and sweet desserts. So, it is fitting that celebrity baker Buddy Valastro comes back to TV this month with two new series on A&E: Legends of the Fork and Buddy Valastro’s Cake Dynasty. The series air back-to-back Saturday nights beginning Nov. 11 at 9pm ET/PT.
Legends of the Fork follows Valastro across the country as he uncovers the recipes and people behind some of the most popular restaurants. “It’s basically a show where I go and meet people, see the ‘secret sauce’ to what makes their place legendary,” says Valastro, who also explains that the show, which he completed filming in April, covers 40 different locations, including Nashville, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, New Jersey and New York.
From there, Valastro then filmed Cake Dynasty, which he says wrapped a few weeks before we spoke in mid September. Valastro describes it as “basically a reality show of my life. It is where we are now with the evolution of my business [Carlo’s Bake Shop in Hoboken] and my family. My kids, when we were doing [the 2009-20 series] Cake Boss, were really young, so they weren’t on the show as much. But now [this series] is the succession part of who’s going to take over the business. And I think that Cake Dynasty gives a really different dynamic of the business. It’s not only about making one giant cake. Today we’re making 7,500 cakes.”
In fact, the very busy Valastro had literally just taken something out of the oven before kindly taking the time to answer our “5 Questions.”
1. Do you have a favorite sports team?
Yeah, I’m a New York Giants fan in football and a New York Yankees fan [in baseball]. Those are my two main, and then hockey would be the [New Jersey] Devils. Basketball, I would say probably the [Brooklyn] Nets; even though they left New Jersey, we forgive them.
2. Do you have any pets?
I do. I have three dogs: Duke, a German shepherd, and two Yorkies, Bella and Baci.
3. You’ve met and worked with/baked for a lot of celebrities. Have you been starstruck by any?
I was starstruck by Oprah Winfrey and Lawrence Taylor. Two weird spectrums, right? Oprah was like a dream, to be able to meet and make a cake for her … and she was so nice off- and on-camera. Then Lawrence Taylor — growing up being a Giants fan, I was just so psyched to meet him. I told him I wanted to tackle him, and he looked me dead in the eye, and he was like, “You [can] try; I don’t think it’s going to work. Take [the] ball.” I was excited; I was like a little kid.
4. Do you have a favorite travel spot?
Yes; depends on who I’m with. If it’s me and my wife, we love St. Barts. If it is me, my wife and my kids, I would say probably the Bahamas.
5. Are there certain pastries/cakes that are more fun to make than others?
At this point, I’ve made so many cakes and so many pastries and everything else, [but] the funny thing for me is I still enjoy it. … I would say the pastry that gives me the most pride that we make is our lobster tail, because it is the hardest Italian pastry to make and we’re probably one of the only places that make it ourselves from scratch, the old-fashioned way. And then when you take a bite of that crispy shell, it just makes everything so worth it. Funny enough, we’re making them today and I had one for breakfast.