Cake Balk

Do or have any gentle readers watch/watched the television show Cake Boss?  For the past two summers I tried to take my daughters inside the Hoboken store, but the lines were so overwhelmingly long, we never made it.

This summer Carlo's Bakery has opened in a new New Jersey location, in a fairly well-heeled zip code, but without the lines. 

So today I went in to place an order for a birthday cake--a quite simple cake with a pair of ballet shoes sculpted out of modeling chocolate as the only extra embellishment. As my daughters had waited some three years to try a Carlo's pastry (both girls had cupcakes the day before), I was prepared to spend a little more than usual on a special cake. 

I was not prepared to spend five times my budget on said cake, however. 

I realize that the rent at this location is high and that the TV show has inflated the value of the cakes, but am amazed that a bakery can charge such an extravagant price for a simple cake (removing the slippers would have reduced the cost by $100, but the "reduced" sticker was still stratospheric).

The pleasures of a beautifully homemade birthday cake outweigh every bit of icing sugar that helps to frost a TV gateau.