One of many reasons why Food Network is pretty much my favourite television network.
Charm City Cakes is a cake bakery in Baltimore, Maryland. They make one-of-a-kind, custom-order cakes that look awesome. The owner is Duff Goldman, and he's awesome. All the other people there are awesome. The result: one awesome reality tv show.
TV about making cakes? Explain.
A single thirty-minute episode of Ace of Cakes usually covers about a week of cake making. Often there will be twenty+ cakes in a week, but the episode will focus on a few of the cooler ones. The trials of getting a perfect scale replica of Wrigley Field done right and on time, for example. (It's for a Cubs fan, so should the scoreboard show the Cubs ahead? Of course not! We want to be realistic.)
A bakery making fancy cakes? Boring!
One thing they like to play up in the promos is how Duff uses power tools. They'll even use some electronics in the cakes at times. And explosives. But watching the episodes, that just seems to be normal: they use whatever tools work.
Really, though. It's the people who make it interesting. I wouldn't be interested in you making a fancy cake, because you're boring. (No, not you, the person reading over your shoulder.) These people have fun making cakes, and their wackiness makes for a lot of humour.
Cast
- Duff Goldman
- Owner of CCC and the Ace of cakes. 'The bad boy of baking', except he's not bad. He's just...kind of wild and a creative genius. When they were making a Scottish-themed cake, he decided he had to wear a kilt, and he hired someone to walk through the bakery playing the bagpipes. Hey, when the cakes start at 500USD, you can afford to do things right.
- Geoffry Manthorne
- Geoff is the executive sous chef, which really means he's Duff's right-hand-man. CCC has a lot of artists, but Geoff used to build architecture models. In fact, he still does, just now they're made of cakes. He's just a quiet guy who focuses on making creative masterpieces. I believe they described him as 'OCD', which colloquially seems like a good term.
- Mary Alice Fallon Yeskey
- Mary Alice manages things. Duff's the boss, but he's a cake-guy boss. Mary Alice handles the business side of running a business. She's weird like the rest of them, but running the businessness means she has a slightly different perspective. The others tend to be all about the cakes and nothing else (you know how artists are).
- (jessicapierce rightly points out that I neglected to mention that Mary Alice is totally smokin hot. Forgive me, Mary Alice.)
- Anna Ellison
- Anna was an art student who started as an intern at CCC. She's sort of quiet, but, next to Duff, who isn't? She does a lot of cake painting.
- Mary Smith
- A decorator who used to do interior design.
- Sherri Chambers
- A decorator and sculpture. You don't see her around a lot.
- Adam Goldstein
- Another one you don't see too often. He mostly does baking.
- Katherine Hill
- Yet another art student. She began in season 2.
- Richard Todd Karoll
- Richard is the guy who looks a lot like Duff, but isn't. He isn't an art student.. He didn't go to culinary school. But he does his job well, so who cares? He, too, began in season 2.
- Katie Rose
- Who? Oh, yeah. You don't see her on the show a lot. As with so many of the CCC cake employees, she was an art student.
- Paul
- I only remember seeing him once, in the season 2 premier. He was referred to as 'The Ninja', and is apparently the 'Intern Wrangler'.
Sources and Resources
- Official CCC website: http://www.charmcitycakes.com/
- Official Ace of Cakes website: http://www.foodnetwork.com/food/show_db/0,3100,FOOD_26996,00.html
- IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0842903/