"It just started evolving": Cake Toppers host Buddy Valastro opens up about his childhood baking journey

Cake Toppers host and the longtime face of Food Network, Buddy Valastro, continues to bring his passion for baking to television audiences.

The latest episode of Cake Toppers aired on Monday, December 15, 2025, at 10:00 p.m. ET on FYI, showcasing Valastro’s signature skill, creativity, and heart as bakers competed to design over-the-top edible creations.

The 48-year-old baker recently appeared on the Lay It On podcast, where he reflected on the roots of his baking career, his childhood in New Jersey and how he turned his small, family-owned bake shop, Carlo's Bakery, into a baking and restaurant empire.

During the conversation, Valastro opened up about growing up in an Italian-American family, learning the art at his father’s side and being forced to grow up after a devastating loss of his father at just 17 years old. He told host Brad Leone:

"How I started and then, you know, I mean, it just started evolving."

Here's what the Cake Toppers host said about his baking journey

The Cake Toppers star Buddy Valastro grew up in Little Ferry and Hoboken, New Jersey, surrounded by family and food, with Carlos Bakery at the center of daily life. He said:

“I started working there when I was about 11. I went to work with my dad. My dad was my hero, my idol.”

Carlos Bakery was where Valastro learned discipline, intuition and pride in craftsmanship.

“You see it, you see the color of it, it looks done,” he said of his father’s teaching style. “No temperature, no viscosity. It’s intuition.”

By the time he was 16, Valastro already knew that baking was what he wanted to do in life:

“I decided that I was going to be a baker. Like I was like, 'All right, this is my career. I love it.' You know, my parents had a good business, and I was going to join the family business."

However, everything changed on Valastro’s 17th birthday.

“We found out that my dad had stage three lung cancer,” he said. “We decided that I would drop out of school until he got better. Unfortunately, he died three weeks later.”

At just 17 years old, Valastro suddenly found himself responsible for the bakery and the people who depended on it.

“Now I’m 17. My dad died—my best friend, my idol—and now I got 25, 30 employees,” he said. “I was a kid. Like, a kid-kid.”

The Cake Boss star reflected on his most important lessons that came in the quiet hours of the night, as he recalled:

“It was like two o’clock in the morning. My buddies are out partying, and I’m frying donuts."

Standing over trays of donuts, Valastro began questioning the model. “I’m selling these donuts for 50 cents. The supermarkets are selling them for 25. They’re terrible, but people are buying them." That moment sparked a change in his thought process. “I’m looking at them, saying, ‘What am I doing?’ I gotta be here at two in the morning doing this.”

Around the same time, cake decorating was undergoing a change, and Valastro saw that as an opportunity to generate profits. He explained:

“A three-tier cake with fondant was like $1,000. You telling me I take the same cake, make it look pretty, and instead of 150 bucks I get a thousand? Beats frying donuts all night.”

Reflecting on his strengths that led to his success, he admitted being both artistic and practical, adding,

“I was kind of years ahead of my time.”

Although he did not attend a traditional culinary school, he joked,

“I went to the Carlos College of Baking Knowledge.” 

His baking knowledge then kept on evolving, and he grew from 30 to 75 employees, expanding the floors in their bakery:

“I was always trying to see touches and times, how I could make things faster. Efficiency, automation, that’s how my mind worked without even knowing it.”

Those early lessons eventually paved the way for everything that followed, including his television success, massive production projects, and his current role guiding bakers on Cake Toppers.

Valastro said the heart of his journey hasn’t changed. When asked whether he still likes to bake, he said:

 "I'm good at it. There’s something peaceful about it."

Stay tuned for more updates.