Carlos Bakery

Keeping up with this blog is very difficult, since my computer is a piece of poo. I am finally able to go online after the crashing of the hard drive. It is tough being online because my computer and this strange internet connection don't work very well together. Enough about the computer, let’s talk foooood!

Carlos Bakery, home of the Cake Boss! Watching the show you would never know that they are as busy as they actually are. I was expecting a line, but only because I previously heard there would be one. We made the trip on Friday, hoping the line wouldn't be too bad. In order to get to Hoboken New Jersey, which really is not that far from here, we had to ride the bus into Union City.... I think we were the only white people there; it is a very diverse place. In Union City we had to take the bus to Hoboken. As we rode into Union City, we knew where to take the next bus; the only problem was that we didn't know where to get off the bus we were on. We got off where we thought was the correct location, but we were wrong. We had to walk a couple of sketchy blocks to the location of what we were really hoping was the bus stop. Many busses passed by, except for ours. So of course we started getting nervous that we weren't in the right place. Luckily after about 30min. the bus came by and we rode into Hoboken. Finding Carlos bakery was very easy. They even named the street after the bakery. We probably waited in line for 30 min or so, and had a chance to do some people watching in the mean time.  A limo pulled up when we were half way through the line and a large group of 13-16 year old girls came out dressed like they were going to prom in 1995. It was very obnoxious to see these girls walking around like they were very important, I think it was a birthday party, or maybe an 8th grade graduation, either way I don't know why they were visiting the Cake Boss on a Friday night dressed the way they were. It was our turn to walk inside... I was so excited! My excitement turned to stress when we walked in and found the bakery to be incredibly packed. We were handed a number and had to push though to get a peek at some of the stuff in the cases. We saw some small cakes and cookies, but we definitely did not get a chance to see everything because there were way too many people. We decided on getting a Reese’s cheesecake, or what we thought looked like cheesecake with a Reese’s on top. My number was finally called and I had to yell over the counter at the girl, who did not understand my cheesecake order and said they didn't have that, so now I am very curious as to what that Reese’s thing actually was. We ended up with a 6in Oreo cake and a canoli for a total of $29 dollars. Pretty expensive.

To get back to Teaneck was another complicated journey. We came across the problem of where to get off the bus, so we randomly got off again where we thought was the right spot, then realizing it wasn't, so we walked again to where we waited before, which was not the right spot, so we had to walk around even more to find the bust stop. When we did we were expecting the bus to arrive at 7:15, (what the schedule board said) which was really the AM schedule 7:15 would have been perfect because we found the bus stop around 6:50. When the bus didn't show up at 7:15 we waited until 7:30 then checked the schedule again, we had to wait 45 more minutes for the bus. That’s when we decided to eat the canoli, which I forgot to take a picture of. The shell was very crispy and it was filled with a sweet ricotta filling with pieces of candied orange and little chunks or chocolate, topped with powdered sugar. It was not what I was expecting, but it was delicious. I normally don't like ricotta, but it was perfect and not too sweet. 

Later on that night after we got home and had dinner, we opened up the cake. It was good, but not great. It was a chocolate cake with vanilla icing and Oreo pieces all over. The chocolate cake tasted like it could be box cake, and the icing was American butter cream made with shortening and powdered sugar, that also had a generic taste to it, but could very well be homemade. I understand the whole box cake thing, since they have so much cake to make for the amount of people that come through there. I probably would only go back to visit with my family, it was way too complicated to get there for cake that is just good. It was great to see it though! 6 out of 10, maily because of the name, canoli and experience.