Freed's Bakery created a mammoth cake tableau for ventriloquist Terry Fator, featuring Terry and his five favorite puppets. The show began airing in August. Freed’s Bakery general manager Max Fried says the all-edible cake required 230 hours to make and deliver.
The Fabulous Cakes’ Las Vegas episode features two others: At Caked, owner Carolyn Portuondo made a replica wooden sushi boat cake filled with hundreds of pieces of sushi, sashimi, and rolls – all made of cake. Vincent Pilon, Executive Pastry Chef for the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, produced a topsy-turvy wedding cake adorned with his signature chocolate flowers, ordered in true Vegas fashion, just two days before the wedding.
Freed’s Bakery owner Joni Fried says the beauty of “cake TV” is that it takes people away from depressing news like the economy and gives them something special to imagine. “It’s really been phenomenal,” she says.
Freed’s has been voted Best of Las Vegas by the Las Vegas Review Journal’s Reader’s Choice for the last 29 years and has been recognized by AOL City’s Best and The Knot’s Best of Weddings.
In the early 1980s, “we had a young decorator who didn’t care how many hours he worked,” Joni Fried recalls. “That’s how we became known in Las Vegas as the place for last-minute cakes. We could get any customer a cake within four hours. We don’t do that so much now, but we still do.”
The Freed’s Bakery staff has grown to more than 45 dedicated people, including associates who have been with the bakery more than 25 years. There are seven full-time cake designers, who can produce a cake with as little as four hours notice. As one of Freed’s cake decorators points out, the cake decorating world has come a long way since she started decorating cakes for Freed’s 17 years ago. “Back then, you were really something if you had a basket weave cake,” she says.
Freed’s Bakery has grown to notoriety on the national stage after having been featured on such shows as The Food Network’s “Roker on the Road,” “$40 a Day with Rachael Ray,” “Sugar Rush,” and “After Midnight.” Freed’s has also been featured on Lifetime’s “Top This Party,” Hawaiian Airlines’ “The Best of Las Vegas,” “Las Vegas Live,” and The Travel Channel., as well as in Bon Appétit, Martha Stewart Weddings, People’s Amazing Real Life Weddings, Neiman Marcus Entrée Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, and the New York Times Food Section feature on wedding cake designers.
