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Community Corner

Booker, Newark Make Debut on 'Cake Boss'

Episode originally filmed in April at Belmont-Runyon School for Read Across America Day

As of Cake Boss that premiered Monday night opens, we see Buddy entering the Newark City Hall. Could it be he's meeting with Superman, ?

It is Booker! Oh boy, we have to get him to retweet this article to his 57 million Twitter followers.

“Mayor Booker's done a lot of great things in Newark,” Buddy says, which will inevitably be used as an endorsement in commercials next year when (come on, you know it's happening).

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The mayor wants Buddy to make a cake for . “My hope is that you could make a cake that could capture their imagination and excite them about literacy,” he says.

Booker gives Buddy a muse: Dr. Seuss. “Just promise me it won't be a green eggs and ham flavored cake,” the mayor jokes.

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Buddy returns to the Lackawanna factory with a box of books. “Dr. Seuss is one of my favorites,” he says. “Not only do I remember reading them as a kid, but I read them to my kids,” he says.

He asks the bakers what they think is iconic about Dr. Seuss. They start answering: the big hat, weird architecture and other wild things. Buddy gets his idea. He's going to do something gravity defining, with swings and spinning wheels. “Everything I see is topsy-turvy, angling this way, angling that way,” he says.

Turns out this is such a big episode that not only does it have Booker in it, but it's also Buddy's 35th birthday. His wife Lisa is planning him a surprise party. She tells Buddy's guys that she needs a cake for Saturday night, at a party in a bowling alley.

They start shouting ideas but Lisa shoots them all down. Mauro then interrupts to say that the cake will be a surprise for Lisa so he's not going to tell her anything about it. She agrees. “If he finds about any of this you're all dead,” she jokes.

Mauro has an idea to make a table with place cards for everyone in Buddy's family. Also, plates of food: “Like a big huge thing of spaghetti, a big chicken, a big roast beef.” All the guys are really into it.

But Buddy's sister Grace hates it. She says the plates with the big roast beef and such make it look like the family is always eating.

“That's going to be embarrassing,” Grace answers. “They're going to see a birthday cake – food. What does that say, my brother's a smorgasbord?”

Her husband Joey says they're going to redo the cake, with three tiers on it representing each stage of the bakery's life from 412 Adams Street, 95 Washington Street and the Lackawanna factory. Those first two streets are here in Hoboken, for those of you elsewhere reading this because you saw Cory Booker tweet it.

Meanwhile, Buddy continues with the Dr. Seuss cake, which will have six moving parts. He says he wants to show the kids that imagination can't be contained. “It's time to unleash the beast, it's time to make this (pointing to his brain) go wild,” Buddy says.

When the cake is finished Buddy admits it's one of the hardest he's ever done. But it's also one of the most visually stunning. It's very colorful and whimsical, and all the famous Seuss characters are on it too: the Cat in the Hat, Horton and . “I feel like there could be more crap sticking out of everywhere,” Ralph jokes.

Buddy and the bakers Mayor Booker is there, speaking to hundreds of kids who are all wearing Seussian red and white striped hats.

and all the kids go nuts. Even Booker goes nuts. They all go even crazier when Buddy shows them all the cake's tricks.

“Buddy has a way of using his art form as a way to connect with people that is just really wonderful,” Booker says.

“Sometimes you make cakes for no reason,” Buddy says. “This was a good reason.”

While Buddy is out the other bakers finish his surprise cake. Mary and Madeline approve. They think Buddy is going to like the cake because it has so much family and history on it.

Buddy enters the bowling alley. Everyone shouts surprise and he jumps. Everyone comes to hug him. “I thought I was coming here to deliver a cake for a bar mitzvah,” Buddy says.

Buddy says he likes the cake, the one showing the different stages of the famous Carlo's Bakery. Surely he'll be there longer to add more, at least until then President Booker beckons him to DC to be Secretary of Cake.

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