‘Cake Boss’ Buddy Valastro recovering after ‘terrible’ bowling accident impales hand - NJ.com

Buddy Valastro, the celebrity baker known as the “Cake Boss,” is recuperating after sustaining a serious injury Sunday.

Valastro shared a photo on Instagram Wednesday showing himself in a hospital bed, his hand and arm bandaged and raised up.

“I was involved in a terrible accident a few days ago,” said Valastro, 43, using the hashtag #ironfist. “What do you think of my new accessory?”

Valastro had to undergo two rounds of surgery after hurting his right hand in a bowling accident at his home.

“Buddy was spending some quality time on Sunday bowling with his family,” Nikki Monan, spokeswoman for Carlo’s Bakery, tells NJ Advance Media. “There was a malfunction with the bowling pinsetter, a common fix in the past, but (it) turned into a terrible accident. After trying to release the bowling pin from the cage mechanism, his right hand became lodged and compressed inside the unit.”

Unable to remove his hand, she says Valastro watched a metal rod "slowly and repeatedly impale his hand three times between his ring finger and middle finger. "

More than five minutes passed before Valastro’s sons, Buddy Jr. and Marco, went to the garage for a reciprocating saw to cut through the metal rod and extricate their father’s hand from the machine.

Valastro underwent emergency surgery Sunday at Morristown Medical Center to remove the rod from his hand and stabilize the wound. He underwent further surgery at the Hospital for Special Surgery in Manhattan with orthopedic surgeon Dr. Michelle Carlson.

“It will be an uphill battle as it’s Buddy’s dominant right hand and he will need prolonged recovery and therapy,” Monan said.

Valastro’s reality show “Cake Boss,” filmed at the Hoboken bakery, premiered on Food Network in 2009, launching Valastro to food fame. The baker grew up in Hoboken and Little Ferry and lives in Montville.

Famous friends, like “Ace of Cakes” star Duff Goldman, his Food Network cake rival on “Buddy vs. Duff,” and celebrity chefs Emeril Lagasse, Rocco DiSpirito and Cat Cora, commented on Valastro’s post, offering their well wishes.

“Get better homie," Goldman said. “You’re gonna need that hand.”

“Get better quick my friend," Lagasse said.

Carlo’s Bake Shop has been in Hoboken since 1910. Valastro took over at the bakery after his father, Bartolo Valastro Sr., died in 1994. He expanded the business into a sprawling chain with the help of his reality TV fame, launching a bakeware line and other reality shows over the years. In showing the day-to-day workings of the bakery and his custom cake adventures, “Cake Boss” features Valastro’s family, including his sisters and his mother, Mary Valastro. She died in 2017.

Valastro recently added a PizzaCake pizzeria to his group of restaurants and bakeries, which include Carlo’s Bake Shops at casinos and malls across the country and Canada and Buddy V’s Ristorante Italian restaurants in Las Vegas, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania and San Antonio, Texas. The pizzeria is at Harrah’s Las Vegas Hotel & Casino.

“You can’t arrest me! I’m the Cake Boss!” the celebrity baker reportedly told police in 2014 before he was arrested on a misdemeanor drunken driving charge. (Valastro later pleaded guilty to driving while impaired.) He was inducted into the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2018.

Valastro closed two of his Carlo’s Bake Shops in Ridgewood and Morristown in 2019 after shuttering Westfield and Red Bank locations in 2018.

The most recent Jersey location to close is the one at Willowbrook Mall in Wayne. There are currently two Carlo’s bakeries in New Jersey: the original in Hoboken and another in Marlton. The bakery’s Times Square location is temporarily closed.

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Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com.

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