On Saturday night, when the episode of Bake It Like Buddy featuring Frisco residents Audrey McGinnis and her 16-year-old daughter Ryan McGinnis airs for the first time, neither of them will be watching.
Audrey will be out of town, and Ryan will be at her Frisco high school's homecoming dance. Thank goodness for DVR.
The two are thrilled to be featured on Cake Boss host Buddy Valastro's new spinoff baking show, Bake It Like Buddy, which began airing in early September on Discovery Family. They're just going to have to catch up on their half-hour episode after it premieres.
"There was a big hype when I left [to film the show] but it's been months," says Ryan, a Wakeland High School junior who flew to New Jersey to film the show with her mom in February. Ryan plans on hosting a watch party with friends soon. "I'm having to re-hype it," she says.
On the show, Ryan and her mom will compete against mother-daughter baking team Chelsi Reynolds and Jade Reynolds, from Arizona, in a four-hour challenge.
All were tasked with making a unicorn cake, and it'll come as no surprise to Cake Boss regulars that this cake had to be big.
When finished, the McGinnis' unicorn cake was nearly 3 feet tall and weighed between 50 and 70 pounds, the two bakers say. It was made up of 18 individual cakes.
"What a lot of people don't realize is, whenever you're assembling a big cake like that, it's not so much the detail but the structure," Ryan says. "If you iced it too early, or if it wasn't set up right, it wouldn't work right."
She learned how to bake, carve and decorate cakes from Audrey, a self-taught baker who owns a Frisco baking business called Every Girl Gourmet. Audrey's been on several TV shows, including heavy hitters MasterChef and Cake Wars. But it was Ryan's first time baking on a national show.
One of the highlights was meeting Valastro, the TV personality and baking superstar whose Carlo's Bakery has spread from New Jersey across the country, including to Dallas and Frisco. When the bakery in Preston Center in Dallas opened in 2016, fans waited in line for hours. Family member Joe Faugno called the Texas opening "off the charts." It's clear Valastro and his family have fans in the Lone Star State.
Ryan says Valastro was "exactly like he was on his own TV show -- personable and humorous and bubbly and enthusiastic." She also liked the dynamic between Valastro and his family members, a characteristic from Cake Boss that carries into Bake It Like Buddy.
Audrey appreciates that, too: She started baking cakes 18 years ago, picking up the tradition her dad started by making cakes for his kids' birthdays.
"That was such a good family memory," Audrey says.
Despite Ryan's time on the big screen as a baker, she doesn't plan on becoming a pastry chef. She calls it "more of a hobby" and is interested in the holistic cosmetic industry; maybe she'll study to be a dermatologist, she says.
Audrey is just happy to have a baking buddy. "I can't say enough about how proud I am of her in the way she handled herself," Audrey says. "It's a high-pressure situation and there's cameras, and things can go wrong. She just really stepped up, and I'm super proud of her."
Bake It Like Buddy starring Frisco residents Audrey and daughter Ryan McGinnis airs at 8 p.m. Sept. 29 on Discovery Family.
