A Brush with Celebrity

Several months ago, a student in one of my cake classes mentioned that Duff from "Ace of Cakes" was coming to Omaha. The next day I searched the internet for the alleged event and found out that he was doing a charity dinner/ auction for the Omaha food bank, but tickets were hard to come by and started at $150 a plate. I was bummed.... until I noticed the event was sponsored by none other than ConAgra Foods--- woohoo- a connection! I emailed Kevin who sent out emails to all the right friends in all the right places and in a matter of hours, we had ourselves free tickets- and good tickets- we sat second from the front, smack dab in the center and only about 6 feet from Duff himself. How cool is that? Even I with my bad aim, could have tossed something and hit him in the back of the head- yes we were that close. Now I really am not into celebrities or celebrity worship- For the most part, I really don't care about that kind of thing, but I am a cakee these days... so for me this was fun to see.

This was our first spotting of his bald head:

And then he did signings of the book. When it was our turn, he borrowed some chapstick from a total stranger-- apparently not a germophobe.

And then he signed my book. They announced there was not time for pictures, just signings, so Kevin snuck this one in... but I was quite bummed that Kevin wasn't able to be in it. He was indeed there and he is an awesome guy who deserves all the credit for me being able to be there. My smile is kinda frightening in this picture- hopefully I didn't scare him :) The signature:
Then it was on to dinner. It was a big crowd- over 1000 people. And this is a picture of the back of Duff's bald head again but taken from us sitting in our seats- we were pretty close... It irked me a bit that the people at his table were just ConAgra foundation big wigs- the sweet lady next to him (very nice- got us tickets, can't complain) told us she didn't even watch the show. That just didn't seem right to me. The table he sat at should have had real die hard fans (IMHO).
After dinner, he spoke and did a Q & A. He was pretty funny and true to his television character. He's definitely a celebrity though and he knows it (if you know what I mean). Then he auctioned off cakes that had been made by local culinary students. This was a low point in the evening because they could barely get people to bid on them. It was like pulling teeth to get a bid. --akward---They always started around $1000, and all of them sold for about that $900-$1300. It was clear that they had expected the cakes to go for a lot more money- Duff even said that if you ordered one of those from his bakery it would be like $6000. Here's a few of those poor unfortunate cakes:Yikes! In the end, a lot of money was raised for the food bank when they auctioned off a trip to Baltimore including an exclusive tour of Charm City Cakes. That went for $40, 000!!!... and when it did they threw in another trip to the competing bidder for another $40,000. That second bidder was a Conagra exec that we spoke to after. He said he wasn't even planning on taking the trip- he was just doing it for the event- CRAZY! Some people just have too much money!

All in all it was a fantastic night to remember!