Jono, Ben & Megan - The Podcast - Jordan Rondel, The Caker, chats to Jono and Ben

Episode Date: August 3, 2023

The Caker, Jordan Rondel, gives advice on the Cakeathon and whether she thinks Jono and Ben can complete all 106 cakes in two days.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Hits with the Jono and Ben podcast. Cheers to Dilma, making the world a better tea. Next week, we're going to bake every cake from the iconic Women's Weekly birthday cake book. We're going to do that at the Edsman's Baking School in Chelsea Bay, which will be awesome. Yeah, and right now we're going to get some advice from the queen of cake. What is the recipe for success, Ben?

You'll know her from the great Kiwi Bake Off. Her business is The Caker. Her name is Jordan Rondell and she joins us live from Los Angeles. Welcome. Thank you very much, Jono. How are you? Yeah, well, I'm doing very well. I'm looking at you on Zoom. We're dressed in beanies and swan dries in New Zealand. How hot is it in Los Angeles? It's been hot. It's been uncomfortably hot. I'm actually a Fahrenheit girl now.

Oh, you've gone Fahrenheit. In the 90s. The 90s? That means nothing to us. Give it, come on. I know. Definitely be like in the 30s. Okay, let's do a Google translate.

How much in degrees is 90, you're saying? I could be embellishing that. 32, 32, yeah. Yeah, okay. It's hot. So we got you on because we want to try and make every single cake from the iconic birthday cake book that many Kiwis had in their childhood.

There's 106 cakes in there, and we need some advice from someone like yourself. How long are you giving yourself to do it all in? Two days. Two days. In saying that, there are some logistics we've looked after there's an egg shortage so we're buying pre-made sponges ah okay look like our record the number of cakes that we've made in a day that the record is about 400 oh and how many was that how many people was that

that's a team of about 18 oh i will knock this off before lunchtime. Great to chat to you. See you later. Yeah, there we go. The cake, everybody. Well, because I was reading last night that you got a request at like 2 o'clock in the afternoon from Miley Cyrus to make a cake for that night. So that's fast turned around. Yeah, it was. And it had to be a whole new recipe too.

So, look, I feel you guys, this is a challenge for sure. How can Miley phone you at 2 o'clock in the afternoon and go, I want a whole new recipe, and by the way, I want it in four hours? How does that work? Well, it wasn't her herself, unfortunately, but you don't say no to Miley, do you? No, you don't. But you could have given me another 24, 48 hours.

It's pretty cool because your goal is to make you know baking and cake making cool and i think you do that it's you know like as has it taken a while to change people's perceptions yeah i mean look i started it back in 2010 so a good 13 years ago there were like two places you could get a cake from and neither of them had any kind of any innovation or um sort of you know homemade feel to it so i think back i did trailblaze something back in the day and and now there's so many incredible cake makers around new zealand and i'm like i'd like to think i had a little something to do with that maybe you're looking at two of them right now we're probably about to undo all of the

great work you've done for cakes uh oh, my goodness. Do you remember this iconic birthday cake book? Yeah, I do. I thought it's been a number of years since I would have flicked through it, but I'm pretty sure my mum used to make my birthday cakes from that book. I mean, the big bangers, the train seems to come through a lot. The duck with chips for a mouth. The unchlorinated pool's a big one with the green jelly. Now, hey, there was a thing with Chrissy Teigen a while ago,

and everyone in New Zealand got up in arms that she stole your idea. Are you cool with that? It's water under the bridge now, but at the time it was a bit hard to swallow. Yeah, but I got so much support from New Zealand, it was crazy. It really meant the world to me. And, you know, she's off doing her thing and I'm off doing mine. And it's fine. I'm over it.

Yeah, I know you're over it. But just to bring everyone up to speed, just so we open up that wound again. She loved your pre-made cakes. You co-labbed and stuff. You co-labbed and everything. And then she ran off and did exactly the same idea. Felt like that, right? Yeah.

That is literally what happened. Yeah. She called the collab off three months in and said, you know, the reason being I'm going to release my own line. And I said, well, hon, like you can't just, I said, here's an invoice or we continue. And so we did continue, we released it. And then they did everything in their power to squash it basically.

So it was an interesting experience. I learned a lot. It must have been pretty crazy though coming from New Zealand and taking that out of it, obviously how things ended, not so sweet. Having Chrissy Teigen, having Miley Cyrus, having celebrities, wanting to collab with you, wanting to eat your cakes. I mean, that's a pretty incredible journey you've been on.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the thing I love about America is you can wake up and have no idea what's going to happen that day and it's this like terrifying but also kind of wonderful feeling and just it really is like that cheesy saying about being the land of opportunity like is true and i that's why i love it yeah well you're nailing life over there we're very proud of you well wish us luck we'll send you the photo evidence. Don't feel you have to open it when we send it to you.

You've already done more than enough. I want to see it all. Good luck, you guys. Take care of yourself.