John Oliver delivers kitchen equipment to cake bear makers as next LWT episode nears

As promised, a new flat grill and convection oven were delivered to Deising's Thursday morning, because of the bakery staff's exquisite cake bears donning an edible face of the “Last Week Tonight” host.

Ben Nandy

Jun 13, 2024, 9:57 PM

Updated 163 days ago

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HBO host John Oliver has made good on his guarantee to deliver kitchen equipment to Deising's Bakery in Kingston, after the bakery's response to Oliver's now-famous “cake bear challenge.”
As promised, a new flat grill and convection oven were delivered to Deising's Thursday morning, because of the bakery staff's exquisite cake bears donning an edible face of the “Last Week Tonight” host.
As part of a June 2 segment on Red Lobster, Oliver announced that he had won an online auction for the entire contents of the restaurant that recently closed down in the Town of Ulster.
Oliver's staff recreated the restaurant in his studio and gave away the famous Red Lobster biscuits.
Deising's co-owner Eric Deising also posted a note on the door of the shuttered restaurant, asking to buy a flat grill and convection oven.
After News 12's June 5 story on Oliver beating the Deising family to purchase the equipment, Oliver did another segment this past Sunday offering Deising's a new grill and oven on one condition - the bakery starts offering a John Oliver cake bear.
"I don't like cake bears," he said to his in-studio audience after running through some of Deising's items posted on the internet. "I [expletive] love cake bears!"
The owners and staff have been working 12-hour days to keep up with the demand for the cake bears. So far they have sold about 1,400 John Oliver cake bears.
"It's what everyone talks about every day," Deising's baker Emma Mejia said. "No one talks about Father's Day coming up. It's just all John Oliver. Everyone forgot about the dads."
"No one's complaining. We're all having fun," Eric Deising said, "as [much] fun as we can doing the same thing over and over and over."
Deising's is sharing some of the spotlight and good fortune. The restaurant is sending all the John Oliver cake bear proceeds to Peoples' Place Food Pantry and Resource Center in midtown Kingston.
Eric Deising said it could end up amounting to a donation of more than $10,000.
"Something really fun is going to help an organization that last year provided 1.5 million meals to the people of Ulster County," Peoples' Place Executive Director Christine Hein told News 12 Thursday.
"It's a win for everybody, and a win for John Oliver," Eric Deising said, "because now he has a bunch of new fans up here in Ulster County."
The owners said they may keep selling the John Oliver cake bears well into next week because there might be another leg to the saga on this Sunday evening's episode of 'Last Week Tonight,' sources told News 12, which may further increase demand for the cake bears.