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SALT LAKE CITY – This Labor Day, we’re celebrating working Utahns, like a grandmother and granddaughter who will soon be competing on a new Discovery Family show “Bake It Like Buddy.”
“Cake Boss” Buddy Valastro will put them up to a challenge in the premiere episode, which airs this weekend.
Debi Jensen is well known in Daybreak and beyond for her delicious Swirly Girls Gourmet Bakery goodies.
“If you get hungry, you eat the goods,” said Debi laughing, as she had a taste while icing cupcakes.
Despite her three decades of experience, Debi thought it was a prank when she heard from the producers of “Bake It Like Buddy.”
“I kind of ignored it, and then they called again and the girls here said, ‘Why don’t you call them back?’ It wasn’t a prank and it was for a family show,” she said.
“Family” was an ideal theme for this baker because it was a breeze teaming up with her 16-year-old granddaughter, Sage.
“She started baking with me when she was real little, at home,” Debi said about the 11th-grader. “Cookies every year, especially for the holidays. She started coming here at 11 and folding boxes, whatever I wanted her to do. It wouldn’t be Swirly Girls without the both of us.”
Like her grandmother, Sage knows her way around a kitchen.
“I just like being creative, and it’s something new every single day,” she said.
The high schooler is continuing to learn from her skilled grandmother.
“If I mess up, she doesn’t get mad,” Sage said. “She just said, ‘This is what happened and this is how you fix it.'”
She said her grandmother is more popular than she is.
“I was sitting in math class and they’re like, 'Where do you work?' And I was like, 'My grandma’s bakery.' 'What bakery?' 'Swirly Girls.' They were like, 'You know Debi!' And I was like, 'Yeah, that’s my grandma.' Everyone knows her,” said Sage smiling.
Creating tasty treats has become a sweet family tradition for these two generations of Jensen ladies.
Their episode of “Bake It Like Buddy” airs at 7 p.m. Saturday on Discovery Family.
