When “Cake Boss” star Buddy Valastro says thank you, he says it with a cake.
That’s what the staff of New York's Hospital for Special Surgery learned when the reality TV baker showed his gratitude with a towering confection after they helped him recover from a potentially career-ending hand injury.
On Wednesday, the 43-year-old shared a glimpse of that cake — as well his doctor who operated on him — with his fans and followers on Instagram.
(Click or swipe through to see all the pictures in the set.)
“Check out the super special cake I made for Dr. Michelle Carlson, the nurses and staff at @hspecialsurgery as a token of my immense appreciation!” he wrote alongside several photos.
The first shot shows Valastro holding up one a heavily bandaged hand as he stands alongside the surgeon. The photos after that one that show off his creation.
“It replicates the main hospital there in #NYC,” he said of the cake, which also included several hospital-scrubs mini cakes and, at the top of the tower, a hand giving the thumbs up for all the hard work. “I could never thank them enough for all they have done to help me on this journey to a full recovery.”
It’s a journey that started back in September, when Valastro had his right hand impaled by a pinsetter rod in his home bowling alley.
"I thought I was going to faint, I looked at my hand and there was blood everywhere and I was stuck, the rod going back and forth because the machine goes back and forth," he told TODAY’s Savannah Guthrie from his New Jersey home just days later.
Valastro’s sons worked together to free him before an ambulance arrived on the scene.
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At the time, he told People magazine, “My hands to me are my lifeline of everything I do. And I wonder, ‘Am I ever going to do what I used to be able to do?'"
The cake he presented to the staff of HSS seems to answer that question.
The hospital shared many of the same photos of the cake Valastro did on its own Instagram page, along with a message from Dr. Carlson.
“That was spectacular,” she said of his creation. “To see this beautiful cake that someone has made for you - it really shows they appreciate what you’ve done, and that’s the best there is.”
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