Cheesecake was a staple on the kitchen table at the Miami home of “The Golden Girls.” Throughout the run of the iconic ’80s sitcom, the four women — often sporting night gowns — frequently shared stories and bonded over slices of decadent cheesecake. TV Land even made a nearly 18-minute-long compilation video of “the best cheesecake moments,” a testament to its significant role in the series. But who actually made all those cheesecakes? Chef George Geary is the one who got it done.
Geary made every single cheesecake that appeared on the show over the course of seven seasons, from 1985 to 1992. Managing the bakery department of a Safeway store in Hollywood near Paramount Studios, Geary was only in his 20s when he was first tapped to make a wedding cake for the pilot of the then-unnamed show. He had no idea that the show would be called “The Golden Girls” and become one of the most famous American sitcoms in the history of television.
Chef George Geary made all of the cheesecakes for The Golden Girls
It was not uncommon for Geary’s Safeway bakery department to be tasked with creating food props for filming at Paramount Studios. After making that initial cake, he said that producers took notice of his savviness in knowing how the cake would look on camera. “Obviously things have advanced a lot since then, but at the time they were impressed that I understood how white frosting could read yellow on camera,” he explained (via Wednesday Journal). They decided to make eating late-night cheesecake a reoccurring theme in the script, and thus, his job as the resident cheesecake maker for “The Golden Girls” was cemented.
According to Geary, over 100 episodes featured cheesecakes. He made all different types of cheesecake through the years, always preparing seven identical cakes for the weekly Friday night tapings. They were typically plain or New York-style cheesecake, though he explained that they would change up the look through the years and that it was important they looked like store-bought cheesecakes. While he invariably had seven cakes on hand for possible reshoots, they typically only needed one or two per taping. As an added fun fact, Geary also shared that Bea Arthur (who played Dorothy) was the only Golden Girl on set who never ate a morsel. Arthur just didn’t like it.
