Twin Sweets goes national with PBS filming

A new Public Broadcasting Corporation show, JA’s BizKid$, made a return trip to Bremerton Monday, this time turning a local kitchen into a TV studio.

Regina and Dominica Ogazi, 17-year old seniors-to-be at Bremerton High School, have been in the business of making cakes for five years, running an operation named Twin Sweets. BizKid$ is a show about kids, money management and entrepreneurship.

The production company for BizKid$ made its first trip to Bremerton earlier this year to film a segment about the Kitsap Credit Union’s student branch in Bremerton High School, but the Ogazi twins story was so compelling they warranted their own segment.

“We’ve gotten a lot of good stories out of our relationship with the Kitsap Credit Union,” said Jeannine Glista, executive producer of JA’s BizKid$. The show is sponsored by Junior Achievement and America’s Credit Unions.

The episode with the Ogazis, “A biz, what is it?” will be part of the show’s second season, airing locally sometime in February or March 2008. The film crew arrived at 10 a.m., and filming wasn’t complete until the middle of the afternoon. During the shoot the twins made two two-layer cakes, and an additional single layer cake, and the film crew took off with one of the elaborately frosted finished products, featuring, of course, dollar signs.

“They mostly had us talk about the process of making cakes,” Dominica said, “but they also asked us a little about things like how we calculate profit.”

“It was pretty fun, actually,” Regina said. “We’re excited about it, even though it’s pretty far away. We keep telling everyone about it. It’ll be more exciting when it gets closer. It’s cool to think we’ll be on national TV.”

Although the filming was all business, some of it was monkey business, as the producers have a sense of humor that targets preteens and middle schoolers.

“They had us do a lot of stuff, like putting frosting on each other’s face,” Dominica said. “It was supposed to be frosting mustaches, but it got a little carried away.”

Regina added a goatee and a pair of angry eyes on her sister, and Dominica retaliated by giving Regina a unibrow and making the green frosting appear to be dripping from her nose.

“I got her pretty good,” Regina said, “but mine was probably more embarrassing.”

What isn’t embarrassing is the way the girls work together, including the business that has produced somewhere around 100 cakes for all occasions. Their mother, Joan, said the twins have always worked well together. “They’re best buddies,” Joan said. “Their very first cakes actually weren’t bad.”

Joan has aided in starting Twin Sweets, as she helped the girls learn their way around a kitchen in the first place. “They used to climb over the counter and fight over who was going to put the ingredients in,” she said.

The Ogazis learned more about TV production, and were impressed with the amount of lighting, number of takes and variety of camera angles used. What took hours to shoot will be pared down into about two and a half minutes of air time.

The BizKid$ crew also learned more about baking from the twins. One of the things Glista especially appreciated will remain a secret technique, but it helps the cake to bake evenly from the edges to the middle.

“They also enjoyed the banter between the girls,” Joan said. “They liked watching the way they worked together.”

If you’d like the Ogazi girls to work for you, you can try to squeeze an order in with Twin Sweets by calling (360) 479-5159.

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