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| - The decisions you have to make about a wedding cake are both surprisingly numerous and surprisingly complex, with certain options you choose early on having a vast impact on the design options you have later. For example, if you choose buttercream for your frosting, it will be smooth and sweet and creamy awesomeness in your mouth -- but on the cake, any colors will run and it can't hold complex shapes, so you're limiting yourself to very simple designs. Other frosting options exist, such as fondant and rolled white chocolate, and they each have their own set of benefits and limitations as well.
If you're good at research, you have some time to kill and you know what you're looking for, you can find a lot of this information on-line -- but when you're in the midst of the overwhelming task of planning a wedding, it would be so, so much easier to just sit down with a professional who can lay out all your options and explain the benefits and limitations of each one.
Unfortunately, you won't find anyone like that at Carl's Cakes. Oh, Carl seems friendly, helpful and optimistic when you first meet him. The samples he gave us at our cake tasting were better than I ever knew cake could be, and when we asked about decorations, he was quick to assure us that he could "do anything you want".
After our initial meeting with Carl, we surfed the Net for examples of memorable wedding cakes and cherry-picked the ideas we liked best until we had put together the perfect cake design. I'll admit it was on the moderately complicated side, but nothing exceptional by wedding cake standards; and after Carl's repeated assurances at the tasting that he could "do anything you want", we thought we were safe.
But once he has your deposit, his attitude changes. He's difficult to get ahold of by phone, and impossible to get ahold of by email. Suddenly, any design requests more complicated than the average birthday cake are answered with a simple "I can't do that". Even something as simple as multiple colors will be refused on the basis that the colors will bleed together. He never tries to suggest compromises or alternatives, and if you ask for them, he'll only tell you to come in and pick something from his generic book of designs.
Why all the limitations? Because Carl frosts his cakes with buttercream frosting -- and ONLY buttercream frosting.
I've lost track of how many hours we spent on the phone going back and forth with Carl over the cake design, struggling to find something he could do that didn't leave us cold. Dealing with him wasted a large portion of the limited time we had to plan our wedding, and drastically increased our stress during an already stressful time. If I was rating his business purely on Customer Service, I'd have to give him 1 star.
But I'll also give credit where credit is due. In the end, he delivered our cake on time, in the flavors, size and design that we eventually agreed to. It was beautiful, if vastly simplified from our original design, and the flavor? To this day, our wedding cake is still the best thing I've ever had in my mouth. If I were rating his business purely on taste, I'd have to give him 5 stars. Heck, I'd give him 6 if it were possible.
So if you want the best cake you've ever had in your entire life, consider Carl's Cakes -- But consider very carefully. Give him an exact cake design and make ABSOLUTELY SURE he can do it without modifications BEFORE you give him a dime.
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