When Cake Tasting Goes Wrong

A few weeks ago, Mr. Warbs, MOH J5 and I suited up in our sweat pants to taste some cakes! Let me tell you, I was super excited about this. The bakery had come highly recommended from our florist and is in the same neighborhood as our venue. When I called them up for a consultation, they informed me that they were in the middle of moving to a new location (even closer to our venue) and should be open the weekend of August 20th. At that point, that was three weeks away. I happily confirmed the appointment and regularly checked in via e-mails and phone calls. Cake is serious business.

The day finally arrived and we scooted off to Thousand Oaks, which was about an hour drive. I personally blame the Kardashians for all the traffic; Kim K was getting married and I think that's her hood. When we pulled up in front of the address we were faced with...an empty store. Ahhhh! At first I was afraid they had gone out of business, but Mr. Warbs reminded me that they had just moved. We were at the old address. D'oh! All the time I spent drooling over cake, I had forgotten to get the new address. This time cake brain won out over bridal brain.

A quick phone call and Mr. Warbs' scout like senses and we arrived at the new location which looked like...an empty store. Deja vu? A glitch in the Matrix? You bet! While the store wasn't empty, they were not completely open to the public, a fact the baker left out in our e-mail string. We were told that we couldn't go into the store and had to sit outside at a patio table. Red flag number one. After about twenty minutes of looking over photos and magazines, the baker brought out the cakes. I had expected to be presented with a nice assortment, kind of like these:

Image via bayareaguide

Image via bayareaguide

Typical sample cake presentation. Well, our cakes looked more like this:

Yes, that is a foot cake.
Image via Sugar Britches Cakery

Unfortunately, I forgot to charge my camera so I didn't take any photos. But those cakes looked bad y'all. Real bad. I think the baker could tell from my expression that I was not pleased. She quickly told us that the guy in the kitchen (seriously, that's what she called him) had slapped those together pretty quick, but on the day of the wedding they would look different. Um, am I supposed to take your word on that? After she went back into the store the three of us dived into the cakes. We had marble with chocolate chip custard, red velvet with cream cheese filling, chocolate with rum custard and a vanilla cake with vanilla filling. The cakes were bland and tasted as if they were days old, which the baker confirmed they were. Nobody liked the red velvet cake or filling which disappointed me because red velvet is my favorite cake. MOH J5 and I liked the rum custard the best. Mr. Warbs liked the chocolate chip custard. However, we all agreed that we did NOT care for the cakes at all, we only liked the fillings. It was unanimous that this bakery would not make the cut.

The whole experience left a bad taste (literally) in my mouth. I don't pretend to be an expert, but I'm pretty sure a bakery should have an open storefront during a cake tasting appointment. The presentation was horrible and the cakes tasted like a Betty Crocker mix. Not disgusting, but not what you would expect from a professional bakery. Also, if you give me cake and I don't finish it all, you know something is wrong! Has anyone else had a cake-gone-wrong experience?