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I hate wedding planning, but I’m not going to lie… I’m going to try as many cake tastings as I possibly can. I loves me cakes. Wedding cake consultations are generally free of charge, and they should be if they want you to buy hundreds of dollars of cake from them. Kelvin’s not a fan of sweets, so he’s not loving this like I am. (He’s actually trying to keep me from going to more… I don’t know what his problem is.) We stuck to bakeries that were local (mainly South Bay) and were recommended by Yelp or wedding review sites. We still don’t have a design settled on, so these bakery gave us quotes with no particular design in mind, though I tried to ask about what sorts of designs and details in their albums would cost how much extra. Here are my personal impressions of the places we tried:

Bakery 1: Satura Cakes in Palo Alto
I scheduled an appointment with Satura Cakes through email, which was super easy since they are very good at responding to email. I’ve heard rave reviews of this place; my mother’s coworker insisted Satura had the best cakes for Asian tastes. The bakery is located in the middle of downtown Palo Alto, and it has cafe seating and sells drinks and individual desserts, as well as (of course) cakes. My mother, Kelvin, and I met with Anne (who also did most of the email correspondence) on a nice sunny Saturday afternoon.

We sat at a couple of the cafe tables inside. Anne had us look through binders of their previous work as she prepared the cake samples for us. Looking at their binder, they seemed to have decent presentation. Kelvin has pretty strict criteria for presentation (smoothness is very important to him), and he seemed okay with what he saw. Anne came back with a HUGE platter of desserts; apparently their cake tasting mostly consists of using their individual desserts, not sliced sheet cake samples. This being our first cake tasting, it was very intimidating. They even packed all the leftovers to take home! (If you taste here, you might want to consider bringing a couple friends.)

Anne had us taste the samples in a very specific order (from lightest to heaviest), which was an excellent idea. Their cakes were overall good, though not spectacular as I had hoped. Their specialty, strawberry shortcake, was very good, and it was very fresh. The other cakes varied in freshness, but Anne admitted some cakes may have dried out from sitting out as individual desserts. (The strawberry shortcake, she said, was freshly sliced.) The dryness was obvious in a couple of the cakes we tried, which was disappointing. I’m surprised they would serve it like this; what if no one had commented on the dryness, would the potential buyer even realize that the actual cake they get for their wedding would be better? Also, their heavy cakes were really, really heavy, which surprised me since I thought this bakery was catered towards Asian tastes. Their red velvet cake was much too sweet. (I can tell you from eating many Sugar Butter Flour red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting that red velvet doesn’t have to be insanely sweet.) The chocolate ones towards the end were basically brownies. I’m glad they force this order of tasting. There’s no way I would have enjoyed the strawberry shortcake as much if I had just eaten the chocolate cake. Not all their chocolate cakes are like that tho; we had a couple lighter chocolate pieces in the middle that were much better.

Anne was super nice the entire tasting, offering us drinks and open to questions. Not being the baker herself, Anne couldn’t give us size estimates without consulting the pastry chefs first, but she was able to give some estimates as to what certain design elements would cost. As with all the bakeries we tried, nothing is definite until we show them exactly what we want. Anne mentioned that their pastry chefs can emulate anything, so if we saw something we liked, we should send them a picture. Satura Cakes was also the most organized, giving us a folder with a sample contract plus some wedding planning tips on paper. (In fact, I’m still using the folder to hold all the other cake tasting info I got.) Anne said she’d email us with a quote as soon as she could, and indeed she did email us the next day. They offer a 5% discount when you book with them within a week of consultation.

Service and organization (at tasting and through communication): A
Presentation (based off photos): B
Taste: B+
Favorite flavors: Strawberry Shortcake, Chocolate Cake with Caramel Mocha Cream, and Green Tea Cake with Vanilla Bean Cream (the tea flavor is really light).
Price: Starts at $6 a slice, delivery fee to Cupertino is $50

Bakery 2: Margaret’s French Bakery
Margaret’s French Bakery is another highly recommended establishment on Yelp. Their blog (written by Margaret’s son) is a spectacular cake blog. They only do cakes by order, so their bakery is in the middle of some warehouse-y area near downtown Campbell. Since they were so close to where we worked, we came for a consultation during lunchtime on a Friday afternoon. Kelvin and I met with Margaret herself, who I contacted through email and she arranged an appointment with me over the phone.

The cake tasting takes place in their small office, since they don’t really have a storefront. Wedding cakes is clearly their business, as they have pamphlets for other wedding services in the area. As we went through the binder of pictures, Margaret brought out a platter with 8 teeny-tiny slices of cakes on it. (Because it was a pretty intimate setting and Margaret was there the whole time, I didn’t feel comfortable taking pictures of the samples.) After Satura, I was kind of surprised at how small they were, but it was probably more what I was expecting if I hadn’t gone to Satura. And the cakes didn’t taste that great. I felt maybe the sample size might have affected the quality, as the pieces were kind of dry. (Kelvin described them as “gritty”.) She said the pieces were baked the day before, which kind of surprised me since they weren’t that soft. (Tip: Always ask about when the samples are made, and when the cake for your wedding day will be made. It’s typical for cakes to be made days before your wedding, especially if your cake has a complicated design.) I’m guessing perhaps they weren’t cut that day or the samples weren’t sealed away in the fridge well enough? I don’t know. Kelvin was pretty unresponsive, which was annoying. It’d be nice if he could make it less obvious in front of the owner his distaste. Even with the small sample size, we didn’t finish the samples. I usually can, but I think maybe I felt weird acting like a pig in front of Margaret. I asked her which flavor was her most popular, and she said everything on the platter was most popular, which I thought was kind of weird. Carrot cake? Seriously? (Admittedly, their carrot cake was pretty yummy and moist, even with the sample size.)

Margaret is directly involved in the cake-making, which makes it easy to ask her about approximate costs for certain design elements. I went through their binder and pointed out random stuff to ask about pricing. Pretty much everything cost extra (Tip: Did you know that non-circular cake shapes, like square, will often cost you extra? This was the case with most bakeries I spoke to.), except for small side frosting decorations like dots. Looking at their album and blog pictures, their cakes are absolutely immaculate. Gorgeous, gorgeous cakes, with even their butter cream cakes looking totally flawless. She gave us a copy of the quote she gave us, which was also the contract, along with a list of all the flavors they offer, including many we didn’t taste.

Service and organization (at tasting and through communication): B+
Presentation (based off photos): A+
Taste: C
Favorite flavors: I thought their Princess Cake and Strawberry Grand Marnier were decent. Kelvin only liked the carrot cake… which is too bad since he doesn’t really like carrot cake.
Price: Starts at $6.50 a slice, delivery fee to Cupertino is $50

Bakery 3: Cake Expressions
Cake Expressions also has some decent Yelp reviews, and they came highly recommended from the couple who had that crazy awesome Lego cake I mentioned about a while back. They also only do cake special orders, so no storefront with desserts. They’re located in some random building in another warehouse-y district, this time in East San Jose. The building is easy to miss, but they usually have a real estate-looking sign that says “Cakes” by the driveway. I made an appointment over the phone with them for a Saturday afternoon, and this appointment was bumped early at their request later on, tho the woman I met with, Robin, wasn’t aware that they had successfully made this change. My mom joined Kelvin and me for this trip.

Their tasting area is a small room that isn’t very well ventilated, so it was still warm even with the portable air conditioner running. There’s two tables with chairs, a bunch of binders with pictures of cakes, a wall of model cakes, and a large TV showing the same couple cutting cake, with footage rotating every whole minute. Robin had us look at binders as she prepared cakes, probably slicing them from sheet cakes. As we waited, the very nice grand cake master of Cake Expressions, Cero, was passing through the tasting room and introduced himself to us, which was cool. Robin came back out with a platter of decent sized samples (which looked huge after going to Margaret’s) and a “map” describing the cakes on plate. She didn’t care what order we ate it, so we just went at it. And it was hella good. All the cakes were fluffy and moist, and none of the flavors were heavy. I love, LOVE their Chocolate Raspberry Truffle cake, which is a dense chocolate cake with raspberry puree in it, giving it an interesting texture. Very chocolately, but just right on the sweetness. Overall, we loved all the samples; the whole thing was immediately gobbled up. They’re also the only place to offer a mousse outer frosting, which was different. I didn’t really get a good idea of the difference between the mousse and buttercream because I was so enthralled by the cake, but I happened to like all the mousse covered cakes better, so I’m guessing maybe it’s not as sweet. Cake Expressions also had samples of fondant, the super thick waxy frosting that most complicated cake designs use (usually costs $1.00 per slice extra at most bakeries), so we got to taste fondant for the first time. (It’s gross. It’s basically sugar wax. If we get fondant, make sure to peel it off the cake before you eat it.) Kudos to Cake Expressions for thinking to do that.

I asked Robin when the cakes were made, and she gave me some sort of vague answer like “they were made this week”. This leads me to think that the cakes were a few days old, which is amazing since they taste so fresh. But then I thought, maybe Robin is tricking me into thinking the samples are old, leading me to think their cakes last a while when actually the sample were made that day. Stupid Robin and her mind games! Anyway, she said they usually make their cakes a few days before: one day to make the cake, one day to fill the cake, and how ever many days it takes to frost and decorate it. She confirmed the cake on the day of the wedding would have same texture.

I went through some designs we liked in the binder and got some estimates to what things cost. They have an incredibly reasonable starting price at $3.99 a slice, but just about everything you can think of is extra. Specialty cake flavors (like the Chocolate Raspberry Truffle) and specialty cake fillings (fresh fruit) cost extra, as is using mousse instead of buttercream. I think this was the only bakery where some flavors of cake cost more than others. Design elements cost extra, of course, but generally they seemed to cost less than Margaret’s. Overall, the cost was still lower than the other places we’ve visited, which was great since we actually like their cake. Also, Cero seems to be excellent at making complicated designs, so if you’re design is crazy, Cake Expressions is probably a good option. Kelvin, however, wasn’t fond of their presentation; he didn’t feel any of the cakes he saw were smooth enough. Despite this, he agreed he liked Cake Expressions best so far, as taste is the most important factor in the end. They also have very customizable flavors. One filling they have listed is Chocolate Mint Cookies & Cream, which made Kelvin perk up since he loves mint chocolate stuff, but then he realized it had Oreo, which he doesn’t like. Robin saw this and made sure to mention they could put any kind of candy in the Oreo’s stead, which I thought was a great idea… except I don’t want to make our entire wedding party eat mint chocolate stuff. (I know my mom definitely hates mint.) Still, the fact the option is there is really nice.

Similar to Margaret’s, Robin gave us a quote/contract sheet along with a list of flavors. The list separates regular flavors from specialty, so you know what flavors will cost you more. It also mentions which flavors of filling they recommend with each cake type. Very informative. I wish we had gotten the cake map though, so I could remember what I ate. Robin was friendly and open to questions the entire time, which made the cake tasting very pleasant. We even got a personal recommendation for the place while we were waiting. A customer waiting for her cake was in the tasting room the entire time, and she raved about them. People were also walking in and out, picking up special occasion cakes, so business was okay with them. This place was definitely the front-runner in our cake search after we tasted them. My mom is definitely one “with Asian taste”, and she really liked this place, after being surprisingly disappointed with Satura.

Service and organization (at tasting and through communication): A-
Presentation (based off photos): B
Taste: A
Favorite flavors: Chocolate Raspberry Truffle, definitely. The regular White cake and Red Velvet cake were favorites, too. (I didn’t like their cream cheese frosting tho. Too sweet.) Kelvin liked the Tiramisu, but for some reason I really didn’t like it here, even tho I generally like Tiramisu.
Price: Starts at $3.99 a slice, delivery fee to Cupertino is $45

More cake tasting to come…

New thing I learned today: Fondant really is just sugar and water.

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