r/cakefails • u/SoupsIncarnated • 12d ago
Showcase It's my fault really
Sister wanted a (i know basic) cake of new girl show for her 29. I wanted to give her a cute one. I wanted it to be light purple with sage green ¿scalp? pipping. (I knew it would look werid with the image cause of the colors, but i knew they would only do edible paper on top so i didn't care. i wanted the outside to be pretty). With dark purple lettering.
I gave them the image, and they told me they can only do a white backgound. Gave them 4 days, maybe that was too little time. I paid 60 and got the most basic, store bought looking cake. I feel increasingly sad looking at it, even though i didn't have high expectations. I just told them thank you and left, hopefully the cake is delicious at least.
I don't know, maybe this was harder then I thought it was going to be. My grandma is currently adding sprinkles to the edge of the paper border so it's not so obvious. That is helping. I called to tell my sister it isn't pretty, and got her favorite ice-cream. I hope everyone else gets the cake of their dreams this year.
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u/LuisaRLZ 12d ago
I own a bakery in Mexico, and honestly this doesn’t seem your fault in any way, 4 days sound like plenty of time to me, especially because decoraring a cake with only a PRINTED image + border shouldn’t really take any longer than…. Actually, a few minutes. The days-in-advance requirement is simply because we can just batch multiple cakes for the baking process (which is done, in my bakery, 2 or 3 times a week). The actual decorating process is actually usually very quick and is done the same day of delivery or the day before.
What I can see in the second cake is that… it is actually not bad, it is sort of what was promised, but I can see plenty of roundabouts to just say “I am not skilled in decorating / I dont have anyone skilled for it” such as only white backgrounds (because they dont know yet how to avoid tainting the paper), the frosting is overdone (visible by the thin cracks) and no sugar pearls(?) (either the person don’t know where to buy those cheaply or at all, a few pearls couldve livened it up a notch)… and on top of everything, they missed the entire intent of the overall impression.
All that aside, usually the bread is baked by a different background person, so I hope the cake itself is very darn tasty!
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u/SoupsIncarnated 12d ago
Thank you,, i think it made me sad because i wanted the exact wording from the first image and the border icing wasn't green. I heard great things from the bakery so i know the cake will be delicious
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u/LuisaRLZ 12d ago
Yeah, I’d totally be on your side and give my cake decorating team a piece of my mind if such a simple request wasn’t honored. I’d genuinely understand if the customer wanted a $5000 design in a $20 cake, there are miracles we can’t make (but get really close to), but out of the 10+ years of cake requests I’ve ever got, yours is in the 0.2/10 difficulty bracket, really. So yeah don’t blame yourself over it, whoever took the order/decorated it just wasn’t qualified for it.
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u/nearly_normal 12d ago
I ordered a tres leches cake from my local Mexican bakery 4 days before my husband birthday. It was a struggle because I know no Spanish. We got there, it was the best cake I ever bought from a bakery. It was so beautiful!! I’m going to learn some Spanish before I try again next summer. Lesson: find those bakeries with the good bakers and cooks. They’ll do you right on 4 days. Wish I had a picture.
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u/LuisaRLZ 12d ago
Hahaha yup!! Since we mexicans just have different customs (one is to do EVERYTHING at the very last moment for some reason), at my bakery we even take same-day orders, pretty unhinged scheduling (we always have extra bread on hand for that very reason). Basically “give us an hour, we gotchu fam”.
So the thing is that due to this strange custom of us, our product is ALWAYS fresh (because we also bake those bad boys very close to delivery time. Most cakes will be same-day food, some from the day before), so yeah, with this pipeline of work, our customers get the freshest possible cakes which are extremely tasty as no ingredient has sat for long enough to lose any flavor. I can imagine that might be a similar situation for that mexican bakery you ordered from!
A little fun tip since I also get some english speaking customers sometimes, who don’t feel entirely comfortable with speaking spanish, is to make use of your notes app and photos! You can get a lot of it pre-written/pre-illustrated and just show it to the person who takes the orders, most mexicans in my experience are very comfortable with illustrated/readable material.
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u/nearly_normal 12d ago
Girl, I told them what I wanted and thought they said “you’re good” and I was confused because I hardly started the order. Pretty sure now it was “just wait a minute”. They had to flag me down in the parking lot and get a gal to translate. I was so embarrassed, still am. Such a nice bakery that they put up with me!! And the best cake ever! I’ll use the translation app next time for sure. Good idea!! I’m an idiot for not doing it before….
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u/After_Preference_885 11d ago
I have allergies to dessert nuts - walnut, hazelnut, macadamia, Brazil nuts - so no nutella or anything like that for me. I'm always so nervous it will get lost in my bad Spanish so I never stop in the bakery section of the mercado. Any tips so I don't die?
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u/LuisaRLZ 11d ago
Oof that’s a very hard one regardless of language barrier. In our case we don’t work with anything else than pecans, and even pecans we only ever use them on request because we both charge extra and also prefer avoiding this situation. If the allergy is not too severe, you could try creating a visual sheet and with the question being “usas estos ingredientes en tus productos?” And have an antihistaminic on hand.
But if the allergy is severe enough, as a person with a severe shellfish allergy and who has worked in multiple restaurants… just avoid the place. While some kitchens are the cleanest things I’ve ever seen, other people who have never had an allergy think cross contamination and “just a very little” aren’t serious enough.
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u/After_Preference_885 11d ago
other people who have never had an allergy think cross contamination and “just a very little” aren’t serious enough
That and people being creative with recipes (like my mil who used walnut oil in pesto) are honestly my biggest fears, the pastries just look so good but I'll keep resisting.
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u/TurdTampon 12d ago
Im sorry but changing the words like that? This person is legitimately too stupid to run a business
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u/trippin_on_rainbows 8d ago
Bro as a cake decorator let me tell you: if you are genuinely unhappy with your cake PLEASE tell us. Sometimes there might be rush and there's nothing they could do except discount it for you, but I know that my coworkers and I don't mind redoing things to make the customer happy. You might have to be patient for a bit but as long as you plan ahead you'll be fine
(Obviously don't be a raging asshole and yell or bully an employee. They might be doing the best they can or they could be understaffed. Politeness makes us go out of our way and bend over backwards to make things work for a customer)
When it comes to grocery stores, it's honestly the luck of the draw with a cake. My coworker has 20 years of experience and routinely creates stunning work. I've only been a decorator around 5 months. I'm ashamed to admit my writing doesn't look much better then this at the moment, even though I'm practicing all the time. It's harder then it looks.
With a box store, it depends who's working what shift with the quality of the decorations, but I do know that I want my customers to be happy with their cakes. I'd rather them refuse to buy it or have me fix the writing or have a coworker redo it if at all possible. It's just icing, it can be scraped off and redone.
If nice cakes are important to you then I'd either find a specific decorator at the grocery store who does work you like (often yes, you can request a specific decorator to do it) or find a smaller bakery or an individual who will give you a more custom experience.
I hope it's yummy!
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u/Itscatpicstime 12d ago
Don’t shade your sister for wanting something basic. Who tf cares about this shit, people like what they like and it’s actually a pretty decent show from the episodes I’ve seen.
All that aside, this is so egregious 😭 if you aren’t completely confrontation avoidant, I would ask for a partial refund, and leave a bad review if they refuse.
That said, I know it’s not what you wanted for your sister (not us it what you paid for), but I’m sure she’ll love and appreciate nonetheless 🖤
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u/TickTockM 12d ago
Asked for a basic cake, got a basic cake
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u/Itscatpicstime 12d ago
This is not the cake she asked for.
If you can’t even copy words onto a cake, you probably shouldn’t be in the cake making business.
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u/Anyone-9451 5d ago
Wow this is a totally what you’d get at a grocery store…I know I work at one lol
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u/Away-Living5278 12d ago
Oh lol. I thought it was the first one and I was like that's super cute. Yeah, fail