There’s been a trend cropping up in my recent consultations. It’s not color, shape, or even flavor related. Nope, it’s a trend of brides who have been fed a line or two (or many!), and ask me for the real deal. Probably about time to blog about it!

There is a certain cake company out there – who shall remain nameless here – who has the nasty habit of outright lying about the offerings of their competitors. I’ve never understood why – they have their fingers in everything, pretty much saturate the market, and really have nothing to fear from small, boutique custom cake outlets like my company.

I’d like to clear up some of their statements, as told to me by a prospective client of theirs:

1. “You don’t want to do the outside of your cake YELLOW! (Yes, she very much did want a yellow cake) It can look GREEN under some lights!”
Sure, it can.. if you have green lights shining on it. Blue lights, even. Why anyone would do this as a default is beyond me, but whatever. Bizarre reasoning for trying to talk someone out of their dream cake. Sure, any cake can be made to look any color with external lights… that’s why it’s always good to have your cake area well lit. You know, with something other than green/blue lighting (unless that’s what you want!).

2. “If you do any color other than natural colored, it will stain your guests’ teeth for 2 weeks!”
Uhm, no. At worst, you may stain them until the next day, but that would be under extreme circumstances. Let me elaborate!

- Color that is incorporated *into* fondant will not stain teeth, period.
- Most colors that are incorporated into buttercream will not stain.
- Black or very, VERY dark colors incorporated into buttercream *may* stain teeth, but only for a very short while. This is assuming that a large amount of the colored frosting is eaten – piped accents will not do it.

So, it’s not the best idea to frost the entire outside of a cake in a deeply colored buttercream. Oh well! Fondant is an excellent alternative, and as a side benefit, will keep your cake moist and fresh!

3. “Fondant is (insert disparaging remark of choice here).”
Can fondant be nasty? Sure, if you buy the wrong one. Is it appropriate to blanket all fondant with that label? No. Click here for a past blog entry about fondant, which explains everything.

4. “It’s bad to color frosting, because coloring is UNNATURAL!”
The most amusing thing about this statement is that the bakery that makes this claim bakes their cakes from mixes – you know, full of unnatural stuff!

Here’s the deal. While there are plenty of people who would like to keep certain dyes, etc out of their diet, it takes only a very, very small amount of coloring per serving to achieve any particular color. Definitely not harmful in the slightest!

When coloring fondant, even less color is needed, and fondant is easily peeled off to avoid the dyes if necessary.

Finally, there are many NATURAL food dyes available. Frosting can be colored with anything from berry juice/extracts, to beet juice, to squid ink. Not wanting to deal with “unnatural” ingredients really is no excuse to just avoid color altogether.

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The thing is, none of these comments really need to be made to anyone, much less a bride who is looking for her dream cake (whether it involves color, fondant, or both!). No one is saying that this bakery – or any, really – need to deal in fondant, OR color. Just be honest about the reasoning. It’s not about being unnatural, or what color it can look under lights.. it’s that it doesn’t fit the business model of this particular bakery. Things like fondant and color take a lot of time, and specialized attention. When you’re churning out multiple dozen wedding cakes every week – definitely concentrating on volume – dealing with all a single color / lack of color can make a lot more sense. Assembly lining cake has its drawbacks when it comes to ability to customize!

More power to them, though. Personally, that’s not what I’m about, so we service very different brides. I just wish that they’d stop misinforming brides about products, techniques, and their reasoning behind not offering. There is nothing wrong with color or fondant!

I believe that every bride should have the option to have the cake of their dreams, regardless of what that is. Color, fondant, crazy, elegant, whatever – without being told lies about why they “don’t want that”. As a cake vendor, if I come across a bride whose dream cake is something that I don’t really do (fountains, stairways, whatever!), I’ll refer them on to someone who does. It’s not my job to change their mind on what their dream cake is – it’s my job to facilitate that. EVEN if it means passing them on to a caker that is a better match for their dreams!

The other day I fell out of bed, as usual, with an idea in my head. This is a usual occurrence – it may be a product idea, a contact I decide to make, a new design, a technique, a blog topic, whatever. One of these days, I’ll learn that sleep time is for REM sleep, not asleep-but-problem-solving-in-my-dreams, but I digress…

This particular idea was to write a bit of a rant about bogus industry awards. A big topic to bite in to, but I ultimately decided that it would probably be snotty, and kind of offensive. Put the idea on the backburner.

Today, I received a sign that I *absolutely* had to go ahead and write that bit of snark fest. At least, I choose to see it as a sign. Your mileage may vary, of course

A bit of backstory here: A few weeks ago, Twitter and the blogs just lit up with wedding industry folks congratulating themselves on winning the “Bride’s Choice” award for a certain wedding planning site. I mean the tweets got so prolific, it really did rival the last 20 mins or so of that football playoff game recently. Seemed like everyone and their dog won the award.

I, however, did not – and that was a factor in deciding to forgo a blog entry. Thought it may come across as sour grapes. Anyway.

The thing is, there really wasn’t any judging or standards involved with this “award”. I know, I was one of the million or so ‘winners’ last year. I believe last year, you had to have 4 reviews on their site that were all better than 3/5 stars, or some such criteria. Thing is, my brides don’t tend to visit that site, I feel lame asking for reviews… so I really haven’t had any reviews since. I have received exactly 1 review there in the past year and a half! No big surprise that I didn’t win.

Did I feel bad? No. I understand the nature of the “award”, and it really amounts to some smart advertising for that site. Once a year, they notify pretty much everyone that they’ve won this “award”, and – being human – everyone gets excited, announces the news, and puts the little award graphic on their site. Linked, of course, back to this wedding planning site. Very quick and easy way to not only increase their exposure and traffic, but to seriously impact their search engine ratings. Smart – and sly.

Amid all of the tweets about winning, there were a few voices of reason. Click here for one blog entry that made the rounds last week, albeit for a different site. (Same idea, though!).

All this backstory, right? Anyway, the sign (cue Ace of Base..)? One of my cake tweeps mentioned that the both of us are apparently on this list of ‘winners’ (*chortle*), though neither of us received notification about it when everyone else did. I did go to the site to confirm. Sure enough, right at the top of the list of ‘winners’ – pretty much EVERY cake company in the cities – was Celebration Generation. Woot?

I won’t be bragging about it, I won’t be pasting a link to the site, or their little “Bride’s Choice” banner, because I don’t play that game. There are an awful lot of games in this industry, and I’m just not into that crap. Does refusing to play the game hurt me at times? Sure.. ask me about the local mag that actively badmouths me. Why? Cause they had me do a custom fake cake for a photoshoot, then lied about one of the other cakes involved, in such a manner as to disparage the use of fondant.

I’m sorry, but if you bash the use of fondant, claim to never use it because it’s “so horrible”, then do ALL of your advertising featuring fondant cakes, AS WELL as photoshoots.. you’re a big hypocrite. If, as a magazine, you know all of this, yet knowingly caption the cake as having been – let me quote here – frosted with their signature buttercream, for the look of fondant without the gummy texture”, I’m going to call you out on it. It’s called having morals. Yes, that was all from memory, from a year ago – I was mad! Why mislead brides like that? Oh yes, because this cake vendor is a prominent advertiser. Sure. ARGH!

I digress, again. “The game” is something that’s annoyed me for a very long time, you see.

In other, more local news, a local wedding mag is currently soliciting votes for their “best of”. Please don’t vote for me. I have no interest in that particular popularity contest at all. I can’t wait for the voting period to be over, as that’ll be when all the emails, evites, FB messages, and tweets begging for votes will end. It’s not a whole lot different than the site I described above, only this one actually involves voting.

The problem, however, is that it really has nothing to do with the quality of anyone’s service or product. You don’t have to be a bride, or even ever have been a client, in order to vote for someone. It’s a popularity contest. The cake category in particular is particularly bogus. All of the top cake companies in the state handle a VERY SMALL AMOUNT of cakes on any weekend… yet are pitted up against companies that can do upwards of 60 weddings in a week.. and it all comes down to a vote? Yeah. That’s quality right there.

That’s not to say that all awards are bogus. We were so thrilled to win the 2008 ICON award, as that had been judged by pros. I cannot tell you how thrilling it was to know that Sylvia Weinstock herself had decided my little company to be the best of the best. Exhilerating! We didn’t win for 2009, but that was completely ok with me. When Gateaux won, I was legitimately bested. An honorable loss is alright by me! I’m happy that we were nominated, an honored to be included in such great company. ISES also has a juried award, and I’m sure there are more out there. Judged awards > phantom standards, or “whoever can wrangle enough votes from whoever”.

I could rant for hours, but I’ll try and wrap it up. In summary, treat any “award” you see with a big grain of salt. Yes, that’s a nice, succinct summary right there.

If you follow me on Twitter – or know me in person – you know that there are many things about the current state of the wedding industry that really make me roll my eyes. Any advice the wedding mags spew about sheet and/or fake cakes usually top the list!

Today, I came across a concept so over the top offensive.. I had to post. Be forewarned, this is going to be a full out rant. It will definitely not be all “sunshine and roses”. In fact, it may be perceived as scathing. Really though, stuff like this really needs to be highlighted and openly ridiculed before it gets a chance to gain foothold as “acceptable practice”

This mind blowing concept? There is a company out there that touts its services as a way to help brides observe etiquette, by aiding in getting the thank you cards out there – and quickly. Till this point, they had me – I have really been dismayed at the way manners seem to be heading, culturally. Advocating that brides get their Thank you cards a.) done at ALL, and b.) sent out in a timely manner … well, it could only be a good thing, right?

Wrong. The devil is in the details, and in this case.. what a doozy! Basically, a bride would upload a photo from the wedding, the generic text she wants in the cards, and a database of names / mailing addresses. The company would print the cards en masse and mail them. Not only do the brides not “have to bother with” addressing the envelopes, they do not even need to SIGN THEM.

OH. MY. LORD.

The best was how the concept was presented.. suggestions like “Well, what is your time WORTH?” “You don’t want to have to bother with actually signing all those cards”, etc. I kept waiting for any sign that the presenter was aware of how ironic it was to frame such statements- and such a service – with ANY mention of “etiquette” whatsoever.. but no. None.

There is a really disturbing trend in the industry, where the invitation list comes down to pretty much nothing more than a gift grab. Invite everyone you’ve ever met, and cut every possible corner on everything to be able to invite these huge numbers of guests. Do things like have an A list and a B list.. serve proper wedding cake to some, grocery sheet cake to the rest.. whatever.. just have that invite list as big as possible. Barf.

But this? Just… wow.

“What is your time worth? Do you really want to waste all that time signing cards?”. The real question should be: What are your guests worth? Do you really value having them in attendance? Do you really appreciate the time they took to select a gift for you, and to book that day off to attend your wedding? To be there for YOU? That’s not even making mention of what money they may have spent: your gift, clothing, hair, maybe a babysitter.. yes. How much do you value your guests?

If the answer really, truly involves not valuing them enough to take a couple of minutes to write them out a personal thank you card, why are you inviting them? Is personally signing your own name REALLY that much of a hardship?

If your time is seriously that limited, and that freaking valuable that you cannot send your guests a properly signed Thank You card, then what are you doing spending time planning a big wedding? You really should just get married at a court house. Not only will it save you a TON of time, you won’t be insulting your guests by sending electronically mass produced thank yous.

I truly cannot imagine what it must be like to receive such a thank you. Where is society heading, really? Is this the next step towards sending a mass email to ALL your guests, basically saying “Hey guys, thanks for coming, we loved your gifts, kthnxbye”?