Green before Green was Good

Did you know that we are a green company? These are some of the ways in which we help the environment by reducing our carbon footprint.

• We limit the use of paper products by putting all of our 95% of our information online.
• At cake tastings, we use filtered water, instead of bottled water.
• We buy almost all of our ingredients locally from central Texas area suppliers.
• We schedule deliveries around the same time to avoid trips back and forth.
• Our web host runs on a hydroelectric facility.
• We plan cakes based on a certain percentage of your guest count, so you don't have leftovers, eliminating the need for cake boxes which end up in the trash. (We know! leftover cake is good..but the trash will last long after your wedding is over. That's not good.)
• We conduct most of our meetings via sunlight, reducing the use of electricity, and our bill!

As a small business, we are committed to helping the environment, as well as making great cakes! Hopefully in 2010 you can find some ways to help the environment as well!

What Do You Value the Most?

Everyone knows that if you're going to plan a full wedding and reception, you have to be prepared to spend money.

I've also discussed pricing and what to expect when you get a cake. However, many people STILL feel like a cake should be the cheapest thing. I assure you, that you get what you pay for...so if your cake quote is super low...you SHOULD be very worried.

However....this post isn't really about the price...but instead, what is it THAT you are really looking for in your cake.

After sitting down with hundreds of brides over the past few years, and talking about their weddings, these are the most common items that brides value, and have found to be more important than the price.

• Pretty, breathtaking cake
• Elegant and tall... A cake that looks like a wedding cake
  
• Premium ingredients like real sweet cream butter, chocolate, and vanilla
  
• Icing, that is applied in a smooth manner with crisp edges and detailed decorations,
  
• Moist and fluffy, yet firm ..not dry or crumbly
  
• Cake that gets eaten by guests
  
• A beautifully decorated cake table that highlights the cake.
• Cake flavors that everyone will enjoy
• Chocolate
• Beautiful photographs of their cake/ lasting memories of their cake
• To eat the cake at their wedding

ALL of these items are what brides have placed as a priority over price. If you could put one word on this list it is QUALITY. Quality will always come before price and that is the one thing that EVERY bride wants at her wedding.

2010 Brides Choice Awards Winner!!

Austin, Texas– Jan. 22, 2010 - WeddingWire, the nation’s leading wedding technology company, just announced Haute Cakes Couture Desserts has been selected to receive the WeddingWire 2010 Bride’s Choice Awards™ for Austin Wedding Cakes! The annual Bride’s Choice Awards recognizes and celebrates excellence in quality and service within the wedding industry, as determined by recent reviews and extensive surveys from over 500,000 newlyweds. Haute Cakes Couture Desserts is among the top five percent of all vendors in the WeddingWire community, which includes over 100,000 wedding professionals across the US and Canada. Awards were given to winners across 19 different service categories, from wedding venues to wedding photographers. “We are excited to recognize and honor the success of the top wedding professionals within the WeddingWire Community” said Timothy Chi, WeddingWire’s Chief Executive Officer. “The annual Bride’s Choice Awards program has given us the unique opportunity to highlight the best wedding professionals in each region as reviewed by brides and grooms who have utilized their services in the past year.” We are happy to announce that Haute Cakes Couture Desserts is among the very best wedding cake provider within the WeddingWire Network, which includes WeddingWire and Martha Stewart Weddings. We would like to thank our past newlyweds for nominating us for the 2010 Bride’s Choice Awards. For more information, please visit our WeddingWire Storefront today. About WeddingWire, Inc. WeddingWire is the only online wedding planning resource designed to empower both engaged couples and wedding vendors. WeddingWire enables engaged couples to search, compare and book over 100,000 reviewed wedding vendors nationwide, from wedding photographers to wedding cakes. WeddingWire also offers an online community and a suite of cutting-edge planning tools, including wedding websites and wedding checklists, all at no charge. For wedding vendors, WeddingWire provides free online management tools creating the only market opportunity that gives businesses control over their clients, reviews, leads and performance. In addition, WeddingWire has partnered with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. (NYSE: MSO) to provide its network of local vendors and online wedding-planning tools in the Weddings section of www.MarthaStewartWeddings.com. For additional information, please visit www.WeddingWire.com.

New Year, New Beginnings, New Cakes

Our New Year has been one of travel, (as I right this I'm sitting in a condo in the beautiful mountain resort of Aspen, Colorado), making new connections, and preparing for a successful 2010 cake year.

We are also busy preparing for our upcoming Spring weddings, which are just around the corner.

"Congratulations on Your Wedding" and "Thank You" to the brides that have already secured our services!

While we enjoyed each and every cake project in 2009, we are excited about the new projects awaiting us this year!

We have added a line of Simply Elegant Wedding Cakes for brides that want an affordable cake, that is not too fancy, less than $500, and super delicious.

We also contracted the services of Cindy Black with Hello Kitchen to design us a super awesome commercial kitchen so we have a permanent home to bake from. Look for more developments on that in the future. Thanks to Eight O' Clock Coffee for helping us with that!

Finally, to stay current with industry trends and network with local professionals, we have committed to serving as a board member for the Nuptial Essentials Association of Wedding Professionals, as well as joined as a member of the National Association of Catering Professionals.

All of that and it is only January 22! I hope the start to your new year has been as exciting as ours!

You Get What You Pay For

Everyone is trying to save a dollar here and there, but sacrificing quality for money is not a good idea, and can often have negative consequences.

A photographer friend of mine was telling me about a wedding that they had photographed recently and there was a terrible cake wreck.

Essentially, the wedding cake was supposedly "damaged in transport", and was in such bad shape that it couldn't be used at all. To make matters worse, the person that made the cake was nowhere to be found to try and fix the cake.

I don't know the facts as to what happened, just third-party knowledge, but I do know that cake was doomed from the beginning (the time the bride wrote that check to be exact), and the damage happened LONG before it was en route to the wedding.

It turns out that the client paid $200 for the wedding cake.

Really? Wow. The bride paid $200 and had NO CAKE AT HER WEDDING!

It is no wonder that the cake ended in disaster. A quote that low for a custom-designed, made-to-order wedding cake should raise a lot of RED FLAGS such as:

1) Why is the price so low when the average custom cake from reputable places is in the $600-800 range? Sometimes more than that.
2)How much experience does the baker have? How many weddings have they done?
3)What does their portfolio look like? Is this their first wedding? Even if someone has never done a wedding, their previous work should tell you if they are capable of executing a wedding cake.
4)This price sounds too good to be true!
5)No one has ever heard of them. Ever.

I could go on.

A lot of time, money, and work go into planning a wedding, so when something happens, that could have been easily prevented...it's a karmic shame.

Not to mention, even a mass produced wedding cake from a grocery store will cost more than $200. Yes, you will be getting a cake that is not made fresh, contains icing with a lot of preservatives, and has a generic design, and you have to set it up yourself, but it will be done correctly. However, aside from the color, it will not be a fresh, made from scratch, custom cake.

Just like any other product (wedding dress, floral arrangements, catering, etc.), a cake that is done correctly takes a lot of time effort and SKILL to create. Skill cannot be emphasized enough! A beautiful and cake and great tasting recipes don't just "happen".

When you hire me, you are not paying for the cake per se, but my expertise, investment in learning a craft, skill in baking, decorating, construction, delivery, AND fixing the cake in case something happens.

A lot of people get sticker shock when they see the price of my cakes, but honestly, as the story above illustrates, you really do get what you pay for. I won't take $200 for the amount of time and effort that goes into a high quality, designer wedding cake. I won't even turn on my oven.

You can SEE the difference, as well as TASTE the difference in my work.

It is not JUST cake.

It's a cake creation, that takes days to finish, handmade for YOU only, in your favorite flavors, and designed to match your wedding theme and colors.

THAT is what you pay for.