Vendor Review: The Flour Child

We used The Flour Child in Columbia, Pennsylvania for our groom's cake and our wedding cake.  

Groom's Cake: 

I wanted a 3D R2D2 cake for Philip because he loves Star Wars.  I thought that the cake looked pretty good.  It really did look like R2D2.  It wasn't as smooth as I had hoped, but it definitely did the trick. 

However, I thought the cake itself was not good.  The cake tasted like it was over a week old.  It was dried out and didn't have a good flavor.  I also requested that she use as little frosting as possible because Philip doesn't like frosting very much.  Well, it had a TON of frosting.  

I was disappointed, but I knew that this cake was more complicated than our wedding cake and probably took a lot of time.  So, I just hoped for the best for our wedding cake.

Wedding Cake: 

First off, let me give you an idea of the kind of cake that I had requested.  I told Alixe that I wanted a square, three tier cake.  I wanted it to be smooth and sleek.  I wanted navy ribbon around the bottoms of each layer.  And next to that, I wanted big, creamy pearls (I used pearls in lots of places in the wedding).  I even sent her some sample photos of what I was looking for (all courtesy of The Knot).  

The ribbon (but in navy) and the smooth texture.

Again, smooth and this time with creamy pearls. 

This time square with ribbon.

She told me she understood and I believed her.  I had confidence that she'd deliver the cake that I wanted.  After all, I think it's actually a pretty simply cake.  

However, I was seriously disappointed to walk into our reception during the cocktail hour and find this:

That cake is not smooth and sleek.  The layers were lumpy and not even (you can even see that from a distance in the pictures!).  Yes, that cake is square, but the edges were not sharp -- they were wavy.  And the pearls were not pearls at all.  They were almost nonexistent which probably would have been better than the sloppy mess that they pretended were "pearls."  

Here, you can see what I'm talking about.  There are tiny little dots along the edge of the ribbon (NOT pearls).  And they were so sloppily done that most of them had tails.  You can also see that the ribbon was put on so poorly that it's squishing the cake out over the top of it.  You can also see what I mean about it not being smooth/sleek.  

This is an actual screenshot from The Flour Child's Flickr Gallery of our cake.  Even in the photo that they chose to display shows all the imperfections and crappy pearls. 

Thankfully Howie was able to get a few good shots of the cake that make it seem like it might have been pretty... But it wasn't.  It was not what I asked for and I am honestly surprised that they thought it was acceptable.  

What they gave me was not a professional grade cake.  I am an amateur and I could have made this cake.  I honestly feel confident that I could have definitely made the pearls much better than that!

The wedding cake did taste better than the groom's cake, but I still didn't think it was a good cake.  And a lot of our guests agreed with me on that.  

So, in light of all of that, I do NOT recommend The Flour Child.  Alixe was pretty good to work with in the months before the wedding (her communication was lacking towards the end but she said it was because she had a TON of weddings going on at the time -- I think that she seriously overextended herself and it showed in her work!), but her actual work left a LOT to be desired.  

I give The Flour Child 2.5 stars out of 5.  They do not get a passing grade from me.  I guess I shouldn't have looked at so many cakes online and watched so many cake decorating shows before the wedding!