YUMMY and beautiful! Wouldn't go with anyone else - ever!

The cake tasted great and looked GORGEOUS!

Carolyn’s cakes are delicious, my sister-in-law first used Carolyn for her wedding in August 2010 and had a great experience and we immediately knew we wanted to work with Carolyn to create our wedding cakes. The cakes were amazing and exactly as we discussed in our meeting (we selected a spice cake, almond cake with raspberry jam, and chocolate marble cake). I was able to easily touch base with Carolyn multiple times by phone to finalize all our wedding cake details leading up to our event. In addition, she embraced my hockey groom’s cake idea!

It was a pleasure to work with Carolyn for our cake. First she agreed to meet with us on the 4th of July at 9am! That alone was above and beyond. She had a great variety of cake flavors and fillings for us to try. Our cake came out pretty close to our drawing and the best thing was that it tasted so good. We literally didnt have anything other than our top tier left over. Everyone at the wedding remarked how great the cake was.

Carolyn was amazing! Our cake was beautiful, delivered on time and displayed beautifully, and tasted delicious! A+

We only met with Carolyn once (which I was a bit concerned about) but everything was exactly as we discussed in our first meeting several months prior. The cake tasted wonderfully and was delivered right on time. She also left a box with special instructions for the top of our cake. She was a bit slower than I would have liked to respond to some emails, however she always eventually did and always answered any questions I may have had.

carolyn's cakes are absolutely delicious. i tasted quite a few samples from other vendors and hers was the best - hands down. plus she provides samples of about 8 or 9 cakes she makes. the cake i really wanted was not on carolyn usual sample tray so she made a separate cake a few weeks later and saved me some to bring home and try (awesome). and it was amazing. everyone at the wedding loved the cake (i had two flavors: spice cake with dulce de leche middle and almond flavor with raspberry middle) and i got compliments on both!

carolyn is friendly and affordable and i have already referred to another friend that got married in May. thanks carolyn!

I have had Carolyn's cakes before because of my job so when it was time to plan my wedding I was so excited to use Carolyn for my wedding cake. When my husband and I went to Carolyn's house for the tasting we looked at many pictures and decided on a different design and different flavor/filling for each tier. Carolyn draws out a sketch of the design and writes down the flavors on each tier for us to approve.I was going back and forth with the design so she was very helpful showing us all the pictures she had.
The day of the wedding all of my guest kept raving about how beautiful the cake was and how it was the best wedding cake they have ever had! I had some fresh flowers on the cake and told Carolyn to put them where she thought they looked best and she did just that.I was very happy with how my wedding cake turned out and the services Carolyn provided.

…………..Update 9/6/11…………..
After discussing my review with Carolyn, I have decided to focus my review on factual concerns I had and objectivity out of fairness. Please note, while I had a poor experience with Cakes by Carolyn, I recognize that your experience may be different, so your mileage may vary. Lastly, I will add that everyone has their off days, even Cakes by Carolyn.

…………..Overview…………..
As a background, I ordered wedding cupcakes and a small top tier/anniversary cake to cut at the reception.

1. The cupcakes I received looked good, matched what I asked for, and tasted great.
2. The top tier cake I received was poorly constructed and did not meet my expectations, although it did taste very good.
3. The service I received was below average and did not meet my expectations for two main reasons. During our interactions: (a) Carolyn was disorganized and appeared to lose track of what I had asked for; and (b) I often had to reach out to Carolyn multiple times after email discussions were not responded to or unaddressed for several business days.

Overall, I was generally dissatisfied regarding my experience with Cakes by Carolyn. The issues related to issue (2) and (3) were very disappointing, almost to the point of wedding day melt down.

…………..Details…………..
Here are the facts supporting my three conclusions above.

Regarding Cupcakes (1)
I was satisfied with my purchase. My guests raved about the cupcakes, both for taste and presentation. Carolyn provided a cupcake stand as part of her display, which I also appreciated. My only negative feedback is that the frosting color didn’t match my deion exactly, but it was close enough to be satisfactory.

Regarding the Top Tier/Anniversary Cake (2)
The cake tasted excellent. However, the cake did not look like what I had asked for or sent pictures of.

- I emailed her with a picture and instructions on two separate occasions: once right after the tasting and again two weeks before the wedding.
- While the cake was white with turquoise and silver polka dots (as I had asked for), it only loosely resembled the example I had sent when I had asked for Carolyn to copy the design exactly with the exception of the colors.

Additionally, I felt the cake was of very low quality for several reasons.

- Parts of the fondant were hand painted, and there were at least 4 areas where paint looked completely ruined, incomplete, or got on the main white fondant of the cake. These painting mistakes were mainly in the front of the cake and were in very plain sight, visible from 5 feet away.
- The white fondant covering the cake had a very large hole where a chunk had fallen off. The piece was about the size of a quarter and sat on the side of the cake.
- There were four very large ruffled/folded areas on the white fondant all occurring at the front and sides of the cake towards the bottom. They were very prominent, some up to 2-3 inches.
- The white fondant had several nicks and lacked smoothness. This was visible from a few feet away as well. Beyond 6 feet it was not as easily visible.
- The cake had small strands of hot glue over it from glue used to attach a ribbon to the cake base.
- The cake was not the flavor we had requested.
- Carolyn forgot to put my cake toppers on the top tier and had to rush back to bring them after my catering director called her. She made it back within 10-20 minutes of cake cutting. I left them with Carolyn because she wanted to attach them to a small base to help them stand on the cake. This was very frustrating as Carolyn assured me she would not forget them, storing them in a safe place.

When we saw the top tier/anniversary cake, we were frustrated, surprised, and heart-broken. It did not match the picture we went over twice with Carolyn and we were not sure why. I feel this could have been resolved if Carolyn was better organized and explicit in her understanding of our expectations. Additionally, regardless of whether it matched the picture, we felt it was low quality. All of the issues I raised above I would never expect to see from a professional baker with 35 years of experience. It is beyond disappointing and still makes me feel quite angry when I look back at pictures considering how much the cake had cost. It was not beautiful and was far from Carolyn’s best effort, based on some of the positive reviews and great photos we had seen prior.

Regarding Service (3)
During my months working with Carolyn, email communication was not timely according to normal email etiquette and Carolyn was disorganized to the point that it affected delivery. For example:

- There were several occasions where Carolyn did not reply to emails for 6 days or more. On one occasion, it took 12 days before I heard back.
- I often had to email Carolyn to re-initiate email discussions that fell through the cracks (e.g., questions were not answered or requests were not acknowledged).
- There seemed to be a lack of email organization as I had to reiterate past email instructions or decisions that had already been made.
- Meetings with Carolyn seemed disorganized as she did not have email updates and information coordinated/prepared ahead of time.
- As stated in part (2), Carolyn forgot my cake toppers and had to rush back to the venue to provide them, making it 10-20 minutes before cake cutting.
- As stated in part (2), Carolyn provided the wrong flavor for the top tier/anniversary cake.

Most communication issues could have been resolved via better communication and setting expectations. If Carolyn had helped me to understand her style, schedule, and needs, I could have been more flexible and my concerns could have been avoided. Timely email responses with agreed upon deadlines for action are a basic necessity of good business practice in my opinion. In addition, I feel that most of the issues with the top tier stemmed from lack of organization.

If anyone has any questions or would like pictures or email evidence of my experience, feel free to leave a message on my guestbook.

I loved how our cake turned out, it was beautiful, and it that is what you care about, choose Carolyn! Our cake was gorgeous, and it was on a beautiful cake stand that she rented to us as well. It tasted great too! My only complaint is that Carolyn is not very responsive. She takes several days to respond to emails and there was a lot of confusion when it came to settling the bill. Other than that, I was happy with the cake!

My cake was just what I wanted!! It tasted so delicious and looked spectacular. I loved working with Carolyn and she made it so amazingly easy. I could not have asked for a better tasting or looking cake and Carolyn was amazing!

Carolyn did our wedding cake and it was absolutely amazing! She let us have a tasting at her home to try all of the different flavors of cake she makes. We couldn't decide between two of them, so she was able to alternate our 2 flavors that we chose with each different tier. She was able to do exactly what we asked her to and most importantly, it tasted fantastic. We even had some left over so we enjoyed it with friends at home, reliving our wedding night each time we tasted it. Great job Carolyn. Thank you so much for your great work. :)

Everyone raved about the cake at my daughter's wedding. It was delicious! Filling was strawberry cream with chocolate chip. It looked beautiful, too, with just the look my daughter wanted...three tiers, different shapes, black band, and real roses scattered. Carolyn is the best.

I cant thank you enough Carolyn for making our wedding cake! It was breathtakingly beautiful. Everyone at the wedding said it was the best wedding cake they have ever had! It was the most GORGEOUS cake I have ever seen, it could not have been better!

I know everyone thinks their cake is beautiful - but WOW! I was shocked at how nice it was. (Four tiers, two different types of cake and two types of filling within the each slice - which I thought would be weird but was AMAZING.) They were able to do anything I wanted - and when I had NO IDEA what I wanted - they were able to help me with that, too. (Hence the variety of flavors in a single slice!)

In the Northern VA area, they had the most reasonable prices. They also delivered to our reception venue - which is pretty standard but always helpful.

I especially appreciated that they worked with my florist to incorporate my flowers into the cake (so I didn't have to use sugar/frosting flowers). It was really beautiful - and I will post pictures if I can figure that out!

Highly Recommend

Carolyn at Carolyn's cakes made our wedding cake on October 22 of this year. When we met up with her prior to the wedding I knew that she was going to be awesome. She listened to everything that we were going for and was helpful in suggestions. When I walked into the ballroom and saw our cake for the first time I thought it was absolutely perfect. It was above what I had in my mind as the perfect cake, and better yet it tasted DELICIOUS! It was without a doubt the best wedding cake I have ever eaten, and I am not just saying that because it was my wedding. :) Thank you so much Carolyn for the beautiful, elegant and tasty cake!