We loved our weddingcake!!! All of the guest said it was the best weddingcake they ever tasted. Would 100 % use again in the future.
Mrs Cookies LLC
Nathalia W.
Joanna made my weddingcake and I am really happy with the result. The cake tastes amazing and Joanna did everything as I asked her. Definitely, I will ask a cake with her again when I need it.
Yummy Cakes By Joanna
Marcos R.
Just what we had hoped and fully executed
The cake was a huge success to wedding event
Jersey Sweets
Jennifer K.
We needed a smaller cake for a small wedding and Susan was willing to do a 4inch/6inch tiered cake with one tier gluten-free and the other gluten-full. After our tasting we asked for even more citrus flavor in our lemon and blood orange cakes and she delivered! Yum!
Little Red Kitchen Bake Shop
Liwayway A.
I am terribly displeased and upset by the fondant weddingcake that was delivered by Joanna Banks on October 21 for my wedding in Manhattan.
On purpose, I waited awhile because my husband and family were very disappointed with the wedding cake and how it turned out. I wanted to take time to be less emotional when I communicated with her or with Thumbtack. It has been two weeks so I believe I am now level-headed and that I now can make a reasonable fact-laden review.
During preparations, Joanna Banks was very nice and agreed to my every request: 4 fondant tiers with different flavors per tier. Cascading fall leaves from the top tier to the bottom since the wedding theme was "fall" and two cat cake toppers and the moulds will look like the cats in my invitation. So imagine, what I felt when I saw my cake for the first time! I was so aghast! (See attached photos.)
First, the person whom she sent to deliver and assemble the cake left the reception venue and instructed my friend/guest who has no experience in setting up a cake, to do it. I understand that the wedding venue made him wait for quite some time but still he should have been professional and made sure he set up the cake himself because it was not my friend's job to do it. Also, when I asked Joanna Banks on my wedding day why the cake assembler left, she replied that the driver had to make another delivery and it was simple to assemble the cake. Was that what a professional should have done? Leave the cake just like that and not making sure he/she did it himself to ensure a decent finished product?
Second and most importantly, the cake was tilting and looked dilapidated! By the time of the reception, it looked like it collapsed and was uneven. It looked like a cartoonish birthday cake for a child than an elegant fondant weddingcake with four tiers. The agreement was that the bottom tier was a Rectangle , the third one a hexagon and the top two tiers were both round. The cake just looked like they were stacked unevenly one on top of another! The shapes were not clear or discernible.
The cat moulds were ugly and did not look like cats at all. They were supposed to look like the cat designs on our wedding invitation (see photo attached.) The leaves she used did not resemble the leaves I used in the wedding venue for decors which she agreed to copy. The leaves she put on my cake were just made from cookie cutters and the leaves had dull colors without vines.
As for taste, the cake was generally ok, not superb for the worth of $350! The taste of the red velvet tier was ok. The largest vanilla tier's texture was too moist and not in the good way and the chocolate mousse seemed like choco pudding instead. My mother-in-law said the taste of the second tier (vanilla with peaches) was too sweet. The topmost smallest chocolate tier was ok.
All in all, the cake was way below par and now after I told her what happened and showed her pictures, she just said "she didn't know why that happened" and "she's confused" why the cake looked like it melted. In her words, the cake was "mishandled". The cake could not have melted because the venue was indoor and it was not warm in the venue and it is falltime, not summer! To add insult to injury, Joanna Banks sent me a photo of a three-tier cake she allegedly/claims to have made just last week. So I asked her: What then happened to my cake? How come it wasn't anywhere as decent-looking as the picture of the cake she showed or those featured on her website? She hasn't offered any reparation or refund for the cake despite my complaints. Neither has she called me (she definitely knows my number) to personally apologize.
The end result was really a failure and my best man who paid for the cake $350 (plus $50 for the cookie leaves) as his wedding gift said the cake was not the worth what he paid for.
Had I known that would be the end result I would have just gotten the money and bought over-the-counter cakes from the regular bakery and served those to the guests. I was so upset during the wedding day and shortly after that my guests had to make a joke out of it to pacify me and divert my attention away from the cake. I was too embarrassed to serve the cake to the guests. Only those who stayed later, tasted the red velvet tier and we just brought home everything. I was so embarrassed to my guests about the dilapidated cake that looked like an uneven giant marshmallow instead of a professionally-made fondant cake.
Please let this serve as a WARNING to all brides getting married. Try not to get the lowest bidder all the time, especially for your wedding cake. Make sure the cake baker knows what he or she is doing. A weddingcake is not just a regular birthday cake that you order anytime. Hopefully, you only get married once so choose a reliable cake baker with a good reputation and which you have tried and tested. Don't leave this to amateurs or you will regret it like I did.
What was so disappointing was that Joanna Banks was the first supplier I chose and I even sent her via email a detailed document with details and pictures so she can have a guide when while she was preparing my cake. She said she understood and she appeared sincere during coordination. She had at least two weeks to prepare. I don't understand why the cake was such a disaster.
I have chosen all my other suppliers (just a few days before the wedding) from Thumbtack and have given a 5-star rating to my DJ and make-up artist, and a 4-star rating to my limousine service (I'm still waiting for output from my videographer and photographer) so I'm not giving an unreasonable rating to this. I just no longer want any other bride to suffer the same agony I did for choosing the wrong wedding cake supplier.
Yummy Cakes By Joanna
Thumbtack Customer
Dee created a selection of mini cakes for our wedding. These served as favors for our guests. From day one Dee was always quickly responsive and available to answer all our questions. This was a very last minute request with a number that kept changing as the days progressed. Dee did by miss a beat and was extremely accommodating of our changes. We were very happy with the final products-the cakes were so cute (our guests loved them) and the taste was delicious!
Dees Desserts
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