Off to WDW this weekend. We (fiancé and I) are staying just one night at the Yacht Club before moving to AKL for the week, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to try out the Yacht Club bakery. This is my first cake order after a couple of years of reading here and regular trips to WDW. No real occasion other than wanting to finally order a custom cake -- but, we are considering getting married at WDW, so will consider it like a preview of the cake tasting
Here's what I requested:
- 6" lavender cake, strawberry basil mousse filling
- deep blue fondant (originally requested buttercream, but the bakery made the point that dark buttercream will stain our mouths/teeth and alter the taste, so fondant it is)
- gold Mickey head constellation piped on top of cake
- a few real-life constellations on sides of cake, with some stars filling the "open sky"
- price quote:
$69
If you haven't guessed by now, the cake design is inspired by the super adorable Yacht Club room curtains! This is my SO's first ever stay at the Yacht Club, hopefully he likes the surprise.
Will post photos/thoughts when back~!
Overly detailed thoughts ahead
The total cost charged was
$91.23, so I think the breakdown was ~$71 + 6.5% sales tax + 18% + $3. I have Tables in Wonderland but could not convince my DF to eat at Yachtsman Steakhouse that night (we had a FEA dessert party reservation...), so room service it was.
"What went wrong" (which I have long gotten over) includes:
- A week ahead of time I asked to please deliver the cake at 7pm instead of 5pm (original time) because I knew we would probably be in our room and not leave for Epcot until~6pm. They confirmed the new time.
We were power-napping at 4:59pm when private dining knocked a billion times to deliver the cake, so there went the surprise to have the cake waiting once we'd turned in for the night
Confirm and re-confirm again if you change anything.
- The top was not exactly what I asked for, but whatever, still loved it. I wanted Mickey's head to be in profile like it is on the curtains so you can see his nose, and I sent them the below photo and said like this, but only the head:
Guessing they couldn't fit the head in profile or something. I did say 'do whatever the bakery team thinks looks best', so maybe that's all it was.
I loved the cake, and my DF was super excited/happy! It was a lot of cake for 2 people, even over 5 nights/6 days. No regrets, we still finished it
(minus a lot of buttercream and fondant)
Private dining setup (just to give an idea of what comes with). The deliverer offered to take it out of the box, and they probably normally do if you're not there?
I declined, since DF was still mostly asleep and I thought this could still be a surprise....
For the constellations, they made the lines gold and the "stars" silver to provide contrast, which is one thing I mentioned via email/pointed out on the curtains.
And they added glitter all over and sparkle sugar/sugar pearls -- didn't request/talk about any of that, so I'm glad they jazzed it up a bit since those little touches made the cake look fantastic.
Glitter is pretty hard to see in photos, but it shone beautifully in person!
How do they find such shimmery yet subtle glitter? Loved it.
Knife for size reference, though to be fair those utensils were hefty.
Thick layers of very sweet buttercream between cake and fondant.
Forgot to take a picture of the cake out next to the curtains, so here's a picture from right before we brought it down to bell services to transfer to AKL.
We collected the cake from AKL bell services at like 6pm. DF had the box, looked at it through the clear top, and said "OMG someone ate our cake!" ...It had jostled and broken in transit, nobody ate it
Not quite as pretty as before, but just as delicious!
Poor thing must've overheated, it was cold and firmly reshaped (i.e. the fondant was hard) when we picked it up... so must've melted before it got to the AKL bell services fridge
Overall, very happy with the cake! I loved the attention to detail for the stars and sky.
The lavender cake was light, not at all too sweet, and was a perfectly light, floral flavor. We both liked the strawberry basil mousse too; it just barely registered as sweet and had like a hint-of-herbs flavor. In some spots there were strong punches of basil, in some there was hardly any, which is probably for the best.
Also, one note on the fondant... do not sleep on this, it is strangely delicious!
One of Carrie's podcast episodes is all about cakes and in it, she and a former WDW cake decorator discussed the fondant and how it's almost marshmallow-tasting/good.
We tried the fondant and honestly loved it. The only thing stopping us from eating all of it was that it tasted even sweeter than the buttercream, which we could barely handle as is.
I have like 40 photos in total, LMK if anyone needs more