A simple guide to ordering a custom cake
Practical advice from twelve years of cake briefs — written for the moment you sit down to send the first message.
Ordering a celebration cake should feel like booking a small piece of someone’s craft. It usually feels like trying to translate Pinterest into a paragraph. This is a short field guide to the parts of the conversation that matter — written so you can spend less time worrying and more time looking forward to the moment.
Start with the feeling, not the design
The most useful thing you can tell a baker is what kind of moment the cake is part of. A quiet engagement dinner for ten, a backyard 40th, a corporate milestone where the cake will be photographed from twelve angles. The feeling shapes the cake far more than a reference image — it shapes the size, the texture of the icing, even the way the slices are cut.
How far in advance to book
A guide we share with most clients:
- Single-tier birthday cake — 7 to 10 days.
- Engagement or small wedding cake — 3 to 4 weeks.
- Full wedding cake with delivery and setup — 6 to 8 weeks. Peak season (October to March) often books out earlier.
- Corporate milestone cake — 2 weeks.
Earlier is better. We hold dates with a small deposit and confirm the design after the tasting.
What to bring to your tasting
For weddings and larger cakes we run a free 45-minute tasting at the Sturt Street kitchen. Two or three reference images help — but more useful than images is a short list of flavours and textures you love and things you do not want. If you hate fondant, say so on day one. If you love olive oil cake, mention it.
Bring a swatch of the colour palette if you have one — even a screenshot of an invitation will do.
Questions worth asking your baker
- Do you bake everything in-house, or do you outsource sponges or fillings?
- When will my cake be baked relative to the event?
- How do you handle delivery and on-site setup for tiered cakes?
- Can the icing handle a 28°C marquee?
- What happens if I need to reduce the order size after I’ve paid the deposit?
A note on Pinterest references
We love a reference. We will not exact-copy another baker’s work, but we are happy to take the spirit of a design and rebuild it in our own hand. Two or three images is the sweet spot. Twelve is overwhelming and tends to produce a cake that does not look like any of them.
The honest part about pricing
Custom cake pricing varies by flavour complexity, the time the decoration takes, and any specialty ingredients. The number on our pricing page is a guide — most cakes land within 10–20% of it. Sugar work, hand-painted detail, and fresh florals add cost. Restrained palettes and clean designs are usually cheaper than they look.
When in doubt, send us a short paragraph. We will reply with a quote and a sketch, and you can decide from there.