Behind the Scenes: Our Custom Cake Design Process

People are sometimes surprised that the first conversation about a custom cake barely mentions cake at all. We usually start with the story: who's it for, what do they love, what's the moment we're actually celebrating?

1. The story

This panda-themed birthday cake started with one detail from the client: her daughter had been obsessed with pandas since she was three. That was the whole brief. Everything else — the bamboo cookie "fence," the hand-placed panda figurines, the hidden trail of babies climbing up the tiers — grew out of that single detail.

2. The sketch

Every custom order gets a rough sketch before anything touches buttercream. It's not fine art — it's a shared reference point so we're both picturing the same cake before any of the harder decisions (size, tiers, structural supports) get made.

3. The build

Bigger custom cakes are built in stages over a few days: bake, crumb coat and chill, final coat, then decorating last. Anything with tiers gets internal supports long before it's anywhere near the delivery box — nobody wants a leaning cake showing up to the party.

4. The reveal

This is the part we still don't get tired of. However the cake photographs, the moment that actually matters is the one where someone sees it in person for the first time.

Have a theme in mind, no matter how specific? Tell us about it — we've built stranger requests into cake before.