About this vendor
Bittersweet Pastry Shop has been in the vanguard of Chicago's chef-driven desserts and cakes for 30 years. Our evolving menu features the finest celebration and wedding cakes in the city alongside breakfast pastries, desserts, our full cafe menu, and Metropolis coffee.
Details
Business Attributes
- Woman-owned Business
Cakes & Desserts
- Cake Delivery & Setup
- Cake Tastings
- Cupcakes
- Groom's Cakes
Dietary Options
- Gluten Free
- Nut Free
Awards and Affiliations
Reviews
Your trust is our goal. Our community relies on honest reviews to help you make those big decisions with ease.
4.9
out of 5.060 reviews
Review photos
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We had the best experience with this bakery from start to finish. Our tasting was incredible. Every option was so flavorful, moist, and unique that choosing just one was the hardes...
t part! They brought our vision to life with a stunning cutting cake that matched our inspo photos and color scheme perfectly.
We ended up choosing a coconut cake with milk chocolate frosting, and it was truly unforgettable. It was so moist and delicious that we happily ate the leftovers for a full week. It was just as good on the last bite as it was on our wedding day.
Beyond being talented, the team was warm, professional, and so easy to work with. We’ll definitely be back as regular customers, not just for cakes. Highly recommend!
We wanted a local Chicago bakery, and Bittersweet was everything we hoped for. Samuel made the entire process—from tasting to delivery—so easy and personal. We even chose his favor...
ite flavors, which ended up being ours too! The cake was gorgeous, delicious, and will forever remind us of our special day. We can’t wait to return for more sweet treats.
We had our personal two-tiered wedding cake made by Bittersweet and it was SO perfect! We are so very glad that we chose Bittersweet. We wanted to get a smaller cake for just my hu...
sband and I to cut and then we had additional desserts for our guests. We chose the two-tiered small cake with buttercream frosting and it was so picturesque and also tasted delicious :) We had our florist add cake flowers but we also could have chosen to get some added from Bittersweet. We decided to do a cake tasting (for an additional cost) and it was so worth it and so much fun! We got a to go box of a variety of different cake flavors and different frostings and you just mix and match to figure out which combination you would like for your cake. It was a fun wedding prep activity to do and made it extra fun deciding on our cake!
We worked with Bittersweet for our wedding cake and mini desserts and had a great experience! It was hard to narrow the flavors and dessert options since everything was so deliciou...
s :)
Bittersweet has a partnership with Union League, where our reception was hosted. We were so lucky that they have that relationship set up because it meant that a lot of the details...
were covered by Bittersweet & ULCC's catering-- we didnt' have to worry about a thing! We love Bittersweet as a bakery and were so excited to have a wedding cake from them.
My wife is gluten free and they did have offerings for a GFree cake, but unfortunately they weren't to her liking (she's not a huge cake person). We opted for a gfree dessert on the side of the regular cake.
The cake that we did have was absolutely delicious. We had guests asking where it was from and what flavors (coconut with lemon sabayon & white chocolate ganache) because it was THAT great. Not only was it tasty, but it looked amazing. We gave some loose inspo photos, some key words & our color palette and they did the rest!
We used Bittersweet for our wedding cake and could not be happier! After having the most delicious cake from Bittersweet at our engagement party, we knew we wanted to use them for...
our wedding. The entire process was extremely easy with great communication. The cake tasting ended up being one of our favorite parts of the wedding planning process! We would highly recommend Bittersweet for any events!
We hired Bittersweet Pastry Shop for our wedding cake, and we couldn’t be happier! The cake was absolutely delicious—white cake with layers of crème brûlée and strawberry a winning...
combination.
The design was stunning, featuring a beautiful mixed floral arrangement of edible flowers that perfectly matched our vision. Communication was a breeze and the price for our cutting cake was very reasonable.
Highly recommend Bittersweet for anyone looking for a wedding cake that tastes as amazing as it looks!
We loved our wedding cake so much that the week after the wedding we ordered the exact same cake again. Delivery was smooth and everything was just like the pictures online. The te...
am was also very responsive during the reservation/design process. Highly recommend!
Bittersweet did an awesome job! We participated in the tasting and picked our flavors and style of cake. The cake was delivered on-time to our venue. We were very happy and re...
ceived many favorable comments from our guests. I would definitely use Bittersweet again!
Working with the team at Bittersweet was a lovely experience. The cake for our daughter's wedding was exactly what she and the groom requested. Delicious! Thank you!
We absolutely loved working with Bittersweet Pastry for our wedding! Our cake was delicious and looked stunning. During the planning process, they were reliable, thoughtful and inc...
redibly friendly. We also had a ton of fun doing their take home tasting. They give you so many options and it was such a fun experience to do together. As a now married couple, we make it a point to visit their storefront and if we ever need a cake again, we’re working with Bittersweet!
We loved our wedding cake! It was beautiful and tasted amazing! Samuel was so helpful and made everything so easy and stress free for us. He did an amazing job communicating with u...
s and making sure everything was delivered for us. We cannot recommend Bittersweet enough!
I've always known Bittersweet for wedding cake, and I'm glad I picked it. Easy tasting experience (pick up and at-home tasting). Responsive coordinator. Completely customizable.
I ...
did not meet anyone on the day of, but everything turned out well. Almond cake is the best! Highly recommend.
Bittersweet has a partnership with River Roast for wedding cake. We feel so lucky for this partnership because this bakery’s cake and mini sweets was perfect for our wedding! The c...
ake tasting was so fun and so many flavors to choose from. Samuel is great with communication and giving suggestions at the tasting. Our cake was delicious and just beautiful. Our guests loved the desserts and even some GF options. We even get a free anniversary cake which is amazing to us since on wedding night you don’t fully get to enjoy eating anything as bride and groom. 100% would recommend booking them!
Wow- what can I say about Bittersweet. They were absolutely amazing. I am a BIG cake girl- and boy was I in heaven. From the initial appointment, we was blown away with how special...
we were made to feel. We tasted our cakes and pick our fave, and patiently waited to our big day- but we dreamed about delicious our cake was going to be.
AND IT WAS. Bittersweet bakery has a customer for life now.
We highly recommend using Bittersweet as your bakery for your wedding cake! We were thoroughly impressed by the design and taste of our cake. They offer many delicious cake and fil...
ling options and getting a cake tasting kit to sample all of the possible combinations made the choice easier. They were very professional and communicative leading up to and on the day of the wedding!
From the planning, and presentation to the final tasting - Bittersweet can do no wrong!
Bittersweet made a delicious cake at a great price for our wedding! We had an 8" and 6" tiered cake as well as a few side cakes. We chose 2 types of cakes: vanilla cake with lemon ...
sabayon, raspberry preserves, and vanilla buttercream and marble cake with milk chocolate mousse and vanilla buttercream. Bittersweet was very easy to work with and decorated the cake exactly how we wanted. Highly recommend!
I would give it a 3.5 out 5 but there's no half star option. I ordered Bittersweet for my wedding. I started the process in November of 2019 but my 2021 wedding was delayed to 2023...
due to the pandemic. I originally worked with Kim who was great and then I ended up working with Esther and also communicated with Samuel. I emailed in Feb 2023 like Kim told me to do since I had delayed our wedding. I did schedule a call with Samuel and he never called me. Then Samuel told me he would get me on Esther's calendar to meet with her instead of him. Over a week went by and I didn't hear from him so I messaged him when I had already been waiting 3 weeks since I emailed in February, to talk to someone about my wedding cake. What irked me was that I got stood up for a scheduled meeting and then there was a delay in messaging which results in a delay in meeting up. I had already been waiting a few weeks and my wedding was two and half months away. It made me very nervous. Once I messaged again Esther took over messaging me which was amazing because I did not like Samuel's style at all and I would have requested to switch if he was the one working with me. Esther was great. We sat down with her and she was so nice and easy to work with. We wanted a sunset color palate for the Chicago skyline. I would've loved a color drawing before the wedding day so I knew for sure what colors I was going to get. I did love the colors I got. We had talked about it with Esther but I wasn't 100% sure what the baker was going to be able to do which I would have appreciated. The cake was amazing! It tasted great and the design was gorgeous.
Bittersweet designed our gorgeous wedding cake which was a 6 tier vanilla buttercream design based off the architecture inside our venue at the Blackstone hotel. It was so beautifu...
l and tasted amazing! We chose an almond cake with creme brulee and raspberry filling as well as a marble cake with chocolate frosting - both were fantastic. We chose this based off a super fun (and large!) tasting a couple months before the wedding. Our guests loved the cake! The design was exactly what we had envisioned. It was a bit pricey but worth it in our opinion. The staff was very responsive and friendly. Highly recommend!
We worked with Kerrie to design our wedding cake and it turned out amazing! They executed our design perfectly, it turned out so gorgeous! We opted for two different flavor combos ...
- banana cake with milk chocolate mousse and chocolate ganache, and then the pinkberry cake with lemon sabayon and strawberry preserves. They were both INCREDIBLE! I can’t wait to order mini cakes for our first anniversary (and maybe every anniversary).
So many delicious cake options we struggled to narrow down our favorite. The cake turned out beautiful and exactly as we described to them and tasted delicious. We will continue bu...
ying sweet treats from here on special occasions. Highly recommend!
Bittersweet provided the cake for our wedding and they were fantastic. It was really easy to order a cake kit and taste the different combinations. The communication for ordering w...
as a little slow (but not detrimentally so) because we had to use their online chat system. The cake was beautiful! They were able to design it how I wanted and hand make gorgeous details that I didn't know was possible. Most importantly, the cake was absolutely delicious. We also did a groom's that was easy to order and a fun addition to our dessert spread.
Highly Recommend! We worked with Bittersweet through our venue and they did such a fantastic job! The cake itself was delicious and they helped me surprise my groom with the most s...
pectacular bears themed grooms cake! We did a sweets table with fun bite sized desserts as well. Highly recommend!
My husband and I secured Bittersweet after doing their cake tasting kit, which was so fun & delicious to do! They were easy to work with & communicate with ahead of time, they also...
delivered the cake on time on our wedding day, it was exactly what we were looking for. It was just a smaller cutting cake for the head table, but it still made a big impact and was very tasty! Can't wait to come back for other big life events in the future. We cannot recommend them enough!
Bittersweet did our cake as well as sweets for our vow renewal this July. I was thoroughly impressed with the tasting process (our friends subbed in for us) and experience with boo...
king.
Our cake turned out just like our inspiration photo!
Not only was it gorgeous, but the cake itself and all the sweets were delicious - we still have guests raving about how they far exceeded expectations for wedding cake!! :)
I highly recommend Bittersweet Pastry Shop for all of your event needs!
Our wedding cake from Bittersweet was exactly what we had envisioned and more. The cake looked incredible and tasted even better. Multiple guests came up to us to tell us how muc...
h they enjoyed the cake! Thanks, Bittersweet for a delicious and beautiful wedding cake of our dreams!
Our wedding cake was fantastic! Lots of compliments from guests who “don’t even like cake.”
We booked Bittersweet Bakery to bake our wedding cake. The first thing that we loved was the way we got to pick up a whole box of different cakes, fillings and frostings! They gave...
us suggestions and the cake we picked was delicious! They placed pretty pearls along the bottom and delivered everything to our venue seamlessly.
Bittersweet bakery did such a beautiful job on our wedding cake! It tasted so delicious! Their cake tasting kit was organized which made the entire process of deciding flavors easy...
. The different cakes, fillings, and frostings were all labeled and kept separate. My wife and I ended up choosing vanilla cake with a milk chocolate mousse filling and vanilla buttercream frosting. For our late night snacks, we chose their mini cheesecakes and mini chocolate chip cookies. The cake and desserts were such a huge hit with our guests!
I'll be honest: originally I wasn't convinced we needed a wedding cake, but our wedding package at River Roast included a cake through Bittersweet. So so so glad it did! We did a s...
mall cake (vanilla with lemon and strawberry filling) and an array of sweets (lavender macarons that were to DIE for, espresso tarts, peanut butter chocolate mousse bites, and cheesecake squares). We were able to do the tasting entirely at home, selected a variety of treats from their extensive samples, and were thrilled with the display on our wedding day. And a bonus: the wedding cake includes a FRESH cake on your one-year anniversary - no frozen top tier here! Would highly recommend.
We have all been to weddings with dry cakes - this is not one of them! Bittersweet Weddings made an absolutely delicious wedding cake for us (three tiers with chocolate mousse and ...
white cake with ivy piping). Truly, very tasty. So much so that my husband and I got forks and dug into the cake after cutting it - it was THAT good. Cannot recommend them enough for your Chicago wedding!
We wanted a small simple cake for our reception and Bittersweet delivered! We loved so many of the flavor combinations that we had a hard time choosing just one. In the end we chos...
e strawberry with white chocolate with white buttercream and flowers which turned out delicious and beautiful. Our day of coordinator was able to pick up our cake without a problem. We will definitely order again in the future!
Bittersweet was amazing to work with for our wedding. From the cake tasting, to the planning, to the delivery, everything was amazing. They have a variety of flavors and designs to...
choose from. The cake not only look beautiful, but it was so delicious I still dream about it! We will be ordering more cakes in the future, and would highly recommend it to any couple!
Our caterer had recommended Bittersweet to us and after we did our tasting, it was an easy decision to use them! They have a wide variety of cake and filling flavors that you can m...
ix-and-match however you like (talk about a fun tasting!). Nancy was super nice, helped us determine the appropriate size cake for our wedding size and was flexible when we changed our minds on cake filling. Even our venue coordinator raved about Bittersweet! We highly recommend!
Working with Bittersweet was easy and perfect from start to finish. We went in for a tasting first, which was extremely thorough and delicious, and tasted both cakes and sweets. ...
We discussed the cake type, filling, frosting, decorations, etc. - very detailed. We ended up ordering a cake and cake pops, which all turned out amazingly, was delivered on time, and was enjoyed by all. The whole process was unbelievably smooth, and their prices were very fair.
We originally picked them because we had been there many times to eat - they are also great for a quick lunch/coffee!
I'm so grateful that my venue (River Roast) partnered with Bittersweet Pastry Shop & Cafe to provide wedding cakes for their clients. Working with Nancy was seamless, despite me be...
ing a bride who was planning long distance and from a different time zone! She was accommodating to my best friends who did the tasting for m. Nancy was quick to respond, addressed any concerns, and listened to my wishes. Our cake was DELICIOUS, and the only regret I have is that I didn't get a bigger than 4-tier cake. We loved Bittersweet and highly recommend them!
Our wedding cake by Bittersweet was included in our reception package at The Metropolitan Club. We worked with Nancy, who was so flexible! We had a great tasting for 4 people and g...
ot to try a wide array of flavors/fillings. She helped me design my wedding cake, and I can't believe how beautiful it was on our wedding day! Not to mention DELICIOUS!! The cake was so moist, the flavors were incredible. I had several guests compliment us on how yummy the cake was. We also get a new small cake for our 1 year anniversary, I can't wait for that treat! I highly recommend picking Bittersweet for your wedding cake!
We worked with Nancy from Bittersweet, and she was amazing. She was super helpful and responsive to my emails. She delivered everything to Galleria Marchetti, and the cake and swee...
ts table turned out great! All of the guests said everything at the sweets table was amazing. THANK YOU NANCY!
Bittersweet made our cake and other various sweets for our wedding just over a week ago. All I can tell you is that I don’t even like cake and I was scrambling for seconds...it was...
that good! Nancy is super personable and easy to work with. She accommodated all my requests. We would recommend Bittersweet whole-heartedly and without reservation! Thank you Bittersweet!
It was a pleasure working with them on the vision of our cake. It came out perfectly!
I wasn’t tied to cake for our wedding but when I asked my fiancé at the time what his perfect dessert would be he said “A really good piece of chocolate cake.” After our tasting I...
was completely sold. We got the fudge cake with mocha mousse filling. When people asked me what I was most looking forward to at our wedding my answer became “The cake!”. I wanted a simple design with gold bands and it came out perfectly. You also get an anniversary tier so you’re not eating year old frozen cake and I’m already so excited about it. My poor husband is going to have to go back every year since my birthday is the day before our anniversary too.
The cakes taste amazing!! You won’t be disappointed in the selection. However, I wanted some simple detailing and none of it was included on my wedding day. I was disappointed at h...
ow plain the cake looked.
Delicious and moist! Everyone loves the cake! I can’t wait to come Back for our anniversary duplicate cake :)
Cake tasting was our favorite day of wedding planning! We went to a number of bakeries but Bittersweet stood out. Not only is the quality of cake superior to all other bakeries we ...
visitied, the customer service and attention to detail was over the top. Our wedding cake was not only beautiful, it was made exactly to order, and was delicious! We got so many complements. I cannot wait to get our 1-year anniversary top layer next August! It gives us something to look forward to and was such a nice gift to receive from Bittersweet. Thank you Nancy and team!
We got married in August and worked with Nancy for our tasting and cake - it turned out INCREDIBLE. First, our tasting was so much more than what I was expecting. It was deliciou...
s and the samples were abundant; it made it much harder than I thought to choose our cake flavors! Second, they have such a talented team there. Our cake looked flawless and I made sure not to leave without eating my slice. I can't wait to go back there for our anniversary cake (and sweets in general!). If I could do it over again, I would 100% go with Bittersweet Pastry Shop.
I can't say enough good things about Bittersweet! Not only was my cake STUNNING it was delicious! My cake was a highlight of my wedding for sure! Such a great company to work with...
! Very professional and easy to communicate with! Highly recommended!
My husband and I absolutely loved our wedding cake! Nancy was wonderful to work with and made the whole process extremely easy. There were so many options to choose from during our...
tasting, all of which were delicious. Bittersweet delivered our cake to the venue and provided the cake holder. Beyond looking beautiful, it tasted phenomenal! We could not be happier and can’t wait for the first year anniversary topped that they bake fresh!
They were a part of our wedding package. It was great. The tasting was nice because you got to taste the different cake and fillings; do mix and match. We ultimately went with vani...
lla with milk chocolate filling and a carrot cake. Everyone really enjoyed the carrot cake. The cake itself was beautiful and turned out just like the picture. The owner and staff are easy to work with.
Our venue included a cake from Bittersweet bakery and we were so happy! We were able to go for an individualized tasting and design meeting. The staff were extremely helpful and ki...
nd and our cake turned out exactly how we dreamed it would. They delivered and set up the cake the day of and it was flawless. Our guests loved the cake and said it tasted amazing.
The only reason for 4 stars instead of 5 was that the actual cake was a "pho" cake that we cut in front of our guests. The inside wasn't actually cake rather it was a strange clay like mixture that when we attempted to "smash" on each others faces did not work out and it was super awkward. I just wish we would have been warned about that beforehand!
Contact
1114 W. Belmont, Chicago, IL
Bittersweet Pastry Shop & Cafe