About this vendor
Bovella’s Pastry Shoppe is a wedding bakery in Westfield, NJ, founded in 1949 by the late Michael Bove and succeeded by his protege Ralph Bencivenga in 2008. Together, the duo established the bakery’s reputation for high-quality cakes and pastries with an Italian influence. Today, owner Ralph runs the charming café with pride and principle as he endeavors to fulfill the lifelong mission that Michael helped lay out before him.
Every cake, cookie, and cannoli is handmade with careful attention to detail by the dedicated staff at Bovella’s Pastry Shoppe. This family-run bakery prides themselves on making everything from scratch in the kitchen, ensuring that each slice of pie is made using the freshest ingredients. Couples are sure to love their custom-made wedding cake and dessert as they celebrate their momentous day.
Bovella’s Pastry Shoppe offers a selection of wedding cakes and dessert options for weddings and private parties. Couples can liaise with the shop in regards to flavors, size, and color schemes for their bespoke cake. A variety of traditional Italian pastries are also available such as pasticiotti, sfogliatelle, and cannoli for wedding brunches or after-dinner desserts.
Details
Business Attributes
- Asian-owned Business
- Black-owned Business
- Hispanic or Latinx-owned Business
- LGBTQ+-owned Business
- Native American-owned Business
- Pacific Islander-owned Business
Reviews
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4.7
out of 5.089 reviews
Review photos
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The cake was delicious and matched the decorations we requested. (The flowers were from my florist). The person who delivered it was timely and extremely kind. Bovella's is perhaps a more casual establishment in regards to ordering/scheduling/payment, but that fits my energy. Thank you!
Having Bovella's as my neighborhood bakery I knew they had to provide my wedding cake - specifically, their rainbow cookie cake. I cannot describe how seamless the process was and how perfect the cake ended up being!! It was a dream working with them. They also provided the challah which was a hit.
I grew up loving Bovella's cookies knowing that they HAD to do my wedding cake. We tried other bakeries Funfetti cake and fudge filling, but NOTHING compared to Bovella's. The cake decor is exactly what I dreamed of with fun confetti sprinkles. Look no further for a cake!
We used Bovella's for our wedding cake in June 2019. The cake was included as part of our package with Clarks Landing, but we could not have been happier with how the cake turned out! I've had a lot of mediocre wedding cake, but once we went to the tasting, I knew that that would not be the case for our cake. We chose a vanilla cake with layers of cream cheese and chocolate fudge filling and it was so incredible! This definitely did not taste like dry "wedding cake." We received many compliments on how good the cake tasted! I showed Bobby a picture of what I had in mind, and he fully captured my vision and the cake was beautiful.
Bovellas is partnered with Clark's Landing Yacht Club, and we were very happy with the result! The whipped cream tasted fresh and not too sweet, and the fresh fruit inside was great. No fondant, and the cake was moist and our guests were pleased! The cake looked just like the photos I sent in.
Bovella's was the partner bakery for the caterer I chose; I didn't do any shopping around or comparing, I got what I got.
Pros: The end cake result tasted very good and everyone enjoyed it. The flavors and design was an okay approximation of what I requested.
Cons: It was very difficult to establish contact with the Bakery and my Caterer didn't offer much help. It was very much the case of old school mom & pop + poor business skills, a personal pain point for me. When I requested samples, I was met with surprise that I would want to taste cake before ordering and I was then presented with a take home pile of cake scraps (although some say this is common). When prepared to order, I again ran into issues with communicating and gaining confirmation.
Because of my catering "package", I had limited options for the cake design. But I selected something simple (white background, mix of metallic gold and lilac swirls with a navy ribbon). Couple days before the wedding, I call to confirm and he can't find the order for a solid 5 minutes, but then finally confirm.
Wedding day: delivered and no issue. From a distance, the cake looks fine. Up close, it looks like I pipped on bumpy swirls in standard bold purple and yellow colors (no metallic gold), and the seams of the ribbon were frayed with loose threads.
Taste: Taste was fine - it's cake. I had 3 tiers, all white cake, 2 tiers with chocolate raspberry mousse filling and one layer with vanilla raspberry mousse filling (due to someone with a chocolate allergy). The mousse is supposed to be a whipped combination of their chocolate mousse and raspberry jam. Instead, each tier of the cake had both vanilla and chocolate, with a giant solid lump of raspberry in the middle, and almost no mixed mousse in the cake.
End result: It was cake and it tasted good and no one noticed. It was dark and no one could clearly see the design. Dealing with the Bakery was irritating and inefficient. Overall, it affected no one but me that spent hours looking through inspiration and constructing a design to have it botched at the end.
Thank you so much for the beautiful wedding cake!! It came out beautiful. Not only that, but it was delicious!! I highly recommend your bakery to everyone :)
beautiful cake, tasted wonderful. Bobby with
Bovellas was easy to work with and made my wedding cake perfect
My wedding cake was so delicious!!! They were great to work with and my cake looked exactly as I wanted it to!!! Thank you Bovellas!! Can’t wair to get it remade for our anniversary!
The team at Bovella's made the most amazing cake for our wedding. They listened to all of our requests and not only did it look fantastic, but it tasted fantastic as well! The cake looked stunning in photos and you could tell all the extra detail and effort they put into their work. Not to mention, after following their instructions for preserving and freezing the top tier, the cake actually tasted just as amazing on our first anniversary! Highly recommend - they are the best!
Our wedding cake was beautiful and super delicious! We’re looking forward to our 1 year anniversary to enjoy some more of it.
Bovella's Pastry Shoppe did a phenomenal job on our wedding cake and groom's cake!! Both were PERFECT! We wanted a naked cake decorated with flowers and a Dallas Cowboy Groom's cake! It was a tall order to fill and they met the mark. Their staff is wonderful! We will definitely recommend them in the future!
Our cake was beautiful for our wedding on August 12, 2017. And it tasted delicious! Bovella's is professional, helpful, and great bakers!
Beautiful and delicious cake. We had a great consultation and were so happy with our wedding cake.
Our wedding venue uses this bakery for their cakes, so we were a bit worried about not choosing a bakery on our own but figured it was one less thing to worry about and we just went with it and we are SO GLAD that we did! Our cake tasting was fantastic, professional, and while everything tasted perfect we made a clear choice with a white cake, with lemon filling and vanilla custard. We chose a fondant cake with blush ruffles on the bottom layer, quilted on one layer with pearls and the top layer plain. I could not have imagined how wonderful it would turn out. The cake was perfect, absolutely stunning and it tasted FANTASTIC! I have always heard how fondant can taste funny and mess up a cake but it was necessary for the design we wanted but we had no issues. Fondant and all, it was so delicious! Would recommend this bakery 100%.
Our wedding venue works closely with Bovella's so we used them for our cake. The tasting was fun and very laid back. The decorator was open to our design ideas and the finished product was beautiful and delicious! Definitely recommend them.
“My wife and I are foodies and when it came to the cake, we knew that it couldn’t be plain. We looked at various bakeries in NYC but none were remotely in the price range that we had budgeted for – that’s when friends of ours recommended we consider Bovella’s in Westfield, NJ…and we are glad that they did. When we met Bobby for the tasting, he walked us through the process and all the decisions we’d need to make (the “icing on the cake” was that he whipped up homemade fudge frosting for us to try!). Fast forward to the day of our wedding - the delivery went smoothly and needless to say, the cake was a hit. A big thank you to Bobby and the team at Bovella’s!”
Best Wedding cake we have ever had. You guys are wonderful. All of our guests raved about the cake and it was beautiful.
Cake was beautiful and was delicious every single layer was so flavorful. Thanks, MOB
Bovella's Pastry Shoppe did an amazing job with our wedding cake. Not only was it stunning, but it was delicious as well! During our private tasting they supplied us with a variety of options - all delicious. They helped us in selecting the best combination, and picking out a beautiful design. The cake was amazing, and we couldn't be happier with Bovella's! We would recommend them 100%, and give them 5/5 stars!
Cake was amazing! Bobby did exactly what we wanted, an Alice in wonderland cake, and it was delicious
Our wedding cake on February 6, 2016 was the best cake either of us have ever had. It was elegant, tasty, and beautifully decorated. I can't say enough about how appreciative we are of Bovella's and their amazing work. Thank you so much for creating that masterpiece! Chocolate cake, peanut butter and fudge filling, peanut butter cookie crumble and butter cream frosting. I'm drooling! You are the BEST!
Bovellas did exactly what we asked for our cake!! Even though it wasn't an option given to us at the tasting. Funfetti with lemon filling and vanilla icing. AMAZING.
Bovella's has made my cake for every event since my christening, so I knew they'd be making my wedding cake too. They never disappoint. It was an Italian rum cake with extra rum, decorated traditionally all in white as I wanted (they can do trendy too), with our own Royal Doulton figurine on top. We didn't save the top layer (who wants stale frozen cake?) - instead Bovella's promised us a free small cake on the house on our first anniversary! We also ordered trays of Italian cookies to put on every table, so that our guests would have something to nibble during the hours between entree and cake.
We used Bovella's because that is who Clarks Landing uses for their cakes. Everyone at Bovella's was so nice. We went there for the cake tasting and it was so hard to choose because everything was so delicious! We picked our flavors and showed them a picture of the cake we wanted. The cake came out beautiful and it was delicious!
The most Amazing Wedding Cake! Moist, delicious and oh so Special... Even when things didn't go as well as we planned, Ralph came to the rescue and made our wedding cake spectacular. He was attentive, responsive and able to meet our needs at the face of adversity. Ultimately, we were grateful, satisfied and did not have to compromise on our Wedding cake dreams. If you are looking for something as beautiful as it is scrumptious, this is your wedding cake / pastry destination. Thank you and Besos, Tiny
Our wedding cake was divine and looked adorable. We worked with Bobby, and he made the tasting so much fun. And oh my goodness there was so much cake and frosting and filling to try! The whole process was a breeze--Bovella's has a contract with our venue (The Grand Summit).
Our cake from Bovella's was included with our reception package with The Berkeley Plaza. I am so very happy it was. Even though I grew up in Union, I had never heard of Bovella's before. We went there one night to check it out and as soon as I walked in I knew this place was heaven. Growing up Italian, the amazing smells of the cookies and cakes made me feel like a little kid. We did a tasting with Bobby, who was our cake baker and decorated and he is just such a sweet man and so incredibly talented. Our cake was not only delicious but so beautiful. And Bobby did everything he could to make sure it was exactly what I wanted. He even texted me the day before the wedding (after asking if I would be okay with that, which I really appreciated) to make sure that he the right idea of what I wanted my cake to look like and confirm he had all of the items I dropped off (ribbon, pearl brooch, etc). Also, on top of the cake, they provided pastries for the table at the reception and every single one of them were amazing and soooooo delicious. Amazing old school family bakery. I definitely recommend.
Never before had choosing a cake for a wedding been so simple and so satisfying! Bouvella was the perfect choice. My parents had tried their cakes before and liked them - light, airy, perfect for a summer wedding.
Ralph graciously arranged two tastings- one for my family and another one for me (when I was visiting from west coast). Hard to choose among the many delicious and creative flavors... Ultimately went with Ralph's seasoned suggestions and did a red velvet layer, vanilla w fruit preserves and chocolate with hazelnut layer.
Day of the wedding cake looked stunning and was beautifully decorated. By the way, priced cannot be beat- this was the most reasonable rate in north central Nj.
Our cake was included with our reception. We were skeptical at first because we had never heard of the bakery (it is located about 2 hours away from the reception vendor). We drove to the bakery to do the cake tasting and we were not disappointed. The bakery itself is lovely and enticing. I would recommend going to a cake tasting just to see the bakery and town. We had a good time. The staff was very nice and very accommodating and they designed the cake very close to what I wanted....I was pretty particular and had brought in a few pictures. The cake itself was delicious and we had loads of compliments...many frequent wedding go-ers said it was the best cake they've had. We had vanilla cake with chocolate buttercream and raspberry filling with vanilla buttercream icing. Simply amazing....not too sweet, just perfect.
Our reception venue, Clark's Landing Yacht Club in Delran, includes a wedding cake from Bovella's as part of the overall reception package. My husband and I thoroughly enjoyed taking a trip out to Bovella's to sample all of the cake and filling options. We sat with Bovella's wedding cake baker and he explained to us the entire process. He allowed us to design our own cake, including the exterior, colors, cake flavors and filling. The entire process was so easy and enjoyable. Bovella's delivered our cake the day of our wedding and handled all set up. Bovella's also provided two additional small cakes for my husband and I to take home the night of our wedding: a small cake for the two of us to eat immediately following the reception (night-of, but we ended up enjoying it the night between our reception and honeymoon) and a small Bride & Groom cake to freeze for our anniversary. The cake tasted amazing and everyone raved about it!
I have a severe dairy allergy and had a hard time finding a cake! Bovellas was my savior! The cake looked beautiful and tasted amazing!
Bovella did a fabulous job on our wedding cake! They spent time to sit down with us to design a custom wedding cake. They did such a great job of making our design into a reality. The cake was beautiful and absolutely delicious! It was the best wedding cake I ever tasted!
All around great experience. Better than expected. Would recommend!
Our cake was included in the package with our vendor, Clarks Landing in Delran, NJ. We moved to California a few months before the wedding and had to plan the rest of our logistics three hours away in another time zone. Because they're up in Westfield, and our venue and home base in NJ was down in South Jersey, it was easy to forget about all the cake logistics. However, Ralph at Bovella's was extremely understanding and accommodating - they sent a tasting plate down to the venue one weekend when we were back in NJ, which was much closer to us than the bakery. They took our (east coast) late night calls when we forgot about the time difference, and checked with us multiple times to make sure everything was perfect. We sent over several different pictures of cakes that we liked, and what we liked about them, and trusted the rest to Bovella's. With all the last minute details we had to take care of, everything else about the cake sort of slipped our mind once we got back to NJ. When we saw the cake on our wedding day, it was more beautiful than we could have even imagined. It had three different flavored fillings, and everyone was raving about how delicious it was. Bovella's was absolutely amazing. Here is a photo of the gorgeous cake they made for us: https://flic.kr/p/pB6TGD
Our cake was included in our wedding package through The Westwood, and was provided by Bovella's. At the tasting we were rovided with a plate containing each type of filling and frosting. Some were an extra cost from what is built into the package. We went with chocolate cake, white butter cream and chocolate fudge, an extra charge. In terms of decoration, we had white fondant, an extra charge, 3 round tiers with blue ribbon at the bottom of each tier, and piped silver icing double hearts throughout and silver beads underneath each ribbon. It was absolutely beautiful, coordinated with our colors perfectly, and most important, was delicious!
Clarks Landing Yacht Club in Delran, NJ sent us to Bovella's and I was very pleased to get exactly the cake I wanted based on a picture. We also had a delicious cake tasting - so many flavors! I only wish I could have taken home the leftovers from the wedding!
The cake was absolutely beautiful minus the wrong color, but Ralph promised to compensate us on our next order. The flavor was amazingly delish!!! Thanks for a spectacular job....everyone love the cake and taste! Highly recommend them....
While the wedding cake was included in our venue package, we wanted a specific design (theme) and flavor. We met with Ralph, explained what we’d like, and he and the entire staff not only met our vision – but went beyond!! Folks raved how nice the cake looked!!
Our cake was as delicious as it was beautiful! Bobby was fun to meet and work with, and the cake was perfect!
Our wedding was at Clarks Landing in Point Pleasant, NJ and Bovella's did a fabulous job with the cake at our wedding! It was beautiful and exactly what I asked for! Bobby was terrific to work with. He made the cake selection process easy and fun!
My cake was simply gorgeous. it was white and royal blue to match my dress, and they had made it exactly the way I showed from a picture. I had chocolate, lemon, and cheesecake on different tiers and each tasted great
Bovella's created the most beautiful, delicious wedding cake!! I was thrilled that they were able to design exactly what I had been looking for for my wedding. All I did was give them a picture, and they made it happen. Our wedding cake was vanilla with cream cheese, raspberry and cannoli filling. YUM!! We all really enjoyed it! I'd highly recommend the bakery for any other needs as well. They have delicious pies and cookies too!
As our cake was contracted through our caterer, we were skeptical of how good it would actually be. However when we did our tasting at Bovella's, we were absolutely blown away. All cakes are made from scratch, using natural fresh ingredients which is apparent in the taste. There were many excellent flavors to mix and match, we had quite the time deciding! We chose to do a chocolate and vanilla cake with vanilla buttercream and cream cheese filling. Out of all the food we had that night, people are still raving about how excellent the cake was! It was so good that we had no leftovers out of the three tiered cake. I'm definitely ordering a replica for our anniversary as my husband and I only had a small piece! Thanks to Ralph and the team at Bovella's for such an excellent cake!
Many of our guests loved the cake. We were given options as to how to decorate the cake and I had to purchase the rhinestone ribbon to give it extra glamour. I gave the initial requested amount and then was told more ribbon was needed so I supplied twice as much as was needed just in case. Of course, they kept the additional unused ribbon even though I requested that it be returned to me afterwards. I specifically wrote this message as well on all the packaging and ziplock bags as well. The Westwood gave them an additional order cancelling our original cake order so in the end we received the wrong cake. It was fresh and beautiful, but just not what we ordered. My husband does not eat strawberry and I don't eat banana. However, we got a cake of strawberry and banana.
They really out did themselves. Everyone loved the cake, The baker understood my vision and did it perfectly! The cost of the cake was included in my package at the Berkeley Plaza.
Bovellas is the bakery (optionally) contracted with our venue and we are glad we used them. They were willing to schedule a weekend tasting (which they normally don't do) and were able to make a cake identical to the picture we had sent them. Oue cake was DELICIOUS!
Best tasting Wedding cake I had so many happy guests!
The cake was beautiful and delicious. The service was beyond great. Bovella's was so helpful and easy to work with
Our wedding cake was so delicious. It was light,fluffy, and not too sweet. No wonder there weren't any left overs.
Contact
101 East Broad Street, Westfield, NJ
Bovella's Pastry Shoppe