We hired Maria to bake cupcakes for our wedding this past weekend, and I am SO happy I did!!
COMMUNICATION: 5/5. Maria always responded promptly via email or phone and was very helpful, never forgetting to address any of my questions. She wa...s happy to look at my Pinterest board and talk about what I wanted the cupcakes to look like.
TASTING: 5/5. She baked a dozen cupcakes for $30, which was refunded to me after I booked her for the wedding. She delivered them to me, so I was able to meet her and ask a few questions and talk about my vision for what they would look like. We got to try 3 flavors - we chose ciocolatta (amazing), j'adore raspberry (also very yummy), and salted caramel (turned out not to be my thing, though it was well-made). She did tactfully leave before we tried the cupcakes, as she acknowledged that it's easier to make an honest assessment without her hovering :)
THE LOOK: 5/5. I can't wait to get back pictures from my photographer - I'll attach them to my Yelp review as soon as I do! She piped on the frosting in a rose swirl like I had asked for. She added complimentary sugar pearls and flowers, which were really pretty. Maria doesn't like to dye the frosting since that can affect the flavor (and her frosting is really light, delicate, and delicious), so I purchased cupcake wrappers from Amazon and had them shipped to her to complete the look. I also rented a beautiful white cupcake tower from her that her husband had built, and the cupcakes looked gorgeous on it. My florist put some flowers on top and in between the cupcakes, and I couldn't be happier with how it looked. In retrospect, I'm a little sad that I didn't get a spotlight for the cake table, but if that's one of my biggest wedding regrets, I'm pretty lucky!
THE FINAL FLAVOR: 4.5/5. Lots of rave reviews! My fiance - oops, husband!! - is lactose-intolerant, so Maria was kind enough to make one dozen reduced-dairy ciocolatta cupcakes for us to eat (the Nutella still had a bit of lactose). It was so nice of her to make that special batch for us. I liked the cake but didn't like the flavor of the frosting as much. I hate to ding 0.5 for that because it's so tricky and I'm really grateful that she did this for us. The regular ciocolatta and j'adore raspberry were still excellent, but I discovered that my new favorite was banana foster - we had ordered it on a whim since we didn't try it during the tasting, and I am SO glad we did! In fact, I have now eaten 3 of them :X I am now sitting here sad and trying to figure out how to eat Maria's cupcakes again because she doesn't have a store where I can buy individual cupcakes :(
I am SO grateful for her and have zero regrets about having Maria be part of our wedding!