Wedding Cake Help - Maui

Heather-AZ

We are getting married in Maui in November.  I have done pretty good so far with making our decisions but the cake is one I need some help with.

Who did you use?  Our planner recommends Maui Wedding Cakes or Cravings Bakery.  Anyone have any experience with either?  I saw on someone's post that JoAnn was willing to mail a sample. Did anyone do this?

I need help on flavors too....no clue.  Has anyone tried the mango? Any other recommendations???

Thanks!

kaesha

JoAnn is pretty popular on the board!

My favourite flavour is lilikoi (passionfruit). YUM.

fabutan

I've read a few good reviews about Maui Wedding Cakes.  Yes, I think knottie Mauidandy had samples mailed to her by JoAnn, so you might want to check out her bio.

We had mango shortcake for one layer and strawberry shortcake for the other.  We stuck with fruity fillings, since we preferred something lighter.

I've actually heard "mixed" reviews about lilikoi...ppl tend to love it or hate it.  It's kind of sour and plays with your tastebuds.  Our coordinator said that to some (including herself), it can actually "taste like feet"!  Not sure about that (because I don't know what feet taste like, LOL!).  I personally liked lilikoi, but we wanted something sweeter with bits of fruit for our wedding cake.

kaesha

That's so funny Fabutan! We had a totally similar experience except with mango! We decided not to go with it because so many of our friends claim it "tastes like turpentine". When I heard that, I was totally confused. One of my friends claims it's a genetic thing... but I don't know enough to say whether she's right or just making stuff up.

I think ultimately you can't please an entire group with just one flavour. People are just too damn picky! We ended up doing both the lilikoi mousse and a chocolate macadamia nut mousse as our two flavours. The lilikoi was the favourite, hands down, but I'm glad that people had some choice.

AKWinterBride

We are using Maui Cakes, I haven't tried them yet but I can tell you more in a few weeks!  We are having a 3 layer cake, bottom will have lilikoi, middle raspberry, and top just vanilla custard. 

ninja500

 Maui Wedding Cakes  Maui Wedding Cakes  Maui Wedding Cakes  Maui Wedding Cakes

My coordinator hired them to make our cake and it was the BEST CAKE I have EVER had in my life!!!!  Amazing!!!  It was the seashell design with marble cake and chocolate raspberry filling. 

Beth

Heather-AZ

Thank you all for your posts, I really appreciate the help!!!

Ready2wed11

I am using Cakes by Joann. And honestly she's not very attentive. I have emailed her a few times and each time she has taken a while to get back to me. However, we are still sticking with her. I just hope she steps it up a bit as the date gets closer. And ya she does send samples too. We are ordering them in a few weeks. Lilikoi is my absolute favorite too!

Tanq&Tonic

I also used Cakes by Joann (she was the vendor that our coordinator picked).  If you have the option to use anyone else, I would do so.  Three reasons for this:

1) She was really unresponsive throughout the whole process.  Even our coordinator had trouble getting a response in a reasonable time in the weeks before our wedding.  To the point that our coordinator asked if I wanted to switch cake vendors.

2) The cake at the wedding did not taste good - nothing like the tasting.  We had 3 flavors: 2 were mediocre and 1 was terrible.  One layer was fresh strawberry with cream -- I had to pick through the cream in my entire slice and found only 1 tiny speck of fruit.

3) The cake did not look good.  The fondant work was sloppy (and VERY thick) and it  didn't match the design I asked for.  It wasn't a catastrophe, but it bothered me that it was crooked with indented corners -- make the cake look far cheaper than we paid for it.

Not a great photo, but you can kind of see how crooked it is...
http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5188/5640796744_a0e655614c.jpg

maui2011

We're going with Cake Bakery...recommended by my WC.  We are doing a simple 6"cake and cupcakes. HTH! J. :-)

carrieoz_76

We ordered samples from JoAnn and were very glad we did so.  I ended up disliking some of the flavors I thought I'd like (lilikoi and mango - although I like them in other things), and we found a flavor we could both agree on.  Plus it's fun to get to try out cake samples even when you're having a DW.

Ready2wed11

Tanq, 

That's garbage! I can totally tell it's crooked! Wow, I'm definately going to change cake vendors. Hope someone is still avaliable for 11-11. Thanks for the tip.

TashaK24

We used Maui Wedding cakes and it was delicious and gorgeous!!
(ignore the frosting smudge, that would be my nephew getting to the cake before anyone else :P  He's lucky he's cute!)

dianalynm

This is a little late, but thank you all for the input. It looks like JoAnn might be out for us, but I may still want to do a tasting (if she ever gets back to us from now until we go to Maui--which is in 4 weeks!). Anyone ever used Cake Fanatics? Seems like she's new, but I want to sched a cake tasting with her, too. Cravings Bakery was suggested by my WC as the best one, though...