This past weekend Scott & I entertained two more bakeries in an effort to nail down our wedding cake for October. Our first stop was the Emmaus Bakery, which ended up being a quaint family-owned business. The woman, Andrea, was very nice. Their buttercream icing was good, although it did leave me wondering what else was in it as it had some other flavor in it when compared to my mother’s. Their cake was kinda average but their prices were much more reasonable then the last two establishments we had visited the weekend prior.
After leaving Emmaus Scott & I wondered if it was even necessary to make our last stop of the day, Merry’s Cakes in Stroudsburg. They were having a tasting day where you picked up a box of ten cake combinations for $10. They were the only one to charge for a tasting and it was a whole other hour north for us to travel. We decided, why not?
Boy am I glad we made the trip! Merry’s Cakes has the most delicious cake by far that I had tasted of all four venues we had taste tested. Their setup was a little odd though in that we arrived to pick up our box, they didn’t have our name on the list, and then they expected us to just leave. I was a little put off by this since I had just driven over an hour to get there. But Scott & I poked around watching them make this adorable panda cake and they eventually told us we could stay and look at their books. They don’t have a large area for people to sit and loiter so I think this is one of the reasons they just expected you to pick up the box and bolt.
In speaking with the owner it seemed that Merry’s Cakes would be the lowest of the low when it came to all of the vendors we visited. Merry seemed really nice and didn’t even have a calendar up for October yet so she was definitely not being booked actively.
Scott had to get gas before our 1.5 hour trek south home and so I swiped a spoon at the gas station so we could dive in to the cake box. Omgz! The cake itself without any icing was moist and delicious. Before me sat nine (don’t know where our tenth sample went?) delicious cakes of varying flavors. I have to say, I liked all of them!
So all-in-all I think we’re done our cake hunt. I’m going to try and design it this week so that I can either talk to Merry’s Cakes about it or e-mail it to them for their perusal. I only have one reservation about the place: they have a huge disparity when it comes to their online reviews. About 70% of people say that this is the best place ever and that they’ve been in business for years and are so awesome, etc, etc. But the other 30% say the most awful things about how they were treated and their cake flavors were mixed up. This perplexes me but I do see how this could happen as even the taste testing box we received had some of the cakes iced with the wrong icing that was marked on the guide sheet we got. Hurumph. :-/