I have a cake that I'm doing for this weekend. She wants it to serve about 30/35 people.

It's going to be a 2 tiered cake and she wanted to use some fairy dolls ( I'm thinking they are the Disney Fairies, so the cake will be designed around the dolls... )

She has her husband drop of the doll and it's a Off Brand Tink, it's hair is horrible and she has no shoes. It does look like it's taken out of the kids toy chest, what am I going to do now?

Well, she wants me to make these MULTI ETHNIC fairies to go around the cake, so that's going to mean a lot of painted details on the dolls and she wants a yellow butter cake batter tinted pink.

I've worked out a way to make a doll stand to hold the doll up and off the cake, but my worries is that she called to have the cake delivered, I charged her for the delivery (she hasn't paid it yet) and I told her to pay the entrance fee or the delivery guy is not going to be able to get into the park to deliver the cake.

So, now she's called me telling me that she has spent "STUPID MONEY" on this party because she needs to outdo the cake, but the cake is going to look so tacky with that cheap doll on top. She's also requested that I put some Pirate things in the design for the boys and I"m like, Wha??

How am I going to work THAT in, not like I have time to run across town to get a treasure chest chocolate mold ( I thought I could do that and have some fondant coins coming out and some fairies around the chest.

I mean I can do the best I can, but you can't put make up on a "pig" and call it a "Super Model".

I'm not looking forwad to making this. I am actually scared now that this nice lady is going to turn on me big time!

Hmm.. firstly, I wish you luck with this cake. My gut instinct says this has problems written all over it. I had a customer like this recently. Someone who doesnt have any idea what they have in mind. They want us to be the masterminds behind the one thing they have in their head (in your case, this tacky fairy doll) and then all of a sudden they get this impulse to make the cake favorable to everyone including multi-ehtnicities and boys LOL.

What you might want to do in this case is politely tell her something like "I love your ideas. Very creative! I think the best way this cake will look wonderful is if we stick to this one doll you have brought me, and we do a theme surrounding it. Maybe you can get some pirate favors for the boys and we will just make this a 'fairy cake'". I've had to do that-- to trump the customers idea with what would be my idea of making a successful cake.

I mean, we are in a difficult business. We want to please our clients but we also want our cakes to be successful. I imagine if we all *always* went with our customer's suggestions, we would have formally-designed lime green and hot pink wedding cakes, cookies in the shapes of private parts, and black fondant with red trim much more often!

Duff once said something I thought was smart, can't remember the exact words but he basically said, "we take the customers ideas and come up with a solution that is feasible, will look good and be something we could do."

Soo.... after my long-winded post, I would basically guide the client with what you think should be attempted successfully and nothing more. When I do this, I am usually surprised with a happy client in the end who loves the design I came up with.

Good luck butterwench! I will be thinking about you!

If this doll is really AWFUL, how about you telling her that since it is " used", it is no longer FOOD SAFE....... The Dollar Store aways has little figurines.... I'll bet she could find something that would do the trick and it would only cost a dollar......

Oh my goodness! You mean you can't take Tink's Magic Fairy Dust and make a cake that has "Fairy Pirates" on it? LOL Sorry, I know you are seriously concerned, but, I couldn't resist.

I don't know what you are charging for this cake, but, since this lady hasn't paid yet.....I'd call her and as loriana said, try to "smooze" her to accept your idea. But, if she resists.....tell her you are going to have to raise the price. You have to cover your costs and she is changing the original design which calls for MORE work!

I'm not known for being diplomatic. Wish I were. But, then again, I don't do this for a living and that may be something you are considering. Sorry, I wasn't more help, but, I haven't had an entire pot of coffee this morning!

Beth

You should definitely take control and tell her what would look best. YOU are the cake artist and she hired you for your expertise! You need to SELL her your ideas.
My husband is in advertising and he tells his clients what would work best-that's why they hire him!

Hi,

Thank you all for responding, I'm still having a bad feeling over this.

She has already paid she paid me 150 dollars for the cake and gave me an extra 10 dollars which I applied to the delivery charge but there is still a balance.

It's only a 2 tiered cake for 30/35 people.

So, I guess today I'm going to spend the morning getting that treasure chest, since I need a cake board for this any way ( I need 2 larger cake drums so I can kill 2 birds with ones stone)

Well , she hasnt' sent me the balance on the delivery, so I guess I will call her later on today.

Sigh.

Well, I went all over town looking for a treasure chest chocolate mold, I figured that I would print out a treasure map, tuck it slightly under the cake and place the little chocolate treasure chest alongside the map and cake.

No dice, after 4 hours of looking in places I give up.

I went to Michaels and they had a foam pirate ship that I'm going to glue together and use instead of the chest ( so now the cake is not 100% edible, ugh!)

And I found some little Tink cake toppers that I also purchased because I really can't use that beat up doll, even if I sanitize it.

So with all this running around I was going to make the cake 3 tiers instead of 2 and quite larger to handle all the doo dads I'm suposed to use for this cake,

But, no way.

Going back to plan A

Wish me luck!

Oh and she's now informed me she's going to pick up the cake, so that's fine, I feel safer handing over a 2 tiered cake than a 3.

She's having it delivered so I've gone all out. Hope I remember to take the photo, let some cakes out of the shop because my camera wasn't in it's usual spot and I was also busy on the computer. lol

Wow, and I thought I was the only one who has had wacky requests that have sent me all over town. I've had a couple that had me buying margarita mix on the way home....Glad to know I am not the only one.

Well, good news, she loved her cake and it did look awesome! lol

Did you take a pic of it? Now that I've read the story I want to see this magic Pirate Fairy cake...

That's great news! I want to see a picture too.

me, too.

my pics are to large to upload, I've been trying!

Try resizing them to smaller than 1 MB. Do you have software to do this? If not, try gimp http://www.gimp.org/ It works great like Photoshop but it's free (open source)!!!

Can you re-size them? You can open them in Microsoft Paint and the click where it says Image and then Stretch/Skew and reduce it by 50% and that should shrink the file size more than enough..

If not, you can e-mail it to me and I'll shrink them for you. jeanne.kalman @ gmail.com.. (minus the spaces of course).

You can also go to www.shrinkpictures.com, it's free, easy and you just download the resized photo. No software to download or figure out. I use it all the time.

PICTURES!!!!!!PICTURES!!!!!!!!!!PICTURES!!!!!!!!PLEASE! You are so accomodating to your client. I do my best to please & love them all, but, honey there's a limit. And, it begins with your sanity staying in tact. I wish you luck, kind baker.

oh my goodness, now i's dying to see this cake! it was like a little mini soap opera and we must see the finale!

I use shrinkpictures.com, too. It is easy and free and nothing to download!
That's how I did my avatar. If I can do it, you can , too!!!!