Hi All,
This is the first time I am writting on a forum and I am glad that I found this one. I received my first complaint this past weekend and I was devastated. I made a princess castle cake for one of my customers and they told me it was hard, that they couldn't cut it and it was like paste inside. I had two other cakes this same weekend and made the cakes at the same time and my other two cakes were a hit. I also had to cut and fill the cake with BC and it was not hard. The only think I can think of is that I left it too long in the refrigerator and it was cold or frozen. The lady was willing to show me the cake but she is outside of my area and I didn't want to travel to see it. She also said that the texture was better a couple hours later than when they tried to cut it and that's why I think it was frozen. They also demanded their money back. I was so bombed. I'm just getting started and it really rocked my confidence. My very first complaint.

a refrigerated cake can come up to room temp in about a half hour, a frozen cake, within a few hours. Unless the customer picked up the cake from you and ate it right away, I doubt it was frozen or even all that cold. Now if they got home and put it in their own fridge until right before it was served, then certainly, it would be hard. I would ask them if they put it in the fridge and not be so quick to throw money back at them. if that was the case and you want to give them something back, maybe offer a discount off their next order. I would explain that you had 2 other perfectly happy customers this past weekend too. Hope you work it all out.

Was the cake a butter recipe? If so, butter cakes will become quite hard when refrigerated. Did you tell her to refrigerate the cake? Depending on the size of the cake......and a castle cake can be quite large.....it's possible that the cake never came to room temp. at serving time. Especially since she said it was better later in the day.

It's a tough call, but I don't think I'd refund ALL the money. Try to get some more information about where she stored the cake before serving it.

and.... you have to remember that you can't please all of the people all of the time - so is the nature of the beast when your craft is offering a product intended to.

Swallow this tough pill, take the advice of the others here, ask the tough questions, get to the bottom of it so you can keep it from happening again. Even if the "it" means actually printing out a little flyer to hand to people with their cakes advising them on proper storage and serving techniques.

Don't be so hard on yourself. This will be one of many complaints so use it to thicken your skin a bit but not to put a dent in your confidence. At least you have a forum with hundreds of thousands of understanding bakers and decorators to turn to! You'll ALWAYS please us! hee hee hee

By all means, please do not give money back until you get the entire story. It seems odd to me they continued to eat the cake and of course are willing to let you see it when they are conveniently out of range.

I'm sure your cake was very good.
If it wasn't-I promise they would have chunked it instead of continuing to eat on it. If I were to bet, they probably ate every bite!

Just my 2 cents.