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ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS In order for you to see the quality of our work, we’ve kept the text on this site to a minimum, displaying as many pictures as possible. We’re also sure you’ll want to know that we can string a sentence or two together so, as we love to chat - we thought we’d reserve our ramblings for this special section. Hopefully it will answer a lot of your questions, but we’d like you to call us if you have any more. We want to show you that to us, superb service and incredible produce is paramount. It’s so important to us that you are happy, so we’re laying our cards on the table and telling you everything we think you’ll want to know about our company. Some of the information will surprise you, some will reassure you, but it’s all here to help you make the right decision - after all, we want you to choose us. At House of sugar we try and give you the most enjoyable, luxurious experience you will ever have; 5 star service - with absolutely none of the pretence. We’d love to meet you. If we haven’t already, we want to impress you - that’s our job. Please, ‘be our guest’, all brides and grooms are invited to join us for a personal consultation where we can have an informal chat. We’ll show you the extensive range of exclusive designs in our digital private portfolio and listen to your ideas and dreams. A gift box of gorgeous freshly baked cake samples is yours to take away and enjoy. We always provide you with samples of cakes freshly baked that day, as frozen cake goes against everything we believe in. Because of this, some flavours may be limited. We will try and give you as many flavours as possible and boxes usually always contain slices of the three most popular cakes; Belgian chocolate truffle, Madagascan vanilla & raspberry sponge and traditional fruit cake, but if you have a slightly more adventurous flavour in mind we can create a sample of it for you on a bespoke basis, for a small charge. Please see our ‘The perfect cake’ page on the cakes section For more elaborate weddings and parties or, if planning to order one of our famous dessert tower centrepieces, you may wish to take advantage of our diamond consultation service where a designer comes to your home and lavishes you with bespoke, freshly created samples and desserts of your pre-specification. Get the bubbly out, get the girls round and make a party of it! This service is invaluable when planning larger events where show-stopping desserts or more than one style or cake flavour is required. Please call us at the studio for details and prices. A truly stunning cake is the result of a great collaboration between client and designer. Don’t worry if you’re finding it hard to pin-down exactly how you want your cake to look – this is perfectly normal. It’s up to us to help you develop your ideas and make sure the finished creation fits your event and theme perfectly. Armed with the knowledge we have gained from you at your consultation, along with our experience and skills we will create a cake that has exactly the right balance of style, taste, personality and of course, the all important - wow-factor.
You guessed it - we only use the very best ingredients in our cakes, non-GM and organic wherever possible. Finest flours, natural cane sugar, local creamery butter and farm-fresh free range eggs - along with your choice of natural flavouring, all go towards making our cakes the most delectable and delicious you will ever taste. When filling our cakes we like to use fruits that are in season wherever possible and during the autumn months, all vanilla sponge cakes will be filled with our homemade Raspberry, Blackberry, or Plum jams & reductions, made from fruit and berries grown in our gardens that lie behind the studio.
Believe it or not, your cake will be baked freshly on your wedding day in a process that we believe is unique to our company. We reverse the design and creation process, working backwards hour by hour, until we reach the desired time to commence creation to achieve ultimate freshness. For example; a cake ordered to be cut at 3pm would be baked around 1am and decorated throughout the early hours, meaning when you take your first bite, it’s as absolutely fresh as a cake can possibly be. Fruitcakes and elaborate sculptures & decorations are made in advance, but sponge, Madeira and chocolate cakes will be made the very day you tie the knot. You simply couldn’t get a fresher cake.
Every cake is freshly baked within our design studio by the same designer who decorates and delivers it! It may surprise you to know that some ‘bakers’ and ‘designers’ buy their cakes in from mass-producing factories and simply decorate them. We can only imagine the poor quality, taste and freshness of bulk production or frozen cakes. We would love your custom, but if you aren’t ordering from us, we would still advise you to ask your designer; exactly where your cake is coming from and just how fresh it is - we wouldn’t wish a bad quality cake on anyone. Chemicals, oils, stabilisers and additives used to keep factory cakes ‘fresh’, simply cannot compete with high-quality, fresh ingredients baked lovingly in small batches by skilled craftspeople. Asking ‘how much is a cake?’ - is a little like the age-old question; ‘how long is a piece of string?’ but the following guidelines should be of help when pricing for your occasion. Because every cake we make is completely individual – we famously never make the same cake twice – every price varies. Something that sets us apart from other companies is our ‘all inclusive’ pricing plan. We have a standard ‘generous portion’ price and included in this is everything! Each portion price includes moderate decoration, filling, cake boards, pillars, ribbons, boxes, delivery (within Edinburgh) and set-up. We price our cakes this way in order to make planning and budgeting for your event simple and convenient. Prices for some of our ranges are below, but as usual, please contact us for a specific quote for your individual creation. When contacting us by e-mail, please specify how many people you wish the cake to feed or, what size in inches you would like the cake to be.
For various reasons some of our exclusive ranges are subject to minimum order sizes. Wedding cakes are subject to a minimum order of 80 portions. Regardless of how many guests are attending your wedding, whether it’s 20 or 200, we advise a minimum cake size of 80 portions, this ensures that the cake will be of an adequate size and proportion and will not look small amidst the wedding paraphernalia. A cake consisting of anything less than 80 portions can look a little on the stingy side. Because of the labour-intensive nature of handcrafted, highly decorated individual cakes, we have set a minimum order size of 50 cakes. If you have less than 50 guests attending your wedding, we can supply gift boxes for the extra cakes to be taken home in. Many brides like to give the boxed cakes away as favours to guests.
Because presentation is everything, we offer luxury gift packaging as standard. Our stunning range of gift boxes can be seen over various pages on this online portfolio, but our luxury signature gift boxes come in three gorgeous styles. Anthracite, cerise or clear acetate boxes are dressed with our stunning black satin HOUSE OF SUGAR ribbons, foils and tissues. Please contact us if you would like an alternative colour scheme; we can match any theme perfectly.
We’ll be with you ‘til the end! (But we promise to leave before the honeymoon.) As part of our first-class service we insist on delivering and setting up our cakes at your venue. We’ve heard nightmare stories of lesser companies who “drop-off” the cakes a day or two before the event and leave un-qualified venue staff to figure out how to display them, as you can imagine, this throws up so many possible nightmare scenarios about both their quality, freshness and the amount of care and pride the company takes. So much could go wrong if the cake isn’t looked after by the people who care about it as much as you do. - Us! You’ll be looking stunning at your event and so will your cake. The designer who created it, along with a qualified technician and assistant will personally deliver and set-up your cake so it looks absolutely as it was intended to. We simply will not compromise on our quality and finish. Delivery in Edinburgh is free with our compliments, but please just ask us for a quote for delivery to your area when you make your initial enquiry.
We are delighted to support several charities, all of which are personal to House of Sugar team members for one reason or another. If you are looking for prizes for auction or otherwise, please do feel free to contact us with details. All approaches will be reviewed thoroughly, but please understand, although high-end, we are a small bespoke company and we have to set strict charity limits at the beginning of each financial year. We are not a bakery and do not ‘stock’ cakes that can be given as prizes. Each House of Sugar creation is bespoke and made to impeccable standards by our talented designers over long, labour intensive periods. |
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