The Cake Bake Shop by Gwendolyn Rogers, Carmel City Center

Great atmosphere, great food, great service...we had a wonderful time taking in all the sites. Check out the pictures. Information from the website. Hundreds of Swarovski crystals glisten on so many chandeliers, including a massive shower of light over the bar, which is separated from the dining area by a gold-sequined rope. Behind grand French doors, the bakery area serves several different flavors of Cake Bake's towering, signature layer cakes, including gluten-free options, plus pies, macarons, and other desserts

The Cake Bake Shop had been suggested to me by several friends and I was excited to try them out. I will likely be a repeat customer. However, I am not likely to be a regular for several reasons. My 360 evaluation below. The very good: the atmosphere is delightful. The outside and inside of the store are clean and bright while still being warm and inviting. The constumes the staff wear are pretty, immaculate and enhance the environment. I totally see from a visual perspective why this shop is opening a branch in Disney. It feels more like an experience and less like retail. Also there is staff to greet you and ample service staff in the shop to give eaxh customer 1 on 1 attention. Also good: the lemon, raspbery and magic bars are some of the best I have had. They are beautiful, the pacagung is lovely, and the taste, quality and size are what you want them to be at that price point. Honorable mention to the macarons. While a bit high in price for the size of the cookie they are super yummy and again lovely visually. The not great: I live in Kokom and our local cake shop J Edwards has both a substanially better selection, and comparably as delicious and in some cases more delicious set of Gluten Free offferings. I hink the store is beautiful and every item was beautiful and came in lovely packaging...but not worth it for me at twice the price or higher for less delicious. That said, all their GF stuff was more beautifully presented and packaged than our local place. Also, while the boxes and bags were beautiful the care in packaging was not as good as my local shop. Some of my items were squished, or otherwise the worse for ware in transit which was simply a 40 minute car ride...no bumpy back roads or anything. Thwt strikes me as a customer service oversight. Also the side seam on the paper bags for bakery items splits super easy making the bags pretty but not very functional. The boxes were sturdy though. Also not great: I asked to buy an Italian cream soda while I was browsing. They looked like they did not know what this was. So I said, it is just soda or sparkeling water with flavor syrup and a splash of cream. They said they could not do this. Literally on the other side of the wall was a bar area and behind the bakery counter an espresso maker and a bunch of flavor syrups. They had everything on hand to accomodate my request but refused. They were polite but again when paying a premium one does anticipate premium and accomodating service. Also not great: out of my large order two items were missing. When I called, they took my transaction info checked it. After checking the order info they offered an apology agreed to refund the price of the misssing items. I did mention that I live about 40 minutes away. There was no offer to make up for their error past a refund for items not included. No can we mail you the missing irems can we comp you on your next visit...nothing. This rubbed me the wrong way...perhaps this is standard, but I did not like this way of doing business. When I fidt got there I expressed interest in buying a whole cake. Despite numerous whole cakes being abailablein the display they said that I had to order 48 hours in advance. But Iwas informed I could buy up to 5 slicea of each cake at the higher slice rate. I was not impressed. In conclusion...if you want an experience this is a great place to dine in. If you want amazing bars eat in or take out, also highly reccomend. If you are hosting an in home event and the beauty of the cake is of primary importance. More than that, if you are willing to pay a premium just for prettty. I mean beautiful i ternal layering and the whole nine, this is the place to buy. If you want a tasty cake to treat you family, your local, less swaky option is likely to taste just as good in the whole cake department. Although to be fair I have not tried all their cakes...there may be exceptional highlights in there. But the black and white GF cake was only ok tasting.