Cake Colours
Any colour, which is what every bakery says. Here is the useful version: of the 97 cakes photographed and tagged in this kitchen, white or cream appears on 78, pink on 31, gold on 25, black on 20 and blue on 16.
Colour costs nothing on a buttercream finish. What it can cost you is taste, if the shade is deep enough — which is the part of this worth reading before you choose.
What does a coloured cake cost?
| Item | Price |
|---|---|
Any colour on a buttercream finish A coloured smooth finish costs the same as a plain one any size | Included |
6" cake in your colour The colour is part of the finish, not an extra 8–12 portions | £100 |
8" cake in your colour The colour is part of the finish, not an extra 14–18 portions | £130 |
The colour is part of the finish. The designs page prices the finishes themselves, from a smooth coat at nothing to a hand-painted design, and the price page has every size.
Tell us the colour
We reply within 24 hours with a price. No deposit is taken until you are happy with the quote.
Not ready to send it? What follows answers most of what people ask first.
How long it takes
7–10 days for a simple design, at least 14 for two tiers.
Sooner is sometimes possible: a rush adds 50% when the notice is under 7 days, if the diary is clear.
In a hurry? Bento cakes take 3–5 days.
Delivery
From £30, quoted by distance from RG12 0UY.
Collection from Bracknell is free — see the areas we cover.
Paying
50% deposit to hold your date; orders under £50 are paid in full.
Balance 3 hours before collection, or cash on the day.
The deposit is non-refundable but transferable with 4 days' notice — full terms.
Which colours have actually come out of this kitchen?
All of these, in the numbers below. The count is from the October tagging, which recorded up to three colours on each photograph, so a cream cake with gold leaf and a pink flower appears under all three — the totals add to more than 97 on purpose. What the table is for is the thing a list of swatches cannot tell you: which colours this kitchen works in every week and which are a genuine special request.
| Colour | On | Worth knowing |
|---|---|---|
| White and cream | 78 of 97 | The default, and the finish most wedding cakes want |
| Pink | 31 of 97 | Blush to fuchsia — the widest range of any colour asked for |
| Gold | 25 of 97 | Edible leaf or sparkle rather than a mixed colour |
| Red | 25 of 97 | Needs the most colour of any shade, and the sponge can carry it instead |
| Black | 20 of 97 | Easier in fondant than in buttercream, for a reason worth reading |
| Green | 19 of 97 | Sage and olive read as grown-up; lime reads as a party |
| Yellow | 16 of 97 | Butter yellow is the quietest of the brights |
| Blue | 16 of 97 | Yellow buttercream plus blue makes green — the one colour that fights back |
| Purple | 5 of 97 | Asked for least, and the hardest to match from a photograph |
Every one of those cakes is in the gallery, so the counts are checkable rather than a claim.
Why can a deep colour taste of something?
Because of how much of it there has to be. Buttercream is pale yellow to start with, so getting to a true black, a navy or a deep red means working in a great deal of colouring paste — and at that dose it is no longer flavourless. The result is a faint bitterness, unmistakable in black and noticeable in the other two, and it is the commonest complaint about a dramatic cake that looked perfect in the photograph.
There are three honest ways round it. Cover the cake in fondant, which takes colour at a fraction of the dose because it is a skin rather than the icing — that is the usual answer for black. Use a chocolate buttercream as the base, which starts dark and needs far less help. Or put the drama somewhere else: a pale cake with a black fondant ribbon or gold leaf reads as bold without any of it being in the cream. Fondant cakes and buttercream cakes set out that choice properly.
How is a colour matched?
From an object if you have one, and from a photograph if you do not. A ribbon, a swatch, an invitation or a flower can be held against the cream and matched closely, because both are in the same light. A photograph cannot be matched to in that sense — it can only be matched to the way that photograph looks on a screen, and the same picture is warmer on one phone than another and different again in print.
So the practical instruction is: send the photograph for the mood and bring the object for the match. If the cake has to sit beside bridesmaids in a particular shade, post a piece of the fabric. And say which part matters — the exact shade, or that it reads as the same colour from across a room, which are two different jobs. We don't replicate exact designs; we take inspiration and create something unique.
The two colours asked for most by name have pages of their own: pink cakes and black and gold.
What else do people ask?
Allergies? Our kitchen handles all 14 of the allergens UK law requires us to declare, so nothing we bake is free from any of them. What is in each cake, and our hygiene rating.