A wedding cake gets a tasting first and a deposit after, and this page is where that promise is written down in full.

Scope of these terms

These terms cover two things: any order you place with Oak & Ember Bakery, whether it started as a form on this site or a conversation at the counter, and your use of this website itself. They do not cover anything you buy somewhere else. If you walk in and buy a loaf off the shelf with cash, most of this page does not apply to you at all — read Counter purchases for the short version that does.

Placing an inquiry, showing up for a tasting appointment, or paying a deposit means you accept the terms on this page as they read on the date of that action. We date-stamp updates; see Changes to these terms.

Inquiry-only catalogue

Nothing on this site is a checkout. There is no cart, no online payment, and no button that charges a card. Every price basis shown on Custom Cakes and Bakery & Café — the $6.50 per serving on a wedding tier, the $68 base on a celebration cake, the $8.50 per loaf, all of it — is a basis for you to work out your own cost, not a binding quote. A binding price only exists once we have confirmed your guest count, tier count or delivery date directly with you, in writing or over the phone, and a quote we give verbally at that stage supersedes the basis published here.

Submitting the inquiry form on Contact, on the homepage, or on either service page does not create an order and does not reserve a date. It starts a conversation. An order exists once we have confirmed details back to you and, for custom cake work, once a deposit has been paid per the section below.

Booking a custom order

Every custom cake — wedding tier or celebration cake, fondant or buttercream — goes through the same sequence: inquiry, tasting appointment, deposit, date held. A date is not held on an inquiry alone, no matter how far out it is. We will not pencil in a wedding date off a phone call; the tasting has to happen and the deposit has to clear.

A tasting appointment is scheduled at the shop, in person, and is a paid appointment — it is not folded into the cake price as a freebie, and it is not optional for a wedding tier. Cookie and favor trays and standing wholesale pastry counts do not require a tasting; a phone conversation and a confirmed quantity is enough to book those.

Custom Pie & Tart orders need 48 hours' minimum notice. Wedding tiers need five days' minimum, covered in full on Custom Cakes along with the reasoning. Celebration cakes can sometimes be booked the same week — ask, and we will tell you honestly whether the bench has room that week, rather than promising and then scrambling.

What we refuse, and why

Outside custom cakes: fruit fillings on pies are in-season only, because a fruit that has to travel unripe to be available in January bakes into a filling that weeps and separates. Custard and cream fillings do not have that constraint and run year-round.

Deposit and cancellation

A deposit is agreed at the tasting appointment for wedding and celebration cake work and is what actually locks a date on the calendar — nothing before that point is a hold. The deposit amount is confirmed with you in writing at the tasting, alongside the balance due and when it is owed, because guest count and tier count change the total and we are not going to print a number here that does not match your cake.

Cancel inside five days of a wedding date, or 48 hours of a pie or tart order, and the deposit is not refunded. That window exists because ingredients are bought, dough is fermenting, and bench time on that date is already reserved and cannot be resold to another order on short notice. Cancel earlier than that window and we will discuss a partial refund based on what has already been committed — flour, butter, decorating supplies bought specifically for your order do not come back.

Move the date instead of cancelling and, workload allowing, we will apply the deposit to the new date at no extra charge, provided the new date is given to us with the same minimum notice as a first booking would need.

Warranty & guarantee

If something arrives wrong because of us

If a cake or tray leaves the shop damaged, wrong-flavored against your confirmed order, or otherwise defective due to an error on our side — not damage from transport after it left our hands, not a last-minute flavor change you decided against after pickup — we will remake it. Depending on timing before the event, that means a same-day repair at the shop, a replacement tier, or a partial refund of the affected portion of the order if a remake cannot be completed before the event happens. Tell us the same day you receive the order; we cannot fix or assess damage reported a week later.

Buttercream here is butter, sugar and egg whites — no shortening, no whipped topping — and that is what the tasting shows you. We stand behind that recipe matching what leaves the kitchen; we do not stand behind a cake that sat unrefrigerated in a hot car for three hours after leaving our hands.

Once it is cut, it is final

No refund is given on a custom cake once it has been cut or served. This is standard in the trade and it is not negotiable after the fact: once a slice has been taken, there is no way to verify a complaint against the cake as it left the shop versus however it was handled afterward. Raise any concern about the cake before cutting it, ideally the moment it is set up, so we can see and fix what you are seeing.

Standing and wholesale orders

Standing weekly orders for sourdough loaves and wholesale counts of laminated pastry run on a recurring basis once agreed with the counter lead or owner. Either side can end a standing order with notice given before that week's baking begins — the bakery starts its cold ferment and lamination on a schedule set days ahead, so a cancellation after that point for that week's batch is not refundable for that batch specifically, though the standing arrangement itself can still end going forward.

Custom Cookie & Favor Trays follow the deposit rule above when the order is for custom shapes with a three-dozen minimum. Standard round cutter trays, which carry no minimum, can be adjusted or cancelled with more flexibility since they draw on stock shapes already in rotation rather than a one-off cutter or design.

Counter purchases

Bread and pastry sold over the counter, walk-in, cash or card, are a straightforward retail sale — no ordering ahead required, no deposit, no form on this site involved. Standard consumer protections for a retail purchase apply the same as they would at any other in-person bakery counter. If something bought at the counter is wrong, tell the counter staff before you leave if you can, or call the shop the same day.

Using this site

This website is for finding out what we bake, checking a price basis against your own guest count, and starting a conversation through the inquiry form or the chat widget. Please do not use it to scrape our catalogue content, attempt to submit the inquiry form automatically or at volume, or misrepresent who you are in a form submission — the honeypot fields on our forms exist to catch exactly that kind of automated traffic and any submission that trips them is discarded, not answered.

The text, photographs and layout on this site belong to Oak & Ember Bakery. Recipes described in general terms in our pages — an 18 to 36 hour ferment window, a lard-butter crust — are shared so you understand what you are ordering, not as a license to reproduce our content elsewhere.

Liability

We are not liable for delay or failure to deliver caused by something outside our reasonable control — a supplier shortage, a road closed by weather, a venue that will not permit delivery at the agreed time. We are liable, within the remake and refund terms above, for our own errors in what we bake, decorate or ice. Nothing on this page limits any right you have under Pennsylvania consumer protection law that cannot lawfully be limited by a private agreement.

Changes to these terms

We update this page when the way we book orders changes — a new minimum notice period, a new deposit process, a change to what counts as a shop error under the warranty section. The version in force for your order is the one live on this page on the date your tasting appointment happened or, for orders without a tasting, the date your deposit or standing order was confirmed. Questions about which version applied to a past order go to office@oakemberbakery.com.