WE'VE MOVED

Hello!

Thank you for the amazing 8 years here at A Baked Creation, we can't thank you enough for the memories! But we've decided to move over to a new site - Sincerely, Syl. Please join us there for future posts on all the things you loved here!

Sincerely,
Syl

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Sugar Tiers

I recently saw an interview on Duh-Licious about a new bakery, supply shop, and classroom - all three in one! My aunt had also seen it, been to it, and told me about it. So that's two nudges! How could I not go and check it out? I know that I've been trying a lot more cupcakes these months (good-bye waistline), but like Rosalind says in the interview with Madalina, when you're actually baking and decorating, you don't indulge as much. How true!

Sugar Tiers
735 Markland Street, Unit 4
Markham, ON L6C 0G6
(905) 888-9880

Going into Sugar Tiers was a warm treat and escape from the cold and windy day. Rosalind and Evalin were in the back working. They make their cakes and even hold lessons there. Evalin heard the door and came to greet us. I did what I always do, I look for the cupcakes! Spotted:

Display Case: Red Velvet Cupcakes, Strawberry Cupcakes, and Vanilla Cupcakes

Display Case: Vanilla Cupcakes, Carrot Cupcakes, Romance Chocolate Cupcakes, and Banana Rama Cupcakes

On the other side of their L-shaped counter were other sweet treats such as pastries, macaroons, tarts, and cakes. Focus Sylvia, focus! I'm here for the cupcakes! Here are the ones I got:

One strawberry cupcake! A sliver of strawberry on pink frosting with purple sprinkles on a vanilla cake with a strawberry embedded in it. The cake smelled very good, I enjoyed the texture, it had a good crumb. I think it worked well with the embedded strawberry, some cakes become too soft or too moist when you put fruit in it, but this was a great combination.

One red velvet cupcake! You can see the red colour peaking under the buttercream in the cupcake photo above. Also, an interesting pairing as you can see. Most bakeries put red velvet with cream cheese frosting, but here they did chocolate frosting. Lots of chocolate goodness too, the drizzle, shavings, and chips!

The Banana Rama cupcake, this one was recommended to us by Evalin. A slice of banana on buttercream sprinkled with shavings piped on top of banana cake! This cupcake was moist and something my parents enjoy making. So I saved half for my mom to try.

Like I mentioned above, Sugar Tiers is also a store. You can find fondant, cutters, colour paste, flavour extracts, mats, molds, cupcake stands, and other speciality items. Evalin told us that some of the tools are from the UK! If you're in the area, they also teach classes throughout the week. Three-in-one!

Thanks Evalin for letting me snap the photos. =)

12 comments:

  1. These cupcakes look absolutely divine! My mouth is watering :)

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  2. oh god they look so incredibly good...

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  3. I finally had a chance to check this place out over the weekend and some things to note: their prices have changed (cupcakes are now $2). Also, the strawberry cupcake (one of four that my BF and I picked up on a Sunday afternoon) is now baked differently. It is filled with the same strawberry frosting and the cake now contains strawberry bits. Unfortunately the chunks of strawberry are a tad too large as they were mushy and wet and made the cake too soggy. I also wasn't impressed by the frosting. The taste and texture were really bizarre, nothing I've ever tasted before. Unfortunately I couldn't finish even half my strawberry cupcake.

    My absolutely favourite cupcakes are from Cocoa Locale in Montreal. If you ever take a trip there, you must visit the shop. It's really small but her cupcakes are made super fresh (only small batches at a time) and you must show up before she sells out at 2pm (but then starts making another batch).

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  4. Dominique,

    Oh that's very good to know. Most bakeries we visit aren't close to home, so we don't get updated. Thank you for letting us know about the cupcake price and recipe changes! That is really too bad for them.

    We'd love to visit Montreal one day and we'll be sure to visit Cocoa Locale. =)

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  5. I've just had a horrible experience with Sugar Tiers in Markham. Thankfully, I will not be using them for my wedding and learnt my lesson early on.

    In order to choose my wedding cake company, I will be hosting a cupcake blind taste test with my bridesmaids. Accordingly, I choose some stores and put in orders for a small batch of the cupcakes to be made.

    Despite putting in the order in writing (through email) and providing full payment, when I arrived to pick them up I was told there's nothing held for me and that they didn't have my order.

    Normally, a professional company would apologize profusely for the mix up and offer a solution (i.e. providing some cupcakes even if they were not the custom ones) and likely a refund or some sort of financial compensation. Sugar Tiers did not do this, instead the employee did the following:

    1) Question me like I'm an idiot and did I go to the wrong store (as if there's so many custom cupcake bakeries in that one plaza);

    2) Accuse me of not having actually put in an order; and

    3) Refuse to refund me my money since the manager wasn't there.

    I finally received a refund after flat out refusing to leave without getting it. After more than half an hour, I finally received my money back.

    Needless to say, I will never order anything from Sugar Tiers again and will definitely not be using them for my wedding. On the bright side, at least I learnt how unprofessional and unreliable this company is now and not on my wedding day when my ordered cupcakes don't arrive at the reception.

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  6. Hello fellow Sweet toothers,

    I first heard of Sugartiers when they just opened in Richmond Hill. After test tasting their cupcakes, I was in loves.

    Rosalind personally made a beautiful cake for my mom and dad’s 25th anniversary. All the guests were impressed and raved about the taste and the flavor!

    I ordered cupcakes from Sugartiers a month later and they were absolutely amazing, thank you soooooo much for making my girls night a blast! I love the custom colours and the flavors. I’m definitely coming back here for more (and hopefully for the wedding of my friends too)

    I just read the review from a pissed off bride to be. I’ve never received treatment like that from Sugartiers. They are always professional, courteous and really sweet!

    :)

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  7. I echo the positive remarks about Sugartiers. Looking at the comments by the Anonymous person who posted on October 23, 2011 12:25 AM, I actually wonder if he/she is a competitor to Sugartiers. I've heard a lot of stories of competitors intentionally sabotaging the hardwork of successful entrepreneurs but never thought it would happen to Sugartiers. Sylvia, any idea?

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  8. Hello Anonymous-es,

    We am somewhat confused as to why complaints are being posted here. This is just a post about our visit to Sugar Tiers where we simply described the cupcake flavours we tried. Businesses are bound to evolve, if things have currently changed at Sugar Tiers, please keep in mind that this post is a snapshot of what it was in April of 2010.

    That being said, we feel that serious service complaints should be directed to sites such as yelp/urbanspoon or take it up with the bakery's manager - not here. I am grateful that visitors/readers of our blog are able to share their thoughts or inform us of any product changes. But, we do not want a comment war to erupt here.

    Thank you for understanding.

    Cheers,
    Sylvia & Howard

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  9. Just wanted to share my LOOOOVEEEEEE for this shop! At this point SugarTiers has become a go-to place for EVERYTHING sweet for us. Particularly, Rosalind made my beauuutiful wedding cake, and later my husband's 30th birthday cake, plus i have taken a decorating class with Rosalind - best girls' night activity ever, and on top of that, whenever an occasion calls for something sweet, it's a no-brainer - Sugar Tiers is the place to go! The best thing is that there is always something new there. Rosalind and her team keep working on coming up with new ways to tempt me into a "cheat"-day. Plus, the team is so accomodating - they will bring your vision to life whatever it may be! And they will do it with so much finesse - my wedding cake for instance was embellished with gorgeous peonies made entirely from sugar - naturally i had to have a taste of the petals, and they were awesome! and just to add to the decadent flavour of the cake, there were fresh strawberries in between each layer - hey i enjoy some antioxidants with my buttercream, anybody else ;) ? Try this place, you won't be disappointed! Thank you, SugarTiers!

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  10. I’ve been going to Sugar Tiers for a year now and they’ve always provided me with excellent customer service. Not only do they have the best cake in town, they also go above and beyond to fulfill my orders. I always order our cakes and cupcakes for our birthdays and company events from Evalin.
    They get two thumbs up from me. Highly recommended!

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  11. We were so excited about ordering macarons from sugar tiers as they are quite good the last time we tried them. We ordered over a hundred macarons and I gave the details of my order on a paper with fabric swatches of colours and explicit details. I even ordered signs for the dessert table from etsy to indicate to my guests the flavors of the macarons. 36 of the macarons were the completely wrong. Mistakes do happen of course but how a bakery handles their mistake is telling of their professionalism and customer service. I was offered just two free macarons the next time I place an order (despite paying around $70 for the macarons they got wrong). I was appalled and wrote back that I was very disappointed with a detailed message of how I so meticulously placed an order and came back to recheck the order and still it was wrong and the only response I got was a soundbit, "thank you for your feedback". Disappointed. Never going back there again.

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