The Bear Necessities: It must taste good!

Client: My son's favorite toy in the world is his teddy bear.  Can you make the bear into a cake?

Me: Will he be traumatized when the cake gets cut and served?

Client: This will not be a problem.

Me: Then yes, I can do that!

I cannot count how many times I have delivered a cake only to have the client not want to cut into the finished product. Of course, eventually they do cut into the cake and are happy they did. While the famed lines, "It's too pretty/cute!" or "I can't possibly cut into this!" will certainly be taken as compliment, these are not the gestures of appreciation a caker truly lives for.  You wanna know what really gets us excited?? (I mean, besides new kitchen toys...)

Carnage.

I'm not talking about the blood and gore of the increasingly popular zombie cakes. (Although those are pretty cool too, if you can stomach that kind of thing.)  I'm talking about watching a cake we have created get completely decimated by the people who were meant to enjoy it. Because if it looks this good, don't you wanna know how it tastes?  

This is where I tip my hat to Mr. Miles. At 5 years old, this kid was more enthusiastic about the prospect of chocolate cake inside the bear than he was about what the cake looked like. He demonstrated an excellent understanding that first and foremost, cake is food, and therefor it must taste good.