How an order works

• Sending the form is a request. It becomes an order when I email back to confirm the day and the price.
• Payment is by bank transfer once I have confirmed, before I bake.
• Custom cakes are made for you and nobody else, so a late cancellation cannot always be refunded.
• Everything is baked in a home kitchen that also handles nuts, gluten, dairy and eggs.

The order form sends me a request, not a booking. I check the day against what else is in the oven and email you back with a price and where to send it. That reply is the point where we have an agreement — not the moment you press the button.

Sending the form does hold a place on that day while I look at it, so please only send one you mean. If you change your mind before I have replied, say so and I will put the day back.

If I cannot do the date you picked, I will tell you and suggest the nearest one I can. Until an order is confirmed you owe nothing.

Please allow at least 7 days notice for regular orders. For custom cakes, two to three weeks is ideal, so there is time to get your ideas right.

Shop prices are for the item as its page describes it. A custom cake is quoted after I have read your brief, because size, tiers and detail all move the number.

The price I confirm is the price you pay. Nothing is added at the end except delivery, if you choose it.

If you change the design after I have confirmed, the price may change with it. I will tell you the new price and wait for a yes before doing the work.

Payment is by bank transfer. The account and the reference are on your order page and in the email confirming it. Please use that reference — it is how a payment is matched to a cake.

Card details are never asked for, by me or by this site. Nobody from vvbakes will ever email you new bank details part-way through an order. If a message like that arrives, it is not from me — check with valenciangadi@yahoo.com before sending anything.

If payment has not arrived by the time I need to shop for your order, I will chase it once. If it still has not arrived I may release the day to someone else.

Plans change, and the earlier you tell me the easier it is. Email valenciangadi@yahoo.com as soon as you know.

• More than 7 days before your date: cancel for any reason and anything you have paid comes back in full.
• Inside 7 days: the shopping is usually done, so I refund what I have not already spent on your order, and tell you plainly what that came to.
• Inside 48 hours: your cake is already being made, and I cannot refund it. A cake with somebody else’s name piped across it cannot be sold to anyone else.

Moving to another date is not a cancellation. If the new day is free I will simply move you, as often as I can manage it.

A one-person kitchen has no second baker. If illness, an oven that has given up, or something else outside my control means I cannot make your order, I will tell you the moment I know and refund every cent you have paid.

That refund is the whole of what I can put right in that situation — I cannot cover what you spent on the rest of the occasion.

Collection is from Flat Bush, Auckland. The exact address goes out once your order is confirmed, not before.

Collection times: To be discussed

Please come inside the window we agreed. This is a home, not a shop with staff on a roster, so a collection two hours late is somebody waiting in their own kitchen for you. If you are running behind, a text is all it takes.

An order nobody collects on the day cannot be kept — fresh baking does not wait. I will try the number on your order first, but after that day I cannot refund it.

Delivery is available, free of charge. Please check the address on your order carefully, because I deliver to the address you give me.

Where I deliver: Please note the request in your order and I can see if I can accomodate

Somebody needs to be there to take it. A cake cannot be left on a doorstep in the sun, and if nobody answers I will have to bring it home again — a second run, if there is time for one, is chargeable.

Once a cake is handed over it is in your care. What happens to it in a hot car or on a back seat is beyond what I can stand behind, which is also why I would rather hand it to you myself than send it with a courier.

This is a home kitchen, not a factory with separate lines. The same bowls, benches and oven handle nuts, peanuts, wheat and gluten, dairy, eggs, soy and sesame, often on the same day.

So I cannot guarantee that anything I make is free of an allergen, however carefully I work, and I will not pretend otherwise. Traces are possible in everything that leaves here.

Tell me about an allergy before you order — in the notes, or by email — and I will tell you honestly whether I can make something for you. If the answer is that the risk is too high, that is the answer. I would rather lose the order.

If you want to know exactly what is in something, ask and I will list the ingredients.

Everything is baked fresh, without the preservatives that keep a supermarket cake going for a fortnight. It is at its best on the day. I will tell you how to keep whatever you have ordered — what needs the fridge, what hates it, and how long you really have.

After it is handed over, how it is stored, carried and served is up to you, and that part I cannot stand behind.

Inspiration photos are genuinely useful, which is why the order form takes them. Two things come with them.

• Send only photos you are free to send. If it is another baker’s work I will take it as a starting point rather than copy it — their design is theirs.
• What you get is my hands making something in that spirit, not a reproduction. If an exact copy is what you are after, I am probably the wrong baker.

Your photos are used for your order and nothing else. I do like to photograph my own finished bakes and put them on Instagram — if you would rather I did not post yours, say so and I will not.

The photos on this site show what I have made before, not the thing you will receive. Colours mix slightly differently every time, fruit is whatever is good that week, and no two cakes are identical. That variation is the point of buying from a person.

Tell me — quickly, and with a photo if you can. The same day is ideal, because a problem with food is hard to look into a week later.

If I have got something wrong I will put it right: a repair, a remake, or your money back, whichever fits what happened. I would far rather hear it from you than read it somewhere else.

What I bake for you is covered by the Consumer Guarantees Act 1993 and the Fair Trading Act 1986. Food has to be safe, fit to eat and as described, and nothing on this page limits any of that. Where a clause here and the law disagree, the law wins.

Those guarantees are for people buying for themselves. If you are ordering for a business — a café counter, a staff function billed to the company — they do not apply to that order, and the terms above stand on their own.

Anything that changes is posted here with a new date, and your order runs on the wording that was up when I confirmed it. Last updated 17 September 2026.

Anything here you want explained, just ask — valenciangadi@yahoo.com, or the order form if it is about an order you are placing. What happens to your details is a separate page: privacy.