Deerfield Bakery-Too much sugar is just enough

Sometimes you crave buttercream frosting. I mean the real thing, sickeningly sweet.... enough to rot your teeth by the second slice.

IMHO when it comes to yellow cake with buttercream frosting there is no substitute for Deerfield Bakery. They will create a cake for you to match whatever your little sugar craving, hyperglycemic heart desires.

Case in point. My kid loves ELMO. I mean LOVES ELMO. Deerfield created a masterpiece of red buttercream and moist yellow cake for 75.



They do something called a smash cake which is a little cake for your kid to rub all over his little face creating a priceless kodak moment. Sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words....ahh humanity.



Deerfield Bakery has been in business for about one hundred years. For the past 35 or so years we have celebrated every birthday, holiday and special occasion with a cake from Deerfield Bakery. They have a cute little store and sell all varieties of coffee cakes, donuts and premade cakes in case you have forgotten to pre order. Delicious!

Deerfield Bakery
813 N Waukegan Road
Deerfield, IL 60015
847-945-0068
www.deerfieldbakery.com

That cake face is a classic. Looks like the birthday was a success!

Wow, it sounds like they might just be the bakery to make my dream birthday cake! (All buttercream, hold the cake.)

I just got a cake from there! It is Devils food, fudge in the middle and whipped cream on the outside. We like this but Deerfields has great cakes with buttercream frosting!

Hi,

I think Deerfield Bakery makes lovely looking cakes. Unfortunately the taste does not live up to the looks. While I will admit it has been a while since I bought anything there. I can't find myself buying more when they cake tastes like a boxed cake mix. The cakes tasted at various occasions don't suggest they have changed.

I think they do great presentations and marketing, but that is not an endorsement of their cake's taste.

Still those are lovely pictures of the baby's first birthday.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:
I think Deerfield Bakery makes lovely looking cakes. Unfortunately the taste does not live up to the looks.
Still those are lovely pictures of the baby's first birthday.

Regards,

Well, I was kinda holding back my tongue, but since Cathy2 started it...
I work for a pretty big Co. in the Deerfield area, and when we have the random "10 yr anniv / birthday / baby shower / dept luncheon" celebration, we always debate on where to get the cake. Every time someone opts for DF bakery for the cake, you can hear the moans in the crowd. Surprisingly, the Dominick's on Sanders and Dundee has handily won the battle of the cakes over DF bakery. I'd say that for the past year, we've had 12 cakes, 5 from DF bakery, and 7 from Dominick's. None of the 5 from DF bakery were close to the quality of the Dom cakes. DF bakery cakes always have a large amt of leftovers while the Dom cakes are hard to get a 2nd piece from.

I know that every time Deerfield Bakery is mentioned it gets bashed by a bunch of posters for the reasons listed above. While I don't necessarily disagree with most of the comments, Deerfield Bakery cakes remain a guilty pleasure of mine. I don't eat them very often, but once in a while I just get a taste for that very rich buttercream. I look at the cake portion as merely a delivery mechanism for that sweet, sweet, buttercream. It's kind of like that slider craving one gets every year or so.

HI,

I once took an adult education course with a gal who decorated cakes at Deerfield Bakery. From her description, it did not appear there was butter in the buttercream. Of course, in fifteen years things can change.

***

I took a cake decorating class in 1980. The first thing they showed us was how to make buttercream, its ingredients: Crisco, vanilla, artificial butter flavoring, maybe almond extract, dream whip powder, etc. This recipe required a lengthy 10-20 minutes of whipping in a KitchenAid, which I bought soon thereafter.

This unbuttercream was more stable than real buttercream, not melting or getting soft at room temperature. It tasted like the real butter cream, but it wasn't. I wouldn't be surprised if Deerfield's was using some variant of the buttercream I learned long ago.

Regards,

To me Deerfields is just about the frosting which i find to be a great and guilty pleasure. They layer it on one half inch thick. I am sure there are much finer bakeries making sublime cakes both near and far. I love deerfieds because of the sickeningly sweet buttercream frosting (probably not made with butter as it definitely doesnt need refrigeration). Cake for 30-40 1-5 year olds, Deerfields is my choice. I have eaten 5 pieces since the party and havent touched the yellow cake...wonder if they would do frosting only?

I wholeheartedly support Cathy's comments about Deerfield Bakery. There are so many better bakeries. One of my favorites is the Swedish Bakery on Clark St. Closer to Deerfield, I think Sunset foods has better cakes than DF.

I would agree with others in that Deerfield Bakery is lacking in the taste department.

I think I have posted before about The Bent Fork in Highwood. The cake and the frosting are both top notch.

If you are in the area, a stop at The Bent Fork will be well worth your time.

The Bent Fork
333 Waukegan Rd.
Highwood, IL

Somebody in our office brought in bagels from Deerfield Bakery the other day. I thought they were very good. Big, tasty, and really fresh.

I'm not a butter cream fan, but I really like their whipped cream cakes. Lots of whipped cream!

I recently did a side by side comparison of Deerfield's vanilla cupcake with buttercream frosting and Sweet Mandy B's vanilla buttercream competitor. The Sweet Mandy B's cupcake was far superior, the cake was moist and rich and the frosting was buttery and creamy. Absolutely fantastic. Deerfield's cupcake was somewhat dry and bland and the frosting didn't really taste like buttercream or have the mouth-feel that real butter buttercream has.

I suspected that Deefield's did not really use butter in their frosting, but probably used butter flavored shortening. Granted, shortening is more stable at warmer temperatures, but the trade off just isn't worth it to me. I've gotten my kid's cakes at SMB's for both of their birthdays, and they were beautifully decorated and delicious too.

As an owner and family member of Deerfields Bakery, I thought I should reply to this thread. First of all, thank you for posting the pictures of your childs birthday cake. We are greatful to be part of your special celebrations.

I am new to my family's business and the fifth generation in a long line of bakers. To those critics out there, I assure you there are no shortcuts when it comes to our recipes. We use 100% unsalted butter in our buttercream, it's the third line item in our recipe deck. Our cake recipe is based on a family recipe that has changed slightly as our customers tastes have changed. If you haven't tried it in the last few years, it's one of the most moist cakes around. Pre-made or 'boxed' mixes are 4-letter words in my bakery and they don't exist here. We run a 24hr three shift production schedule. Nothing in the cake making process is frozen. Cakes are made from scratch around 2pm, baked in the late afternoon, put together to spec before midnight, decorated starting at 2am, and boxed starting at 6am. We offer over 25 different sizes, 10 different cake flavors, over 30 different fillings and thousands of designs. Over half of our fillings are made in-house.

We definitely are not perfect, however, we try our best to please as many people as possible. For those of you that celebrate corporate bdays in the area and are tired of our product, suggest to your party planner to try something new from us (most of those orders are standard chocolate or yellow cake - have you tried our Red Velvet cake or Choc. Silk filling?) Our cake and buttercream are very dense (reason why you might have leftovers). Have you tried weighing a cake from Deerfields and one of our competitors? On average it's around 2 to 1. When you cost it out, consider our high ingredient costs, attention to decorator detail, and customization available (ie. something for everyone), the value is substantial. We are also working on a number of new offering and announcements:
- Deer Joe Coffee -- New Organic and Fair Trade coffees that we roast ourselves in our Deerfield location. Coming Sept. 10th
- Serveral new organic and fat-free bakery offerings. Coming this Fall
- Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice in our Buffalo Grove location. Avail now.
- Improvements to our Gourmet Cafe in Buffalo Grove. Coming this Fall
- And a couple of other secrets I can't devulge yet

I hope that those of you that haven't tried us in a while will consider giving us another chance. To all of our customers, thank you for chosing Deerfields Bakery.

Best,

Tim Schmitt
Deerfields Bakery
www.deerfieldbakery.com
847.520.0068 x112

Tim,

Thanks for posting. As I indicated up thread, I am a fan of your cakes. One thing I can say about them is that they're not very subtle. Eating a Deerfield cake means you're getting a full hit of sugar and buttercream frosting. that's what I like about them, though I can see why some may prefer a less in your face, more subtle approach to their cake. Personally, I like cake both ways. It's cake, after all. Different strokes, I suppose.

Stevez, I actually think that the issue with the Deerfields cakes isn't about subtlety in flavor, it's about a lack of real complex flavor. The Deerfields version is very sweet, but that seems to be about it. In my experience, they seem to lack the other flavors that come together in a good cake, for example the egginess, or vanilla or chocolate flavors.

Maybe the sweetness just cancels out the rest of the flavors?

Whatever the cause, it just seems like Deerfields are often on the drier side and rather bland. Of course their decorating skills are often very good, as we can see with the Elmo cake above (which is adorable, by the way!) The cupcake I mentioned upthread was for a baby shower, and all of the cupcakes were beautifully decorated with little booties made out of frosting. The frosting booties were really lovely, but again didn't seem to taste like much more than sugary fat.

Just my $.02

SMT wrote:Stevez, I actually think that the issue with the Deerfields cakes isn't about subtlety in flavor, it's about a lack of real complex flavor. The Deerfields version is very sweet, but that seems to be about it.

I think we are saying the same thing.

Interesting post from Deerfield's Bakery. While my family used to get all of our occasion cakes from Deerfield's and regularly buy items from the bakery at Sunset Foods, it has been 5 or 6 years since we purchased a product from them.

In the spirit of not wanting to overlook a local bakery, I think it is time to give Deerfield's another opportunity.

The concept of a side by side cupcake comparison between Deerfield's and The Bent Fork is on for this weekend. Between myself, my wife and my three daughters, I think we should be able to determine who we feel makes a superior product.

JT

Hi,

You might throw in Sunset Foods cupcakes into the mix of items to taste as well.

Whatever you do I look forward to the reports.

Regards,

jtm1631 wrote:If you are in the area, a stop at The Bent Fork will be well worth your time.

The Bent Fork
333 Waukegan Rd.
Highwood, IL

I must have driven by this place 1000 times without noticing it. I am now one of the newly converted. I like cupcakes just fine, but i find that they do not usually have a large enough surface area to hold enough buttercream frosting to really tickle my fancy. This place is an exception. They have a chocolate cupcake covered in at least an inch and a half of buttercream and dipped in a semi-hard chocolate coating (ganache?) (sort of like a what you would imagine the coating on a ho-ho or ding-dong would taste like if they were made with love) I think they call this a chocolate delight or something close to that.

I walked out of this place feeling like i did the first time i walked out of the Magnolia Bakery or Sweet Mandy B. What a great discovery within a few miles of my house.

Cathy2 wrote:HI,


***

I took a cake decorating class in 1980. The first thing they showed us was how to make buttercream, its ingredients: Crisco, vanilla, artificial butter flavoring, maybe almond extract, dream whip powder, etc. This recipe required a lengthy 10-20 minutes of whipping in a KitchenAid, which I bought soon thereafter.

This unbuttercream was more stable than real buttercream, not melting or getting soft at room temperature. It tasted like the real butter cream, but it wasn't. I wouldn't be surprised if Deerfield's was using some variant of the buttercream I learned long ago.

Regards,

Cathy,

I'm surprised they called that a butter cream frosting. We called it "bettercream on the cheap" in the kitchen I worked in. Basically the same basic idea, and generally tastes, well, like sweet fat. Bettercream is probably one of the highest sins in baking, second only to selling par-baked, pre-proofed frozen loaves from Rich's.

However, the texture is almost a dead giveaway. Shortening will whip up with more air in it, and have a texture that is like a thick, gooey merengue, than a butter cream, which will be dense and have a "flow" to it as it melts in your mouth.

It sounds like Deerfield (a place I have never been, so conjecture warning) may just use more sugar than many people are used to, which could explain some of the comments people have had in this thread.

There is a picture of me from the early 1980's in my father's kitchen, legs up in the air, face first in a lowered bowl on a Hobart mixer, eating buttercream. I wasn't allowed to see Dad when he was making icing

Cheers,

-Andrew
(first time poster, buttercream devotee)

Andrew,

In your experience, how stable is buttercream at room temperature? Or on hot, humid days like we have been experiencing recently?

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:Andrew,

In your experience, how stable is buttercream at room temperature? Or on hot, humid days like we have been experiencing recently?

Regards,

IME not very stable in temps above 80F. At room temp (72F) it's reasonably stable, but I've never let it go more than 2 or 3 days. Buttercream picks up other flavors very easily - I once was piping a sheetcake in the last available bag, which had been used for a pistacio-flavored icing before. Needless to say, the edging tasted like pistacios. Airtight, clean, neutral storage is best; if you must store it in the fridge make sure the container is airtight, and give it time to work back up to room temp (slowly!) before working with it.

As a data point, my wife got me a cake from the Ceres Street Bakery (Portsmouth, NH) for my birthday, and we had to drive it the 1.5 hours from the bakery to the dinner location (in MA). It stayed on the floor of our Subaru Outback that entire time, while we had the A/C pumped up, but on a 94F day in Boston. The cake survived with no change in texture.

The leftovers, kept in the reefer overnight, however, weren't so hot. The buttercream tasted like the way my fridge smells, which isn't exactly bad, but isn't exactly want I want in a cake, either.

Cheers,

-Andrew

Hi,

The reason I was asking about your take on stability. The Cookie Monster cake in the original post was served outside on a pretty warm day. Most real butter cream cakes would not hold up to that kind of abuse. If I recall correctly, there was also no requirement for the cake to be refrigerated. Additionally the decorations of the cake in butter cream with all those thin pointy bits are easier to heat up and collapse.

Despite what the owner from Deerfield Bakery stated earlier. I suspect this cake was not made from real buttercream. Adding sugar will not change butter's desire to soften at room temperature.

I'm waiting with interest on the cupcake comparison this weekend.

Regards,

Cathy2 wrote:Hi,

The reason I was asking about your take on stability. The Cookie Monster cake in the original post was served outside on a pretty warm day. Most real butter cream cakes would not hold up to that kind of abuse. If I recall correctly, there was also no requirement for the cake to be refrigerated. Additionally the decorations of the cake in butter cream with all those thin pointy bits are easier to heat up and collapse.

Despite what the owner from Deerfield Bakery stated earlier. I suspect this cake was not made from real buttercream. Adding sugar will not change butter's desire to soften at room temperature.

I'm waiting with interest on the cupcake comparison this weekend.

Regards,

I don't know Cathy... as I wasn't there. But the points appear to be wide points, not tall narrow ones, which hold up easier. Generally speaking, unless it bakes in the sun for 20 minutes straight, then it's not going to be an issue after it has been piped and set up. I've served butter on my deck plenty of times in the scorching heat and still had it stay "solid".

IME the buttercream will hold up quite fine, as long as the details are wide, and the color used helps blend out defects. Reds, purples, blues, and other similar colors used on wide (1/2") piping are a competely different ball of wax than air-shaded 1" rosettes with tight, thin petals. I wouldn't try and work it in a hot environment, because it is extremely unforgiving. But serving? Not as worried. (No direct sun, not 5 hours in the heat)

I wouldn't pass judgement without tasting it myself.

Conjecture:

The butter, the storage temp, the temp of the house, etc all play into this. In the photo I saw above, they were just serving it, so it probably hadn't been sitting in the sun for long. In the second picture (the smash cake, I LOVE IT), I see the details appearing softer and not straight. If you look at the roped base, the details are quite large, and generally will show better in high temps.

At the end of the day, you'll only know when you taste it. Did it taste like extruded fluff with merrengue mixed in? Then you know you have a shortening or bettercream (*spit*) based frosting.

When I'm in Chicago next, and I can hit up the Deerfield bakery, I'll buy a small cake just to see!

Cheers,

-Andrew

astanley wrote:[In the photo I saw above, they were just serving it, so it probably hadn't been sitting in the sun for long. In the second picture (the smash cake, I LOVE IT), I see the details appearing softer and not straight. If you look at the roped base, the details are quite large, and generally will show better in high temps.

At the end of the day, you'll only know when you taste it. Did it taste like extruded fluff with merrengue mixed in? Then you know you have a shortening or bettercream (*spit*) based frosting

I picked the cake up at 11 am from deerfield bakery which is 15 minutes from my house. I brought the cake inside where it stayed until 4:15 that afternoon. The temperature in the room where the cake was resting was 75 degrees all day long. The cake was stored in the cardboard box in which it came until 4:15. The pictures were taken within 5 minutes of bringing the cake outside in the back yard.

Cathy2 wrote:The Cookie Monster cake in the original post was served outside on a pretty warm day.

Please... please... let us not confuse the charming and venerable Cookie Monster with the cloyingly cute and sweet (appropriately!) Elmo. Even if he has shifted his stance to endorse the "cookie is a sometimes food" position in recent years, Cookie still deserves better than to be confused with that little red troll.

Dmnkly wrote:red troll.

If we are going to be truly accurate he is a "red monster"

DeerfieldsBakery wrote:As an owner and family member of Deerfields Bakery, I thought I should reply to this thread. First of all, thank you for posting the pictures of your childs birthday cake. We are greatful to be part of your special celebrations.

I am new to my family's business and the fifth generation in a long line of bakers. To those critics out there, I assure you there are no shortcuts when it comes to our recipes. We use 100% unsalted butter in our buttercream, it's the third line item in our recipe deck. Our cake recipe is based on a family recipe that has changed slightly as our customers tastes have changed. If you haven't tried it in the last few years, it's one of the most moist cakes around. Pre-made or 'boxed' mixes are 4-letter words in my bakery and they don't exist here. We run a 24hr three shift production schedule. Nothing in the cake making process is frozen. Cakes are made from scratch around 2pm, baked in the late afternoon, put together to spec before midnight, decorated starting at 2am, and boxed starting at 6am. We offer over 25 different sizes, 10 different cake flavors, over 30 different fillings and thousands of designs. Over half of our fillings are made in-house.

We definitely are not perfect, however, we try our best to please as many people as possible. For those of you that celebrate corporate bdays in the area and are tired of our product, suggest to your party planner to try something new from us (most of those orders are standard chocolate or yellow cake - have you tried our Red Velvet cake or Choc. Silk filling?) Our cake and buttercream are very dense (reason why you might have leftovers). Have you tried weighing a cake from Deerfields and one of our competitors? On average it's around 2 to 1. When you cost it out, consider our high ingredient costs, attention to decorator detail, and customization available (ie. something for everyone), the value is substantial. We are also working on a number of new offering and announcements:
- Deer Joe Coffee -- New Organic and Fair Trade coffees that we roast ourselves in our Deerfield location. Coming Sept. 10th
- Serveral new organic and fat-free bakery offerings. Coming this Fall
- Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice in our Buffalo Grove location. Avail now.
- Improvements to our Gourmet Cafe in Buffalo Grove. Coming this Fall
- And a couple of other secrets I can't devulge yet

I hope that those of you that haven't tried us in a while will consider giving us another chance. To all of our customers, thank you for chosing Deerfields Bakery.

Best,

Tim Schmitt
Deerfields Bakery
www.deerfieldbakery.com
847.520.0068 x112

Tim, I have no comment on your cakes, but your PR writing is outstanding. Substantive, reasoned and polite without seeming defensive or smarmy. No doubt there's much about your family business's success that has to do with customer service, wholly apart from cake.

iblock9 wrote:

Dmnkly wrote:red troll.

If we are going to be truly accurate he is a "red monster"

With apologies to your little fella, that was intended as a pejorative rather than a classification