Aki's Bakery [San Jose]

Before coming to pick up my guava cake ($51 for 1/3 sheet), I scoured the Yelp postings to see what to expect. Naturally, the staff was disorganized, my cake was lost, and when found, it was unfinished. There were probably twice as many people working as there were customers and it still took us twenty minutes to get out of there.

But that was okay. I expected that.

I also expected that the cakes were probably going to look like the type of thing that a 12-year old would bake his mother on her birthday, complete with scraggly kids handwriting (but without the sentimentality). But that was okay. I knew my cake would look like somebody threw up all over it.

C'est vrai, n'est-ce pas? I wasn't exaggerating.

What wasn't okay was that I had expected an ethereally light angel food cake iced with a sweet-tart guava puree that perfectly offset whatever little sweetness was in the cake batter. But boy was I wrong.

The cake fell flat in terms of its one-dimensional flavor, which tasted of white sugar with every bite. The guava whipped cream laced inside tasted nothing like guava and the puree on top was too skimpy to make any lasting impression. I do have to give it to them though--the cake was very moist.

You can find better for your money. In fact, you could probably even do it yourself better.

Aki's Bakery
355 Meridian Avenue
San Jose, Ca 95126
Tel (408)-287-5404 or Fax (408) 287-0660