It’s inspired by a summer cobbler and all the sweet dessert making foods that we celebrate this time of year.  It is a Spiced Vanilla Rhubarb Cake with Cinnamon & Sugar Crumble.  We fill it with a Strawberry Coulis and then drizzle that on top……Mmmm mmmm, good.  This new cupcake is made with Gluten-Free ingredients and will be offered on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays.  Come in and try it–tell us what you think!  We hope you like it as much as we do.

We also are featuring some NEW menu items at bliss this summer — Ice cold, refreshing Sorbe natural smoothies and coffee-free (no caffeine!!) Frappes!  Not sure yet??  Come on in and get a free sample before they are gone!  Oh, and have you heard we upgraded the blender so we can serve up those delicious Tillamook Ice Cream smoothies faster than ever.  Working on some cold and crazy combinations combining any of our 16 Tillamook flavors with fresh ingredients……..stay tuned.

And last update to share—have you seen the incredible window displays at bliss lately??  Lisa from Fancy That (our in-store gift shop) has been working with our  bakers to bring to life beautiful wedding displays, whimsical birthday parties, contemporary birthday designs and many more custom designed party displays.  I do not exaggerate when I say custom or incredible!!  I was sharing the photos with some coworkers recently and they had no idea bliss Bake Shop was creating such custom parties to go with our custom culinary creations—but we are!!  Come by and see.  And check out images on our Facebook Fan page and Fancy That’s Fan page. 

Let’s get this Summer started!

I Love when our customers are so excited and delighted with their cupcakes or cake (or cookies, or ice cream, or party…..) that they take time out of their busy lives to Share their excitement with us.  It is Awesome!!

I used to read our Yelp reviews but I don’t anymore–never.  Heck, my husband won’t let me even if I wanted too!  There are some terrible comments–think words like dry, sawdust and awful–being said in many reviews.  Now our cupcakes have come a long way and we are always getting better, but I hope we were never serving up (or charging people their hard earned cash!!) for cupcakes that tasted as these people claimed.  I followed all Yelp’s suggestions to email the customer, offer a refund and to come back and try again, never get angry or make excuses……Not a word.  No responses, no refunds, nothing.  Just bad reviews that have never come off of the Yelp page.  Interestingly enough, we’ve had 3 glowing, wonderful reviews—think words like Best cupcake, Moist & Delicious, superior service—that the brilliant Yelp algorithm brought to their knees and deleted from our site forever.  I guess that means they thought they were suspicious and possibly “made up” by us or our friends??  Not sure but at the rate I get this blog updated, I’m sure I’m not finding time to create fake Yelp reviews!

And WHY on earth would I blog about this and bring any more attention to the sad little Yelp bliss page??  (I”m second guessing myself as I type…)  Well, I received a fabulous email this morning giving me super great feedback on a custom cake the pastry chefs did for a Bachelorette party over the weekend.  It was for a co-worker at Nike who had asked if we do such things with a few days notice (and YES we do for any others who may be wondering!).  Turns out she LOVED it and her email was so fun—I got so excited for 2 reasons….1) she used the word AWESOME (which I’ll admit is a personal favorite) and 2) she used a lot of exclamation points!!!!  You could feel her excitement as you read the email.  It was a wonderful thing to see first thing on a Monday morning.  So I posted it on our Facebook Fan page (with her permission) and asked her for a photo so I could post that with the customer compliment later this week.  (Our camera went on the fritz this weekend so we didnt’ have our own to share dangit)  It is always fun to share real customer feedback with customers and potential customers—especially when you can tell there was true excitement about the cake or cupcakes.  I mean, we bake and sell cupcakes—this is a happy place and we love to make people happy!!

I really wanted to ask her to share her experience in first person on our Fan page—to go on there and post a comment…..but was that asking too much??  what if she wasn’t a fan yet?  what if she was too busy?  what if that was off-putting?  So many reasons not too ask customers to do that even though it is the best PR for a small business.  When a customer posts it on Facebook or Yelp about a great experience they had with our cakes or cupcakes or customer service, it makes all the other “stuff” about running a business fade into the background.  It (almost) makes me go and read our Yelp reviews again and it definitely makes me give the great feedback to my team!  We LOVE to hear these compliments in person–we Really DO–but if your fingers are in the mood for typing and you’ve got a few minutes to spare, please do share your bliss review on Facebook, Yelp or even Google.  It would be AWESOME, totally awesome.

Come in this March any Friday through Sunday and try our latest Flavor of the Month!  Inspired by St. Patrick’s Day, our bakers have created Bottoms Up–a rich Guinness chocolate cake filled with fudge and topped with Bailey’s Irish Cream buttercream.  Here is what one customer had to say about it, “I just tried “bottoms up” and it is AMAZING!!! I’m usually a sugar cookie die-hard but this could make me convert to cupcakes!!! Love it!!”  We couldn’t have asked for better feedback!  Check out more comments and reviews on our Facebook Fan page.  And don’t worry if this combination doesn’t do it for you—next month will be another Brand New Flavor to tempt your taste buds!

Here is the info on the Chocolate Fantasy Flyers:

Join us at the Historic Jenkins Estate in

our 14th year of celebrating chocolate.

that perfect Valentine gift.

That’s right, we are bringing you new Featured Flavors to tempt and delight your tastebuds! We started last month bring our Zucchini Lime bliss to the cupcake case thurs-sundays. Now Caramel Apple is making it’s debut for October! And it wouldn’t be October and the start of Fall if we didn’t start baking those amazing Pumpkin bliss cupcakes EVERY DAY….pumpkin spice cake with a maple cream cheese buttercream—Amazingly tasty!! Recognize it in the case by it’s little orange pumpkin on top–made from more delicious buttercream of course.

Not only is bliss Bake Shop right next door to the Bethany Village Centre Fountain where the Kiddos can splash and play in the cool water……but come on inside our Air conditioned shop for 16 flavors of Local Tillamook Ice Cream! We’re taking our fresh-baked cookies, putting tillamook ice cream in between them and instant ICE CREAM SANDWICH! Come in and try one today. But that is not all that is NEW on the menu at bliss. We’ve also got NEW Italian Sodas, Strawberry Smoothies and ICED Tea. There are so many ways to STAY COOL this summer at bliss……OPEN 10am to 8pm Mon-Sat and 11am to 5pm on Sundays. Stop in and COOL off while the Kids entertain themselves in our Kid’s play area or use our Wi-Fi.

Watch us on Channel 8 with Drew Carney bright and early Wednesday 7/21 as we kick off our 2nd Annual Bittys for Babies fundraiser right here at bliss! Last year we raised $900 in Cash, Preemie clothes and Receiving blankets for the babies at the NICU at Doernbecher’s Children’s Hospital.
Come in this Wednesday and Thursday to help us reach our goal of $1200.0! We will be Donating 20% off the sale of EVERY DOZEN of our bliss bittys during the event as well as Giving a free bitty to everyone who comes in and donates clothing or blankets or cash. There will be a RAFFLE for lots of great prizes and certificates from your local Bethany Village merchants given away at the First Summer Concert thursday night right in the Bethany Parking Lot. Be sure to be a part of it—two days only!! Tune in Wednesday 7/21 to Drew Carney on Channel 8 to hear all about it and see how our very own bliss babies are doing!

Yes, it’s true! They liked em’, they loved em’ and now they will be offering them in their Cedar Hills location for people to purchase. We are very excited to have a partner in getting blissful desserts out to the those in need of a GF or Vegan option. We are working out the details now—how many flavors, which flavors and start date, but look for these in your New Seasons pastry case SOON!

Currently we offer 2-4 flavors of Gluten Free and 2-3 flavors of Vegan every day in our cupcake case. We keep a list of the ingredients on hand at the counter because we know you are concerned about what alternatives we are using….please ask us questions! Our goal is to do double-duty on the cupcake flavors whenever we can, for example you can get a Chocolate and Carrot Cake cupcake that is both gluten-free AND vegan. We also have taken all the soy out of our GF and Vegan based on the feedback that this is a common allergy as well.

Other flavors you might enjoy: Vegan Vanilla. GF Vanilla, GF Chocolate, GF RED VELVET is here!! And GF Pumpkin will be back as soon as our organic pumpkin puree is back in stock at—that’s right—New Seasons. (we shop locally too!)

Remember, you can get any of your GF or Vegan options in a full size round or half sheet cake or cupcake cake! Any GF Graduates next month—celebrate with a dessert they can actually eat!! We highly recommend the Vegan/GF Carrot cake flavor for everyone to enjoy. It has been taste-tested by numerous customers without allergies and they couldn’t tell the difference!!

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