By Shelley Widhalm

The Surveyor

Though Colorado Rose Cake Co. won multiple awards, what’s more important for co-owner Heidi Wheeler is the five-star reviews.

The Knot awarded the Berthoud-based wedding cake design studio with the Best of and the Hall of Fame awards through The Knot Best of Weddings 2019. The Knot is a wedding-planning and registry resource with five national offices, including New York City, and another four international offices.

“It’s based off of reviews,” Wheeler said. “The award itself isn’t as rewarding as the actual reviews from our clients. That’s more important to me … because that’s directly from our client versus a third party.”

The award recognizes top wedding vendors nationwide in more than 40 categories, including best wedding venues, photographers, planners, deejays, florists and wedding cakes. Colorado Rose Cake Co. was The Knot Best of Weddings recipient every year from 2007 to 2019, except for the year 2010, plus the company received several Hall of Fame awards. The company also won the Wedding Wire Couple’s Choice Award in 2011 through 2019.

To qualify for The Knot awards, wedding vendors need at least 10 reviews from couples, their families and wedding guests within the year of the wedding. The top 4% are then given the award.

“They have the Hall of Fame award, which we won, because we won so many awards for so many years,” Wheeler said. “It’s a great tool for brides to get ideas and find people they can reach out to, to start planning their wedding.”

In January Wheeler and her husband Kyle took over ownership and operations of Colorado Rose Cake Co. They purchased it from Wheeler’s mother, Marci Perrotto, who founded it in 1997 and named it after her favorite country song. Perrotto, who wanted to retire, started the company out of her home after making wedding, birthday and other types of cakes as a hobby but then got multiple requests, so she built a commercial kitchen in her basement.

Wheeler worked with Perrotto for 16 years, off and on for the first eight and full time since then — plus she taught high school for three years. She and Kyle are using Perrotto’s kitchen to operate the business, but plan to build a commercial kitchen in the basement of their home, which is in the Berthoud and Loveland rural area but has a Loveland address. They hope to start building the kitchen in November and have it operational by March, before the next wedding season, which for their business is May through October. Their delivery area is primarily Estes Park, but also includes Berthoud, Loveland, Fort Collins and parts of Longmont.

The Wheelers primarily make wedding cakes but will make birthday and other types of cakes during the off season. Their design studio is known for the moistness and taste of the cakes — each tier has three layers of filling and four layers of cake.

“For us it’s our attention to detail,” Wheeler said. “We go based off of the taste, flavor and texture of the cake … and the polished finish provided in the decorations we’re known for.”

Wheeler has been asked by clients if she uses fondant, but she works with butter cream and makes it extra smooth, she said.

To make sure the clients get what they want, the Wheelers invite them over for a one-hour consultation, where they taste a variety of pre-selected cakes to decide on the look, flavor and quantity. They make about 300 to 350 cakes a year — at the busiest, when Perrotto had two employees, the company made 400 cakes a year.

“Creating happiness and creating something people love seeing and appreciate eating is very enjoyable to me,” Wheeler said.

The design studio’s designs have been featured in Borrowed and Blue, Modern Bride Colorado, Rocky Mountain Bride, Best of Colorado Weddings, The Knot and the Martha Stewart Blog.