Baker Details Birthday Cake ‘Nightmare’ After Mom Says 6-Year-Old Daughter ‘Hated' It 'So Much’ (Exclusive)

Controversy over desserts!

Greg Mason recently went viral on TikTok for sharing a video recounting an “evil” complaint from an unhappy customer after she received a unicorn cake for her 6-year-old daughter’s birthday that didn’t look like an inspiring image.

“Obviously I made this 6-year-old cry, she’s heartbroken and it ruined her whole birthday because this cake is so ugly,” Mason says in the video. “It didn’t match her inspo image, the name in italics isn’t appropriate for kids…the border looks like toothpaste, I don’t like roses,” she recalls of part of the interaction.

“You know I don’t usually share interactions like this with clients,” Mason adds in the clip. “I decided to film myself redoing it because if you come into my business and treat me like I’m incompetent garbage and say you’re going to start posting stuff, then I’m going to post stuff and stand up for myself.”

In an exclusive interview with PEOPLE, the North Carolina-based baker explains the backstory of the dessert debacle and defends his custom creation, which was ordered with a few specific requirements — preventing it from perfectly replicating the inspiration photo.

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Greg Mason’s unicorn cake before and after tweaking.

Greg Mason

“A lot of my style and influence comes from just old-school techniques,” Mason tells PEOPLE exclusively. “So I don’t do prints, I don’t do fondant. I don’t do any of those crazy frou-frou cakes. I just do bakery-style buttercream cakes.”

Mason, who says he grew up around bakeries “his whole life” and attended culinary school before opening his own business, works at Treat Yo’ Self in his hometown of Wilson. His designs have become famous on Instagram and TikTok with nearly 2 million followers across all platforms.

“A lot of people see me online and want these crazy cakes and stuff,” Mason says of her creations made at Treat Yo’ Self, which celebrates its fifth anniversary in December. However, due to its “old school techniques”, there are limitations to its design.

Mason says that sometimes people “want the cake out of here so bad that they just agree” without absorbing the fact that his design won’t look exactly like the elaborate photo shown as inspiration because of his chosen techniques.

In the case of the six-year-old, it was a disconnection. “She wanted a simple unicorn cake, but the unicorn horn and ears were made of fondant,” she recalls her mother’s request. “We don’t make fondant here … and we make that clear to people.”

“So I got the inspiration picture that she sent and I explained it to her,” Mason says, assuring that “everything was fine, everything was cool” in the deal. “But at first I was hesitant to accept the order because her daughter had done it [an] allergy.”

The young lady was allergic to food coloring, which presented another challenge in replicating the design as the colors would not be as vibrant as those on the cake in the inspiration photo. But as Mason describes himself as a “people pleaser,” he agreed to do it anyway.

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Greg Mason and his husband Alexander keep cakes in their bakery.

Sean Larkin

“I used these natural food colorings, which is fine, but I even went out of my way to make fresh buttercream just in case, so it wasn’t contaminated…I cleaned my station, made sure there was no food coloring anywhere” , explains Mason.

“I know the colors aren’t exactly like the picture – but also, [she] I brought food coloring and it’s just dye,” he says. “So I’m making a unicorn cake, which I thought was pretty cute and I was happy about that.”

In the end, the birthday girl’s dad took the cake to bring home — only for the Treat Yo’ Self bakery to get a call from the family saying they didn’t like it. So Mason offered to remake it for them if they brought it to the store.

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Greg Mason’s Revised Unicorn Cake.

Greg Mason

“She was just very rude and hated everything about it because it wasn’t like the picture — after I’d already described what it would look like,” Mason recalls of the restrictions they previously discussed with the first order. .

“I offered to redo it because she said no one else in town would make a cake like that,” Mason says of the intricate design and allergy restriction requirements. Plus, he reiterated that they don’t do “double cupcakes” – which is what she wanted.

“I did everything I had to so I could sleep at night because I know if I didn’t fix it, even though she was mean to me, I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it,” he says. “I’d rather do my best to improve the situation and then move on.”

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Greg Mason holds one of his cakes.

Greg Mason

But before the birthday girl’s mom came to collect the fresh cake, she called the store again. “She said, ‘So if I take the cake, will I still get a refund or not?’ ” he recalls, which then opened another awkward conversation.

In the end, Mason returned her money without the cake. “A lot of people are always just trying to get something for free. Not always, but that’s why I ended up paying her back,” he says.

Don’t worry about the rearranged cake though! Mason put the revamped unicorn dessert in the bakery for $10 “as a joke” because he says he likes to “make things lighthearted when those situations happen” — and in classic Treat Yo’ Self style, “it sold out literally right away.”

He says, “Yeah, it was gone in five minutes.”

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Source: HIS Education