I run a cake business from home. AMA

[JamesDelayneysTattoos]

Thought this might be interesting.

hopelesslydevotedtogu (great user name), that’s how much is left that isn’t ingredients, utilities, etc so would need to be divided not however many hours I’d put in. At the moment my average is a couple of quid an hour. 🙈 it’s profit but not a viable business if I had to earn a living if that makes sense. I quite often work on Cakes well into the early hours. I can’t work whilst the family are around really and for the past year I’ve been home schooling my 11 year old through year 6 so haven’t been able to work during the days either. Nights are when I’m able to work.

I do it because I want to be successful eventually. I was stupid when I set up and charged too little, it’s then difficult to raise your prices.

firewall I’ve just got 45 cookies out of the oven. Can’t go to bed until they’re cooled. The lemon cake is delicious. I met Charlotte White recently, she’s very lovely.

You know, I've never seen any recipe with syrup added at the end, but my mum always did it like that.

I love Lemon Drizzle cake. I have occasionally wondered whether it would work with lime, or with grapefruit, which are both flavours I love.

Sadly I don't do much baking at the moment - I have an awful lot of weight to lose, and when I bake cakes, I eat them. Virtual is the best sort of cake for me, at the moment.

How long does it take to do a cake, on average? Let's say the teapot cake.

What do you charge for such a cake?

How do you work out your pricing?

I think the problem with pricing is that you might get the same cake but you wont have the same prices in the north compared to south east for example and again London will be different. For me if bought round here (east, but under an hr away from london) you would quite easily pay around 140/150 for that cake. (Teapot)

And i can answer for the flower making is that a lot of it is bitty. So for example a rose, (made out of flower paste which is more expensive but dries rock hard): i make my cone shape and stick it on a wire, that then needs to be fully dry for a week before i even touch it. Next i pop two layers on so 5 individual petals and let those dry for at least 24 hours. Its not until then that i can continue doing the main bit of the rose, until i get to the point where i have to individually wire each petal. The main bit needs to dry for a day or so before i can attach my wired petals and finish it off.
Flowers are generally time consuming and even more so when you have to wire individual petals etc therefore tend to cost more. The more experience you have the quicker you become so thats why its hard to price per hour because i can do 8 nearly full roses in an evening yet ive seen a friend who has 20+ years experience do 24 in an evening. But then she charges through the nose for flowers, they are botannically correct and amazing to look at.

pancakes and that is one of the reasons that I don’t make botanically correct flowers. I’m rubbish at flowers.

Pricing absolutely depends on where you live. The teapot cake was a big cake and the cup is a different flavour cake too. I charged £75 for that as it was for a friend but realistically it should have been around £125/30. In actual fact that particular cake didn’t take that long as the flowers are simple. Probably took me around 7 hours including baking and finishing. I baked sheet cakes then carved to shape.. (Haven’t included the week drying time of the spout and handle, just the making of them).

I work my prices out by costing the cake and utilities, lots of people times that number by 3 then add an hourly rate. That cake had about 15 eggs if I recall. I’m terrible at pricing, I never charge enough.

SDT lime works beautifully, I’ve made that. Not tried grapefruit but I don’t see why it wouldn’t.

cheshirechat I don’t know where I picked up the syrup trick, I don’t think it was a recipe.

It's really common in the former Soviet block actually, I prefer cakes a bit less sweet generally, but I might give it another go.