to want this cake as my wedding cake and not pay £500 for the priviledge!

[hoops997]

awesome cake

I'm an amateur who does perhaps one or two cakes a year for family since I started learning for fun eight years ago. So I can't say I've had that much experience...

Looking at the beach cake, it shouldn't be that hard to do. The chairs and table are run-outs and lace trellis work, which takes a bit of time but not that much, and perhaps the shells are real? The rest is just fondant with sugar stuck to it. The cake may be just a cube shape on top of a dome (probably in madeira sponge) covered with marzipan then with the fondant being the shaped part.

I'd have trouble with the figures though - not done many of those! I suspect the biggest cost for the whole thing is due to the sheer size. It looks massive.

Wish someone would give me £500 for one of my cakes...

if you are near cambridge Iam happy to talk to you about it with you.

www.marksandspencer.com/s?ie=UTF8&node=42966030&keywords=wedding%20cakes&forceNoKeyword=false&rh=n%3A53617031&size=12&pf_rd_r=0BZ51J90F8DX584JGXV6&pf_rd_m=A2BO0OYVBKIQJM&pf_rd_t=301&pf_rd_i=0&pf_rd_p=215485727&pf_rd_s=left-3&sort=relevancerank

this was my wedding cake, and it was delicious

little house of cakes is great if you are in south west. SHe has a fb page here

Just realised my post looks like an ad rather than a comment on how someone could do it. I wouldn't want to try!

oooh thats my cake!! just to clear a few bits up.
i absolutely loved making it and the cake is £500 for a good reason - the board is handmade and painted by me to match the effect of the rock. the rock is made of 2 dummies carved and also a rich fruit cake to act as a base for the cake. the cake part is the castle itself. the sand is made from rich tea biscuits that had been hand seived so as to get them perfectly fine. (the bride chose these as sugar didn't quite taste as good) the turrets were the hardest to costruct and cover with biscuit and these ones are a none edible part of the cake (infact they are florist oasis and card) the shells are real and the table and chairs are dolls house furniture, the toppers are handmade and bought in, these cost £65 for the pair. the cost also includes delivery and set up to the bournemouth area.
now we also had a cake tasting meeting which has to be included.
unlike other bakers and cake makers that work from home i also pay my tax and national insurance and i pay for public liability insurance too so this all has to be taken into account.
i am happy to work to anyones budget and of course there is always a way to get the cake of your dreams without paying through the roof for it - changing design toppings boards etc, i think the saying i saw somewhere on here is you pay for what you get and i will never charge extra just because its a wedding - you literally pay for the time and ingredients :)

I have a celebration cake business, people have no idea how much work goes into a wedding cake. Driving to meet the client. Meeting with client. Cost of fuel to bake cake. Cost of ingredients. Cost of boards, box, decorating sundries. Then there is the time of driving to the venue, the time taken to set up the cake on a Saturday. The cost of hiring the stand. The hours and hours taken to actually make the cake, all the carving, constructing.
YABU.

BullieMama, that's simply not true that people bump up the price because it's a wedding. Usually there is a lot more time involved in wedding cake around the periphary - setting up, hiring stands, meeting with demanding Bridezilla and going the extra mile to ensure that the wedding cake is absolutely perfect in every single way

I put a lot of fucking hard work into wedding cakes and resent your "oh they're just ripping people off" implication rather more than somewhat

I'd love to see some of you that "I could easily knock that up" actually do it. Please feel free to post the pictures here

'S a bit macabre clevercow?

Nice sandcastle cake on here (hopefully will work)

Mine was £200 off Ebay:

www.whiteorchidcakes.co.uk/372_500_csupload_32492108.jpg?u=1839649488

www.whiteorchidcakes.co.uk/372_500_csupload_32492108.jpg?u=1839649488

@wonderlandbabe
i pay my tax and i pay my national insurance i also am inspected and have liability insurance - i am proud of this!

you don't, yet you charge someone £90 for a cake - family or not if you take money for offering a service you are running a business and could be 1, fined £100 for not notifying inland revenue and 2, taken to court for tax invasion.

I would suggest that Wonderlandbabe is "making" the cake for free and the £90 is for materials. Therefore she is not 'offering a service' she is doing a favour for a friend.

Clevercow - you are very clever, but also very, very snippy

I had a much more detailed cake than that for my wedding, and it only cost £300. It had a handmade board, four tiers, and a smaller sandcastle, but also loads of differents sea creatures all over it that were hand carved out of icing. It must have taken days to make all the detail.

And it was the yummiest cake I have ever tried! I got very excited when my friend used the same cake maker for her dh's birthday cake because even though it wasn't as extravagant, it was just as delicious.

Mmmmmmm...cake.....mmmm...

entirely misses point of thread

cece we had a similarly themed wedding (although ours was mostly tentacles). I would have loved this cake but it was not to be

Clevercow I don't dispute the costings at all - people do underestimate the costs of cakes - but I am disappointed that the table, chairs, and turrets are non-edible and the figures bought in. I could make those turrets out of cake .

In fact, setting aside a good website and some determined self-publicity, all your cakes fall into the "I could do better than that" category. And yet you presumably make a reasonable living out of it, which is encouraging, I guess.

"tax invasion."

....I'm not sure that's what you meant.

A friend of mine who is a cook made me a special birthday cake for ds - chocolate, shaped like a Dalek and fed about 40 people. The ingredients alone cost something like £50. As she's a friend she didn't charge for her time, fuel, etc. etc. etc. but I see how a professional cake from someone who does this for a living could easily cost several hundred pounds.

(Oh, and this is going back about five years, btw, so ingredients probably even more expensive now.)