Fucking 70 quid for a cake????

[Hairwizard]

As title says. Quoted 'from' 70 quid for a Christening cake. This was based on a 6" square cake with 4 sponge layers. Not tiers. Buttercream icing. Any decs toppers etc would be extra and from 8 - 15 quid!
Am i missing something?? How the f does a cake cost that much?

You all need this link, I’ve laughed out loud so many times looking at the horrors on it that people send in.

www.cakewrecks.com/home/2010/6/11/we-learned-good.html

Enjoy

You asked for a quote, they gave you one! If you don't like it then go to Asda to get one

Someone asked me to recreate one of my favourite scarves and told me I should sell them. I told her that materials cost 50-60 pounds and then took me 12 hours to complete. If I am paid 15 pounds an hour for my time in my day job, I would expect at least that an hour "overtime", so that would be a very expensive scarf.

Thus is why makers are giving up directly making and being cleverer about it. Create and sell the (scarf) patterns digitally instead, or create hobby kits you can sell enmass. When it comes to cakes, do corporate events only or specialise.

The ordinary Joe has no appreciation. Imo knitting and baking is perceived especially poorly. The problem is everyone has a Gran who knocked out baby clothes for nothing but love. And arcylic shop knits are cheap.

Baking....I have seen people at charity stalls tutting at £1.50 for a cup cake!

We've all been spoilt by cheap imports and labour. I'm broke myself but understand the hours involved in baking, knitting, painting or sewing something but admittedly because I do it.

But I must admit it is the hobbyists that sell for materials alone that create half the problem. Go on Etsy and you'll see someone selling a pure wool or rainbow knitted/crochet blanket for £60. How is anyone running a business meant to compete? Same with Cakes.

I did say "I admit I do not like to pay a lot for fleeting items", meaning I get that some people do. But for some £70 for a cake is just objectively too expensive, as is cashmere, and a professional hair colour. And yet we get told we have shit hair and wear £2 acrylic clothes from the market. If that's not sneering...

This is another one of those areas where 'women's work' is viewed as being essentally worthless, in the sense of not deserving to be paid for time and skills.

I don't often see complaints at people charging for their time to paint a living room, or unblock a drain, or re-wire a light fitting.

But when it's knitting or putting icing on a cake, people are quick to accuse the maker of being greedy. Funny that.

I bake cakes. I decided when my dd was born that I would persevere and learn how to make a decent sponge, and I did so. So we got used to eating home-made cakes fairly regularly at home.

What really shocked me was when my mil bought a supermarket cake for dd's second birthday. It tasted like sawdust, no joke, and cost over £15. We ended up throwing it away. That's when I realised that such things may be cheap, but they aren't even worth it at that price.

With all these modern pricings, you really gave to ask whether you are paying for value. It's like fast fashion. Okay, a top may be cheap at £10, but if you can only wear it once before it looks like a dish rag, then it's actually a rather expensive buy.

It was the same with that supermarket cake. We had three pieces before we threw it away as inedible. Each piece cost us over £5. That's expensive for what was, essentially, a mouth full of rubbish.

I think you'll find a lot of self employed cake makers are on a lot less than minimum wage.

To be honest I don't know why a lot of them bother to give away their skills at below minimum wage levels. There are a lot of unappreciative people around.

Well, that depends on your taste, doesn't it? My mum never baked or paid anyone for homemade cakes. I had supermarket birthday cake my whole life, and I always ate it! It never got thrown away. And now I have tasted homemade at small cafes etc - I still do bit turn my nose up at supermarket cakes.

I've got plenty of tops that have cost about £10 and somehow they have all lasted more than one wash without looking like dirty rags. I'll admit primary ones less so, but I've some Matalan ones that have lasted very well, and some from Tkmaxx and Asda. All my pyjamas come from Sainsburys or Morissons, and last a few years. I have a pair of Primary block heel boots I've had for 4 years now.

I don't mind the more expensive stuff, but only if it's in the sale! Never full-price.

Primark keeps auto/c to primary

Ok i make cakes in the north east I use free range eggs and buy larger bulk packs that reduce my cost I would have charged for a 6 inch plain sponge cake with butter icing £20 topper would be extra I am insured and registered in would make around £10 from this cake but I only spend and hour tops and I can charge these lower amount because I normally cooking and making at least 4 cakes at a time so I don't have to wait to long between each little job and 4 cake 4 hours for basic however if it was a fondant cake it starts at £25 as more time involved

The ordinary Joe has no appreciation. Imo knitting and baking is perceived especially poorly. The problem is everyone has a Gran who knocked out baby clothes for nothing but love. And arcylic shop knits are cheap.

Oh, tell me about this. I knit and had someone in my family request a copy of an Alexander McQueen cardigan they'd seen in Selfridges. Intrigued, I checked it out. Yes, I could make it but the wool alone would have cost about £300 plus. The time at NMW would have been double that.

I think the problem is that a lot of assumptions people have about these types of crafts are very dated. They remember their grandmothers knitting at a time when British wool was relatively cheap; they also don't realise the labour involved in producing something by hand.

When I look at knitwear, I'm actually astonished these days at the waste and unsustainability of it all. All that energy and material and time to create and ship an acrylic garment across the world to be bought for £25 that won't wash well or last.

If you wanted a way to waste natural resources in the quickest time possible and boost pollution and environmental harm at speed, fast fashion is probably how you would do it.

I can bake a cake, so I did my kids' birthday cakes until the time ds was at a friend's house and they found a book of cakes and he set his heart on a fabulous castle with fondant walls.

Way out of my skillset. Luckily two cake makers live nearby and did brilliant jobs on that and a few future cakes for now £60.

Until one year family stuff meant I didn't contact cake makers in time and they were booked up. One offered to do her basic kids sponge and buttercream for £25 but I assured her I could do that myself and not waste her time.

So I figured I had a day off and embarked on the cake, cutting pieces to shape, icing, then using fondant for the first time. It took me an entire day plus a couple hours the previous day to bake the cake. Eventually it did look great (people said wow, did X have time to make your cake after all?), but making little things out of fondant by hand takes forever!

A professional might have been a bit quicker but would have had to figure out the design in terms of pans and cutting, and charge for that. Given cleaners are paid £12 an hour, a baker is no less skilled!

I've been able to do cakes myself since thanks to buying printed icing pictures on Ebay and ability to buy various colours of Minecraft fondant squares, individual colours of hundreds and thousands, etc.

My dad enjoyed cake decorating when I was a kid and I remember the time we wanted to do water in a pool so got me to remove all the red and orange from a huge bowl of hundreds and thousands... I certainly felt that deserved wages!

This is why I stopped baking for cake sales - my ingredients and time were being sold for pennies - I'd rather chuck them a few quid instead.
There loads of bespoke handmade things I can't afford but it's hardly reasonable for me to think I'm entitled to afford these things just because I want them.

A cake? That will just be looked at a bit and then eaten and gone? No. I admit I just don't like to pay a lot for fleeting items

Well don’t then. Simple. Get one from Asda.

But that doesn’t mean skilled, creative people shouldn’t charge properly for their superior product.

There are plenty of people out there with different priorities who are happy to pay.

As others have said. it's a free market. Making this whole thread moot. You can make a cake yourself, buy a cheaper mass-produced one, or look for a cheaper cake-maker. In all industries there will be a range of price points. Companies are free to charge what they want and customers are free to decide how much they're willing to pay.

There loads of bespoke handmade things I can't afford but it's hardly reasonable for me to think I'm entitled to afford these things just because I want them.

Exactly

I'm nearly 50 and I've eaten a fair bit of cake over the years. I couldn't tell you what the most delicious cake I've ever eaten was, or where I ate it. To me it's a fleeting moment of "Nice cake" and that's it.

I could probably remember 3 or 4 decorated cakes but they were the ones where the decoration is what sticks in my mind, and in fact for 2 of those the actual cake wasn't very nice to eat as they were just too sickly.

I disagree that a 6" undecorated sponge cake is going to look like a bespoke, memorable, centrepiece. That would have to be one amazing tasting fucking cake.

disagree that a 6" undecorated sponge cake is going to look like a bespoke, memorable, centrepiece. That would have to be one amazing tasting fucking cake. And that’s ok - we all value things differently.🤷‍♀️

There are plenty of people out there with different priorities who are happy to pay.

I never said people shouldn't just saying why I wouldn't

Make your own then you are only paying for ingredients and using your oven.

If you pay someone else you are paying for ingredients, oven, electricity, insurance, experience, time, wages, rates, pension, national insurance etc.

People's time, talent and effort just isn't valued enough. I do animal portraits as gifts and often get told I should go into business - no chance! I would earn more on an hourly basis for cleaning. When it's something deemed enjoyable I think people are more reluctant to pay so much!

Same with dressmaking. I used to make all my own and DD's dresses as it was cheaper than buying. One of my work colleagues came in with a suit pattern and some material and asked if I could make it for her and she'd pay me for my time. She thought £20 would do. Absolutely no clue as to the labour involved. Go to Saville Row and see how much a hand made suit costs, then come back and offer me £20 with a straight face!

Another issue is that the customers who buy cheap cakes from hobby bakers working for peanuts genuinely believe that the price they pay is a fair one. It's not fair on the professional cake makers who have trained for years to perfect their art and are charging what is the correct price for it. They are the ones losing business.

But your profit is the £20 an hour. Why are you charging an extra 30% ?

No i think you will find it is not ...... I am charging my customer £20 per every hour of my skilled time and knowledge.. the 30% Is the extra I am charging on the ingredients and sundries and i have needed to create build and transport the cake. There is much more than shoving a bit of flour sugar, butter and egg into a mixer and then into a pan that goes into the price of a cake

No I am not doubting your skill, the cost , or the value of your time. I am just confused as to why you are charging £20 per hour plus 30% , £20 per hour is a very decent income. How does the 30% come into play?
@Cati1234

One of my work colleagues came in with a suit pattern and some material and asked if I could make it for her and she'd pay me for my time. She thought £20 would do.

What did you say to her and what did she reply?!