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?

The christening was almost a year ago!
Doesn't time fly when there's a global pandemic.

@rwalker

go to marks and spencer

I agree for a small cake of 6” it’s costly for that size. No point.

Simple 7 inch chocolate drip cake..cost me 40 quid in ingredients, plus board and box(there was a LOT of chocolate in there!) I planned it, I shopped for it, using my petrol and my time, I switched on my oven for about 2 hours, which are all COSTS too. And then I made it, which took probably 3 hours of my time. OP.. can I be bold enough to ask you how much you'd have charged for it if you'd made it?? How much is your time worth?? More or less than mine??

Sorry, OP, I think YABU. As others have said, any business calculates cost based on what it costs to keep the lights on (ie. ingredients, equipment, insurance, staff, electricity etc bills, rent on premises, business rates etc), plus a (usually) small profit.

As to the other cake makers in your area, perhaps they have lower overheads, perhaps they're deliberately running at a loss to win business or perhaps they have a partner who can help pay their personal household expenses if they earn less than expected in their business.

There are other options (buying elsewhere or making it yourself) if you're not able or prepared to pay a reasonable fee.

Yeah I've looked at this for a different occasion (birthday not christening) and some places it was £60 upwards or even once place £90 onwards. We are going to steal some ideas off their Instagram page and try and make it at home for a fraction of the cost.
Might be a total disaster though

Frankly? I hope it is. What makes you think that you can whip up an instagram ready cake for a few quid in a few minutes. Have you been watching too many tiktoks?

Celebration cakes are more expensive than bog standard cakes for the same reason wedding dresses are more expensive than something you'd wear to go shopping.

Pretty sure OP doesn't need the cake anymore...

I have just ordered a cake for my daughters 16th. I am quite good at cakes myself but I want this cake to be special and to have that professional finish I know I can't achieve. I'm paying £50 for a three tier chocolate cake decorated to fit a theme to feed 6-8 people. I'm happy to pay that. I'm not a fan of supermarket ot costco cakes, they taste very artificial to me.

I’m about to pay£150 for my son’s 18th birthday cake made to order by a local baker. She’s doing everything I ask and it will be amazing. I’ve never bought a posh cake before but he’s having a lockdown birthday and I want to make it as special as I can.

Oh ha just realized this is a super zombie thread 🤦🏼‍♀️

Anyone fancy a slice of zombie cake

The last birthday cake I made DS wasn't particularly fancy, but cost me about £20 in ingredients alone - coloured icings don't come cheap.

It then took at least 3 hours to bake and decorate.

Professional cakes are expensive, but often once you've deducted the price of ingredients, the baker's hourly rate isn't much more than minimum wage.

Wonder what OP would've been quoted a year on from when she started the thread

£15 here, have to add any decoration but you can buy those ready made.

www.cloudninecakecentre.co.uk/products/sponge-cake-base-blank-canvas-filled-and-covered-with-sugarpaste?variant=44890976078

Time, insurance, ingredients, talent. Do what we did for our wedding; buy a ready made white icing sponge cake from MnS, toppers online, put them on and done. 😁

I'm 64 and can remember the shocked comments if a church group met at someone's house and it was - gasp - "shop-bought cake". It was tantamount almost to say the woman was a prostitute along the lines of 'all fur coat and no knickers'. The women who went to the meeting felt insulted that the woman couldn't be bothered making a sponge cake putting jam in the middle and sifting icing sugar over the top through a doiley to make a lacy pattern.

My birthday cakes were all home made and decorated. My mother made my wedding cake, iced it and paid a confectioner to do all the lace work from a cake in a magazine.

I've bought Costco cakes in the past - to take into the nursery when dd was little. They're OK when you need 30-40 pieces but they're made with oil and incredibly sweet.

The cakes I made at home were made with butter, chocolate etc. Dd's favourite, a checkerboard cake, needs 400g of plain chocolate for the icing.

I stopped making them after she and her friends decided to smash it into their faces.

@Whiskeylover45

Time, insurance, ingredients, talent. Do what we did for our wedding; buy a ready made white icing sponge cake from MnS, toppers online, put them on and done. 😁

The OP really doesn't need cake advice anymore.

This thread is almost a year old

Bit surprised that nobody has questioned the logistics of having a christening at the moment though

You obviously don’t bake

Bespoke cakes are expensive.
70 quid isn't that expensive for a professionally baked christening cake.
I've seen people pay over a hundred for a DC professional birthday cake, Wedding cake are astronomically priced too.

Didn't realise it was a zombie.

Thats about right, if not a bit on the cheaper side.

Baking isnt cheap, time, overheads and her skills.

Which dipstick boosted this and how?

@bigchris

I'd only pay that much for an epic themed cake , like the whole of Hogwarts intricately done !

I made a cake in the shape of a dragon, about the size of a cat. Making and decorating it took 8h.

So £70 would cover labour, but no ingredients.

That sounds about right to me. You are not just paying for the ingredients (which are expensive enough) but for the time, oven, overheads and expertise.

Gosh, £70 is an absolute rip off. The ingredients to make a cake like that cost under £20! It would only take a cake maker a few hours to russle that up! And cake tins, icing molds, extra fridge/freezer and ovens don't cost much. No need for insurance either, nor any need to make a profit or cover sick pay or pension payments etc. They should obviously do it for £5 a hour and make a loss!!
I'm sure that you will easily be able to make one yourself, given that it's so cheap and easy to do! I'm fact, you could retrain as a cake maker yourself be swanning around in a Mercedes before you know it!

@Hugoslavia

But the hourly rate is much lower if you work it out over the time that has elapsed since the original post