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?

I'd rather go without a cake than serve up a Costco cake, they are revolting.

A supermarket cake is fine, our local Facebook page has folk that are studying at catering college overnight reduced priced baking.

Because it takes time to make it, cost, professional quality. How much do you earn an hour?

Well i had expected around £50 for what i had in mind going on what ive paid in the past.
No loss for them anyway as they are popular.

That sounds reasonable to me.
I paid much more than that for dd's christening cake, 4yrs ago.

pro cakes cost more than you realise because of the time and skills" but I've just had a great paw patrol cake from a local cake maker for £50 which looked great and tasted just as good. I must admit I was surprised that's all it was but it opened my eyes a little.

But have they made a profit or just barely broken even? You don't know, but I imagine if the norm is around at least the £60 mark then going a substantial £10 under means there's barely any real profit there.

Or it could just be that they made more on the higher end cakes allowing them to be more 'reasonable' on the cake you bought.

@Notthisnotthat
I'm with you on avoiding Costco cakes. I saw a carrot cake there once, looked nice enough but the ingredients list was extensive! About 30 crazy ingredients, palm oil, glucose syrup, food colourings to name a few and 4% carrot.
My homemade carrot cake has 7 fresh ingredients in- you get what you pay for!

If other cake makers are cheaper then go with them.

I enjoy baking but it takes hours and hours. I made a decorated triple layer chocolate drip cake, 24 frosted multi-colour cupcakes and a variety of decorated cookies for a friend's birthday. It took me two solid days of baking and decorating to get it done - literally all day both days. It's not just the cost of the ingredients - it's the time and patience and skill needed to get a professional finish.

As my Dad used to say, if something costs £100, it's £10 for the item itself and £90 for knowing how to do it properly.

This is hand carved cake. I lost count of how many hours this took. This was a competition piece but as a cake maker contemplating whether to give up because I can't make a living this post depresses me.

Everyone who runs a small business will know there's no point competing on price because everything is available cheaper from Tesco/Primark/Amazon.

You'll always get hobbyist selling cakes for £20 and hand knitted blankets for £10 but they are obviously barely covering the price of the materials and not paying themselves anything. It does tend to make people think handmade should be cheap though.

Sorry pic didn't post

@waterbottle12 it takes more than 2 hours to bake, make icings, clean up and decorate then you have electricity, water, cake boards, equipment and ingredients so the decorator is not getting anywhere near that an hour.

I only home bake but I use swiss meringue buttercream and ganache and the ingredient cost quickly add up.

The birdhouse cake took about the same amount of time as the pearl and flower cake and both were hours of work. The cost was upwards of $50 just in ingredients and boards. The two tier cake was less work than the other two but the ingredients cost more due to the extra ganche and SMBC etc.

I don't bake professionally, I do it for my family only and it costs me a fortune. Last night I made ganache for y DD's birthday cake, an 8inch round that will be 6 inches tall. The ganache alone cost me $14 and the chocolate was on special.

Do you know how much time and effort people put in to making even the simplest cakes, plus all the ingredients etc they have to buy.
Most of them probably don't even make minimum wage on some of the cakes they make.
If you want a cheap cake don't go to someone who does it for a living.

They didn't want to make the cake. That's a lot for a plain 6", unless you're in an affluent area.

My bet is they didn't want the order though. 6" cakes are a pain in the arse and often more trouble than they're worth.

Source: am cake maker.

Gahh sorry about that. It said it didn't flipping post.

Wow Raining (although it's not my cup of tea) you have great skills!!

And you deserve to be paid for them.

Economy of scales is the answer. A bakery will be able to buy their ingredients wholesale at a cheaper price than a small home based business. Also there maybe a difference in the quality of ingredients used.

Former professional, now hobbyist baker for family and fun. The compliments are nice, but the real fun is in seeing peoples faces when they ask me to do something and how much it would cost. I think a lot of people seriously have no grasp on the time some of these things take, even simple cakes, for practiced bakers.

My dd's cake was similar to this.

We had a lovely 3 tier wedding cake from M and S at a fraction of the price we were quoted from local cake makers.

I just made my own I bought a topper and ribbon off ebay (the ribbon has his name on dates etc) and just made a cake 🤷‍♀️ the second christening I made cupcakes with little toppers bought from Ebay again named dated etc because my son was lactose and wheat intolerant so it was easier doing individual ones

It still cost a lot of time money and effort

What happened to the days when we made our own cakes? These used to be fruit cakes for special occasions and sponges with jam and cream for birthdays. There was a box of assorted decorations at the back of the cupboard (in some cases caked with royal icing) and on birthdays the boy or girl got to choose the icing colour. Shop bought cakes were simple and not the hideously expensive artistic creations of today. I wanted to buy a simple decorated sponge a while back and couldn’t find one anywhere.

YANBU - upwards of £70 for a 6" cake BEFORE the decs is expensive.

I can knit. I can knit well. I can knit absolutely lovely animals, any animal you can think of. I knit them for pleasure and give them to a specific charity for them to sell. It really pisses me off when somebody asks me to knit one for them if they buy the wool. Each animal takes me around ten hours to complete. To make it worth my while I would expect to charge for ten hours of my time. NMW is currently £8.72. I can imagine the response I’d get if I agreed to make a lovely woolly lamb but in addition to providing the wool I’ll need you to pay me almost £90. It’s the same with baking cakes. People only ever think of the cost of the ingredients. They never, ever factor in the maker’s time.

That is ridiculous for a 6 inch sponge cake!