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?

@ParkheadParadise that cake is beautiful! @StoppinBy that pearl cake is stunning, love it. l'd love to try my hand but I just know I'd get the unrealistic requests.

Simple cakes tend to be more hassle than they are worth because people moan about the price..

To give some Insight into a formula many bakers will use. (Well many of the ones I know)

Each baker had a certain % the charge for profit

Hours needed @ hourly rate (includes planning prep such as weighing mixing, baking/hours in oven, decorating.) + cost of making (Costs of making usually include everything: ingredients, decorations, boards, boxes, ribbons – the lot. + utilities (inc insurances) = cost of cake

Cost of cake X (bakers own here) % = profit

Cost of cake x profit = price of cake

For example I charge £ 20 an hour
And my profit is 30%
Utilities depend on size of cake a single cake I usually charge £5 a tiered cake I'll charge 10-15

Last month I made a 4 tier ombre teal and gold wedding cake... nothing fancy quite plain.. a few details each tier was a different but simple flavour

And it cost me £148 to buy the ingredients and 24 hours to make.

So that cake was worked out like this

24h @£20 + £148 + £15 = £643
£643.00 × 30% = £192.90
£643.00 + £192.90 = £835.90

When I get to my unit tomorrow I'll try and upload a picture I need to get it off the camera first though

@Hairwizard Nah I wouldn't pay that.

Go to Sainsbury's or Morrisons. You'll get one from there, for a fifth of that. It will probably be better too.

All the reasons/excuses some people are coming out with to charge £70 for a CAKE are hilarious. Eggs, butter, sugar, cake board, utensils, gas. PMSL! Bollocks does it cost £70 to make a bloody 6" square sponge cake!

@anotherlittlechicken

I thin you accidentally left the biggie of your list there...TIME

*@CatherineOfAragonsPomegranate
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.
*
The cake I ordered seemed to be standard for what he makes- granted it wasn't massive but he isn't a hobby baker, he does it full time so he must be making some money! I would have paid more 🤷🏻‍♀️

For a bog standard 2 layer victoria yes, but a custom 4 layer beautifully iced to cover ingredients, electricity, time and effort yes I see that as a fair price.

I did my own cake, 6 layers butter icing, beautifully decorated, I reckon at least £40 and then several hours baking and decorating.

@anotherlittlechicken it doesn’t cost £8+ to sit there tap tap tapping on a keyboard in an office every hour either, but hey - it’s called national minimum wage for a reason! Quite frankly you sound like an absolute fool - when you go to work for sheer fun of it do come back!!

Ps I am sure that the supermarkets can sell cheaper due to mass production.

It does sound steep for 6” square. 6” square is really small for a cake though, so maybe they were trying to put you off?! That said, decent ingredients are expensive, so you’d be getting a bargain at anything under £50. I did my 3 year old’s cake last year and a pack of food colouring alone was £8.99 (5 colours in tubes).

Ingredients, time, insurance, qualifications, profit

^^ absolutely this

cake ingredients are expensive. and time intensive if done well.
bake your own if you don't want to pay a fair price.

@baubled it’s not your problem but I have known soooo many hobby bakers then there hobby into a “career” that I genuinely believe don’t have an actual clue how much it’s costing them!!! They think yay I’ve charged £30 for a cake!!! “Just butter eggs sugar and flour” they don’t think about the equipment, the colourings, the tins, the electric the TIME, it makes me both sad and angry because these people are often LOSING money, and people who are good at what they do give it up (I HATE baking and making cakes, but I’m bloody good at it, it’s just not feasible to make a living because of peoples attitudes and unrealistic expectations

If you's want to get a cake at hobby prices (although I still think time and skill really matters) then do that.

But if you go to someone running a BUSINESS then expect to pay them above minimum wage for their TIME because they are not doing an unskilled job, they are doing a SKILLED job.

@AlexaAmbidextra I cross stitch in my spare time.. and I often get asked by family members to do one if they buy the items needed.... but not realising the time it takes....I'm half way through one at the moment, 1 sister and 1 cousin have taken a shine too and I'm already 132 hours in...and 4 needles down, it cost me £40 for my threads needles and aida.. I've tallied my hours out of curiosity if I only charged NMW @ 8.72 it would already cost £1195.26p and it's only just half way done 🤦🏼‍♀️ when I told them they not surprisingly said they would pass on one.. which I dont bloody blame them

As a cake maker I'm glad people like you go elsewhere. YABVVVU.

Frankly it boils down to... cake making is a job that is mostly done by less educated women. So naturally it shouldn't cost much... Like caring for disabled or elderly or children. Oh wait... When they suddenly aren't there, will you finally notice?

AlexaAmbidextra I made some knitted catnip toys for a charity to sell last year - we were selling them for £5 at our charity fundraising stall and someone from another charity came to look and kept saying HOW MUCH!? Obviously I wasn't personally making any money out of them but each one took me the best part of an hour to complete + materials. Obviously people have no idea...

I'd be happy to pay that to be honest. It brings me so much joy when it's my little ones birthday - I paid £80 last year fed 25 decent slices and had a theme. When you work out costs etc... You get what you pay for.

I recall DS's christening cake. Shaped like book, enough for about 45/50 people - special theme and beautifully decorated. £72 in ....................1995!

The cake I ordered seemed to be standard for what he makes- granted it wasn't massive but he isn't a hobby baker, he does it full time so he must be making some money! I would have paid more

Cool @baubled not meaning to get at you, was just speculating that often what appears to be reasonable to the customer is often cutting margins thinly to the maker. He may just be making it work well.

I would suggest that shop bought cakes and proper cakes are completely different. Shop bought cakes are machine made and full of cheap ingredients. And they taste horrible. Proper cake is bloomin' lovely. Can you make something a bit simpler yourself?

This is the reason why I stopped my cake making business. Too many people not realising the late nights, time away from your family, spending hours rolling out icing etc. All for them to balk at the price that you quote, which is usually grossly underpriced. As we (professional cake makers) know that if we priced the cakes according to a proper hourly living wage rate, no one would want to pay the price for them.
There are so many people who think, because they have knocked up a few batches of cupcakes, they can call themselves a cake decorating business. What they don't take into account is the environmental health inspections, liability insurance, income tax, training courses etc. So they can make cakes that are not all that great but can sell them cheaply.

Threads like this really piss me off. If you don't like it, go elsewhere. Buy an off-the-shelf cake within your budget but don't start complaining because someone has put a price on their skill. A bespoke product it just that.

Go to Sainsbury's or Morrisons

Yes, a couple of these at £1.20 each, and job's a good 'un!

www.sainsburys.co.uk/shop/gb/groceries/product/details/sainsburys-jumbo-chocolate-swiss-roll

Apologies in advance to all the well educated cake makers and carers btw, sorry I hit send before reviewing my post. My gripe is that anything that is even vaguely perceived as 'women's work' is always undervalued.

Not read all the replies, but that sounds about right for a cake, depending on what you want doing.
You want four layers, and icing too?
I think when it comes to things like this people just don't appreciate it's not just the ingredients, it's also the amount of time, skill and labour put into it.
You want a bog standard generic cake, go to Asda/Tesco/wherever where you can get one for a tenner.
(no, I'm not a cake maker lol)