@BoxOfDreams
I think you were ripped off. Ingredients what - £15 max? Time - 6 hours max? Not a good likeness either.
When’s the last time you made a cake?! £15 ffs.
I made a cake this week - it took me the best part of 3 days to shop for the ingredients, prep the tins, bake the cakes, make the frosting, decorate the cake and clean up afterwards. Not to mention the time liasing with the customer to decide on a design, arrange collection etc - it all takes time.
The sponge itself was prob £5-7 in ingredients. It was a big cake, not fancy looking but tasty! The butter icing used 6 packs of butter @£1.80 each, 3 boxes of icing sugar at @£2 each, vanilla extract - probs another £1 on its own, plus all the chocolates and flavourings. I made homemade fruit curds for the fillings and two different flavours of butter icing, plus chocolate ganache, so cream and Belgian chocolate to account for too.
The whole thing cost me at least £40 just for ingredients, plus the baking paper circles for lining tins, the electricity for baking them, the box, ribbons and labels for packaging etc all £1+ each
Plus as a business you need to pay for insurance, equipment, tins, colours and flavours, cutters, utensils, wear and tear on your kitchen etc, training courses etc and memberships if you are part of any business groups.
You have to cover your hourly rate for when you’re actually baking and decorating, and then washing up and cleaning etc but also cover the unbillable hours when you’re replying to emails or posting on socials etc as your hourly rate isn’t just for the time you spend in the kitchen, if you’re doing it as a job you need to be paid full time, which includes all the other aspects of running a business.
You also need to account for holiday and sick pay as a self employed person, and when setting your prices, you should also factor in profit for your business, so that as you grow, you can outsource work and pay a decent hourly rate to someone else while also making money for the business. What you pay yourself is not profit.
So all those saying £25 need to give their head a wobble!
OP the cake is fine. If you wanted a more realistic one you should have paid the £350 to the baker who would have been able to do that for you. Asking someone who does drip cakes to make a realistic animal is like asking someone who does paint by numbers to do your portrait. You get what you pay for. In this case a perfectly nice looking dog cake. If your kid is unimpressed with it then you’ve inflated their expectations of what a kids birthday cake should look like - any other kid would be delighted with this!