AIBU to be disappointed in this cake…

[Notwhatiimagined]

I picked up dds cake today and it was not what I expected.

Would you be happy with this cake? I’ve attached two pics below, one was the pic I sent to the cake maker of what I wanted (a family dog) and the other picture is of the cake.

Also his head is made of Rice Krispies as apparently heads are hard to do. I wasn’t aware that it wouldn’t be all sponge.

It’s from a proper cake shop, not someone who does it as a hobby.

What do you all think?

Absolutely awful I'd be really disappointed in that !!!!

I voted YABU in terms of you showed your dog and you got that dog as a cake.
But just been chatting to DH who is a baker, it’s an absolute fucking rip off. He’s got a reputation as the best in our local area and wouldn’t ask for more than 60 quid.
He’s not into cake artistry so much as your dragon baker, and whilst he does love birthday cakes he’s more of an artisan pastry baker.
He said “There are people who can charge over £100 for cakes. But they don’t decorate cakes. They’re artists who use cakes not canvas”

@LoisLane66

£30 for Ingredients? You're joking. 6 eggs, 3 lbs real butter and 4 boxes of icing sugar plus a box of rice krispies, flour and maybe a jar of jam for filling along with buttercream. £2 + 6 + 5 + 1.50 + 1.50 + 2 = £18 max. That's if proper butter was used and if the other ingredients were bought at store and not commercial prices. Much better to look on YouTube for DIY ideas.

I’m a professional cake maker and those ingredient prices are not right for quality ingredients on a cake of that size. It would be at least a 10 egg mix and you’re not including things like the cake board and box.

This cake is fine, it’s not amazing and it’s definitely not realistic. However £110 is never going to buy you a cake that looks like your actual dog. I always turn down carved cakes because it’s not even worth quoting for them, nobody would pay what I’d want for the time it would take me to make a realistic dog cake.

Rice Krispies is a very common option for things like heads that are an awkward shape and need to be light.

I haven’t read all 38 pages, but I think there’s a mismatch of talent v expectation here.

@LoisLane66

£30 for Ingredients? You're joking. 6 eggs, 3 lbs real butter and 4 boxes of icing sugar plus a box of rice krispies, flour and maybe a jar of jam for filling along with buttercream. £2 + 6 + 5 + 1.50 + 1.50 + 2 = £18 max. That's if proper butter was used and if the other ingredients were bought at store and not commercial prices. Much better to look on YouTube for DIY ideas.

Sure, if you miss out half the ingredients used, and ignore the board etc you can whittle it down to £18

If you actually costed it out properly you can't though

Coming in late, and am going against the grain. I am not a fan, and would not be happy, unless I had paid £25 or less.

£110 for THAT?! You woz well ripped off mate!

@Notwhatiimagined I am with you, it's a bit shit. Looks like something a year 7 child did for a baking project at school. Does not look remotely professional. Clearly a lot of people here are easily pleased. I would have wanted a refund.

And people are quite entitled to say they think £110 is ridiculous for a kids birthday cake! It IS! No matter how rich or poor you are, no fucking WAY can anyone say that is a good price for a birthday cake for a child, and certainly not one that looks like THAT!

Funny as well, how some posters say they think this is an OK price to pay, like it's just small change. 'Gotta let people know how considerably richer that YOW I am...'

And if it takes someone 19-20 hours to make ONE cake, (as someone said further back in the thread,) I think they need to rethink their vocation in life! Most bakeries would go tits-up inside of a month, if each cake took 19-20 hours to make!

@glomofnit

at all the posters saying YABU because it's a nice cake 'and they couldn't do that'. This is NOT THE POINT The point is that someone purporting to be a professional has supplied something a reasonably talented amateur could manage, not that it's better than whatever you could do. If someone did you a fairly shit haircut, and charged you three figures for it, would you shrug and say 'oh well, fair enough, I couldn't do that'?

Yes! Exactly this! ^ I can't believe some of the posts on here tbh. I don't believe anyone would settle for this cake if they had paid such a ludicrous price as £110. It's farcical. As you say, it looks like an amateur did it. I have seen waaaaay better on Bake Off.

I wouldn't be happy at all. Looks pretty basic and underwhelming for £110.

So it’s really sweet- however It’s not great I terms of realistic dog cake it’s not great. I’ve seen amazing ones and this isn’t even close.

@GlomOfNit

(I suppose) charging £110 for a few hours' work and the ingredients is fair enough.

As I (and probably many others) have previously pointed out, this type of cake takes a damn sight more than 'a few' hours, you're looking at more like 9-12hrs from start to finish. Even at NMW you're looking at £100+ in labour without ingredients, powering the oven, dowels, ribbons, cake board and box, etc.

I've spoken to my son who (several years ago) made the cakes I showed up-thread and he said that he'd be charging upwards of £150 for something similar these days, probably more since boards, boxes, (food grade) dowels, sugar paste, etc, are difficult to get due to driver shortages and the cost of gas/electric having just gone through the roof.

Oh yes, you also have to take into account the quality of the ingredients used. My son never uses margarine or butter substitutes, always free range eggs, top quality butter, sugar paste, chocolate, etc. These can make a difference if a much as £7-10 on a 10" cake.

(Sugar paste for those who aren't professional cake bakers/decorators is commonly thought to be fondant icing).

@Notwhatiimagined

It’s not the price I’m querying, it’s more so if the dog looks like the photo and if you gave that photo to a cake maker would you expect that outcome?

I'd not expect it to look exactly like the photo. But jeez that tail was an afterthought after it'd been put in the box, surely?!

You are being unreasonable for paying 110 for a kids bday cake. You are being even more unreasonable for paying 150 for a kids bday cake!!!! What a total waste of money. I'm sorry its gross extravagance. I don't care if the cake was identical to the real dog, it is a cake. Flour, eggs and butter. Kids blow out candles on it and then it's cut up and looks like any other bloody cake that's been cut up.

I've actually surprised myself with how strongly I feel about this but it's just repulsive to be spending that much money of essentially something that is to look at for 5 mins then cut up and its like any other cake.
I mean, to answer your initial question, if you spent £30, I'd say it looks pants 🤣 bit of butter cream and some seriously naff cut puts of fondant. I genuinely think I could do better. Asda do a pug for a tenner that's more realistic.

@MyPatronusIsACat

And if it takes someone 19-20 hours to make ONE cake, (as someone said further back in the thread,) I think they need to rethink their vocation in life! Most bakeries would go tits-up inside of a month, if each cake took 19-20 hours to make!

It was me that said this and I was talking about my son who is trained/qualified to do this work. I also said he was 18 when he made those cakes and the 19hrs referred to the TWO teddy bears he did for a set of twins' birthdays.

It's hard enough to carve two cakes to be identical in the first place but it is extremely difficult (especially in the middle of a very hot summer, which was when he made these) to create the fur effect with buttercream, it's not like placing and moulding a layer of sugarpaste over a basic cake, it takes time and precision. Yes, it probably could be done more quickly if the producer doesn't care about the quality of their work or if they're older with more experience than an 18yr old, but at the end of the day, my son takes pride in what he does and will spend more time making sure something is right and as a result gets return customers and fantastic recommendations.

By the way, for those raising geographical issues around prices, I'm in Birmingham so that's where my son was when he was 18 but he's now in Hull although he uses the same pricing structure.

Rice Krispies are used a lot in cakes I think it’s cute and did you see other cakes that the shop made they usually have a portfolio to show previous work..

I am qualified in cake decorating, I don't do them for sale and try to get out of even doing them for my kids if I can. It's a lot of work and incredibly stressful and most people wouldn't pay enough for a cake for me to earn minimum wage. I wouldn't have taken your brief for anything, shaped cakes are the absolute worst. I think what you got was probably fair, you had a much higher quote from someone who could maybe have produced something much more to your expectations.

Cakes cute. I made son chocolate cake recently and ingredients alone came to £30 quid. Always amazed by how cheap people want professional cakes

@Northernlassie1974

Asda do a pug for a tenner that's more realistic.

You really don't want to know exactly what goes into one of those or how it's made!

My son's day job is actually with the company that makes most of the supermarket celebration cakes. He does his bespoke cakes in his spare time.

Supermarket cakes are OK for kids and if you just want to look at it, bespoke cakes are more for adults/special occasions because a 9yr old doesn't appreciate either the work that goes into or cost of making a bespoke cake, -although from this thread, many adults don't either-.

@LeilaSP
AHH, but you have no idea about the quality of ingredients used...do you?
It doesn't come with a guarantee that organic eggs of the Clarence Court type or Charentes or Jersey butter was used or premium conserve in the filling. I have yet to have a cake made where I was absolutely certain that those kind of premium ingredients were used, unless it was made by myself.
Anyway, even premium products cannot be exclusively tasted in a cake as opposed to slightly cheaper butter and certainly not eggs. By the time you've waded through all that sickly buttercream you won't be tasting much else.
Even premium products at wholesale prices are less than I'd pay at Waitrose for say, 250g of butter costing £3.

My argument isn't that cake makers charge that much for cakes, it's the fact the OP has agreed to lay that much for a kids bday cake.
For what it's worth, I'm not against cake makers charging huge prices for cakes, more that people choose to spend that much on cakes, particularly for a child's bday. It's grossly extravagant.

On another note, this particular cake is not a work of art!!!!!

Cake boards and boxes on Amazon are peanuts. I don't know where you shop but good grief! it's laughable to think that, even with labour costs, a cake of that size (looks pretty small to me and no way 30 slices) with a head made of rice krispies as buttercream (yuk) which can't even be sliced, is is deemed an acceptable price to pay. You have no idea of the quality of the ingredients and nor will ANYONE eating it.

@LoisLane66

Cake boards and boxes on Amazon are peanuts. I don't know where you shop but good grief! it's laughable to think that, even with labour costs, a cake of that size (looks pretty small to me and no way 30 slices) with a head made of rice krispies as buttercream (yuk) which can't even be sliced, is is deemed an acceptable price to pay. You have no idea of the quality of the ingredients and nor will ANYONE eating it.

Yeah they are peanuts on Amazon and you know what? They are shit.

If you want professional quality then it costs a lot more.

Again, would you expect your builder to work for the price of bricks?

Its always the "womens jobs" are always the ones that are under valued. Cake making, child care, carers, ..... and yet these are the jobs that most people would outsource than do themselves.

(bangs head against wall)

Forget it cost £110. That's almost a side issue.

OP went to a professional cake shop. They told her they could make her a like for like cake of her dog. OP even doubled checked this. Yes, they said. Here's our price.

They then gave OP that. A cartoon cake that looks entirely amateur. The resemblance to her dog, is that it's a dog. Piped in the easiest cheapest buttercream method. And far from depicting a long significant tail, like the dog should have, did she forget dogs have tails at all, judging by the weird splodge that looks like it's been crammed in as an afterthought?

Let's not forget she didn't mention half would be rice crispies. These were stale.

It doesn't really matter whether OP was quoted £110, £150, £120.... It doesn't matter if they quoted OP a fiver. They didn't deliver what they agreed too.

As a separate issue, a few people are insisting "you clearly don't know what a good cake costs". Firstly, that's a crap cake OP has there, in both fitting the brief, and we now know, in taste. And then tonnes of us have posted loads of cakes well under £100 that are outstanding in comparison.

But, apparently every cake maker we've encountered is voluntarily working for a loss. Even those successfully in business for 10+yrs. Because it's impossible to make anything decent for those prices...

Well, £110 is not cheap, but cheaper than a memorial sculpture of your fog….if that is what you were expecting, I have a potter friend who makes some very expressive, realistic ones in clay…but the 9yr and his friends would break their teeth on it!

I'd be disappointed. The shape is so different and doesn't show the lovely tail.

I don't think you're being unreasonable to not be thrilled: the facial features are a bit weirdly sited, and the ears are too short. So perhaps it's a tad disappointing, but as others have said, it's cake, not marble; rice crispies are standard for odd shaped bits. It's a sweet idea (no pun etc) and part guests/family etc will think it's lovely. The dog won't give a shit. If you another in future, show the baker these photos and explain what you didn't like.

Sorry, party guests. Not sections of guests.

Oh no... did someone leave a cake out in the rain???