to ask how much you would pay for homemade Christmas cake

[TheHopefulBaker]

I am looking into ways to easily earn a bit of extra cash. I make a christmas cake every year just for myself and family as I love doing it, so I'll be putting in the money and time regardless. Every year I get feedback that my Christmas cake is lovely and I should sell them.

I'm wondering if it would be worth it to invest a bit more time and effort to make a few more, and maybe make a bit of money. I was thinking I could take them along to my local car boot sale in October and November.

I'm just wondering how much to ask. I usually make medium round cakes and decorate them with marzipan and royal icing. Then add a few simple decorations on top. Nothing fancy.

I'll try add a photo of last year's

How much do you think people would pay for a cake like this at a car boot sale?

Thanks in advance for any thoughts!

If I had tasted and liked your cake, I might buy one off you directly.
But I wouldn't buy one made by a stranger.
And I wouldn't dream of buying one at a car boot sale!

As PP said, if there are some people in your life you could give them to as a gift, or if you could donate them instead of something else, that might work.

It's tricky, my cousin make those chocolate biscuit plum puddings and her entire family seem to expect free ones every year.

I would buy a homemade cake. However, I’m sorry to say that yours look a bit basic. All you’ve done is plonked some decorations on an iced caked.

@ReignOfError gives good advice regarding costs.

Maybe just sell cupcakes at these fairs. You may get more sales.

I ❤️ Christmas cake and Christmas pudding.

That size Christmas cake would be very expensive, I think you would have better luck making them a much smaller size and in squares and simply decorate them ( no figurines)
Not many people want the big Christmas cakes any more and sometimes they are just hanging around for weeks as no one eats that much Christmas cake

I loooooooove Christmas cake and I cba to make it.

I’d potentially spend quite a lot (£40/50?) on a really swanky home made one that I thought would be amazing. But if I’m not getting something amazing, it would be M&S all the way.

Years ago I made an apricot loaf for a charity fundraiser. They sold it for £4. I'd guess that the ingredients were around £10.

I’d only buy if I knew you tbh and not random and certainly not car boot sale. I’d pay £15 probably

There’s no way I’d buy a cake from a random at a boot sale - your home could be unhygienic. If you have a reputation for making good Christmas cake among your family and friends then offer to make for them only

I’m not as harsh as some of the posts, I don’t think a car boot is the best place to sell them but, I think if you made small ones and put all the ingredients on a tag and wrapped them in cellophane and rented a stall at a Christmas market in a church hall or something you could sell them, marketed as gifts for elderly relatives or single people.

Don’t know about large ones, but a friend of mine makes lovely little individual iced Christmas loaves and they go down a storm at Christmas craft fayres. I’m sure she makes more on them than she would using the same mixture for a large cake.

Honestly, I think you’d have difficulty turning a profit. I make my own and it’s a terrific faff to do well.

Christmas craft fair - yes

Car boot sale - hello, no

I have made Christmas cakes to sell. This was around 2007 and I had orders for around 23. I can’t remember exactly what I charged but it was at least £25 each.

It was A LOT of work. I baked for days on end and then spent days icing.

I don’t think the money covered what I spent in ingredients or time even back then.

It’s not going to be the nice little earner that you hope, I think I can guarantee that.

Make your own, enjoy it and save yourself the hassle!

Have you sat down and figured out what the cost would be to you for the ingredients? For a high quality cake I imagine it's not insubstantial and you would therefore have to charge a decent amount to make it worth your while. if I was going to purchase a Christmas cake, personally I would buy a professionally made one. There's no way I would buy one from a car boot sale.

Well, as a starting point, work out how much all the ingredients and decorations etc cost, and go from there.

But... to be brutally honest (and I know it's a fuzzy picture) but those cakes look pretty poorly presented. They may taste amazing, but if you want to sell them they need to look way better than that and people are not going to spend that sort of money (I would expect at least £50+ for it to be worth your while) at a car boot sale on a cake.

Ultimately though, even with top-notch presentation you are not going to make much of a profit, if any. People always undervalue things like this. My mum used to make absolutely stunning christmas cakes, both to look at and to taste. Each cake probably had about £50 worth of ingredients in them and hours and hours of time spent on them, and she absolulely would not have been able to sell them even just to break even.

I honestly don’t think there’s a market for it unless you’re selling to people you know.

I’d say about a tenner as you can get one in any supermarket for that. The only money in cakes are the super professional ones that can’t be easily replicated at home.

I'd recommend making small ones wrapped in cellophane and tied with a ribbon and sell them at Christmas fayres. People would buy these for presents etc and for themselves. I'm not sure a boot sale would be the right market for them?

Also, there are added complications with food hygiene, as if you're selling to the public you'd need to register with your council, do a L2 food safety course yourself and provide info on allergens on everything you sell.

Sounds a bit hideous and not simple to do! But it can be done and may be worth some thought if you'd like to take it seriously. Failing that, ask around to friends to see if they'd like you to make one for them. Make sure you cost your ingredients and electric costs properly - then decide on a price to sell.

Don't do it. Fruitcakes are exceedingly expensive to make, and if marzipanned and iced properly take such a large amount of time that it is impossible to make a living unless you have an existing customer base.

I did it for 7 years. It involved a large outlay and pre-sales so there was never an unsold cake being baked. It also relied on an existing customer base from other things I'd baked - so they were prepared to pay artisan prices and not M&S prices.

Even then, 10 years ago befoe the fuel and COL crisis my 'hourly rate', if I worked it out, was absolutely tiny. Everyone also only wants theirs in the week before Christmas so you have to be able to hygeinically stopre all those you've sold (around 40 in my case).

There are a lot bettter options for making money that cakes with extremely high ingredient costs. Novelty Cristmas baked goods are cheaper, faster and have higher profit margins.

@TheHopefulBaker - another point is venues...

At car boot sales people are in a bargain mindset. They want a lot for very little. Local Christmas fairs or craft fairs are more likely to have people prepared to spend. However, if there's a bring and buy cake stand, that will undercut your prices by a lot, so thinking about where to sell is very important.

I reckon the photos don't do the cake justice. It looks traditional and lovely. I wouldn't choose to sell them at a car boot though, it doesn't seem like the right place to sell food items. Makes me feel a bit ick at the thought. Instead maybe create a Facebook page now and make the cakes to order in time for Christmas?

@Whataninterestinglookingpotato sorry I didn't mean to add my comment to your post 😩

Sign up for a 1 day food hygiene course and display your certificate.
I would make 4 or 6 inch cakes and not ice them. Your decorating skills would not help them to sell.
Wrap them well in cling film.
Put a list of ingredients underneath.
You would get £8 for a small plain fruit cake if it contaimed brandy and cherries.

I think it's very hard to go down this route. Personally I would never by a cake from someone I don't know because I have no guarantee of their hygienic standards. Also, I think you need a permit to do this for exactly this reason. Why don't you give them as christmas gifts to family/friends ?

As a few others have said for a cake that big you’d have to charge quite a lot to break even. I make mine in a square tin and then cut into 4 and ice separately. I pay £10 for one a quarter of the size of yours from a local cake shop (when I’m wanting cake and too impatient to wait all the weeks for mine to be ready!). I wouldn’t buy from a car boot but I can’t put my finger on why.

Have you looked into a cake cupboard? There’s one at the end of my road that is filled weekly with sliced cake and makes a lot but depends on footfall in your area.

So do I, especially when eaten with a wedge of cheddar cheese😋