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!

I do wonder how everyone says it costs a lot of money to bake your cakes. I do all my own baking as it’s much cheaper than buying it in.
OP I don’t think car boots are the right place but I think Facebook would be especially if you delivered. Quite a few people do joke baking with the necessary paperwork locally. Some are selling 2 meals and puddings for £32 and others cakes and ready meals for more reasonable prices. Lots of fruit puddings have been advertised and sold recently.
im going to cost my Christmas cake recipe now

But it's not just ingredients you have to think about - if you're selling for profit you also need to factor in your time, electricity, equipment, wrapping, time spent writing out ingredients lists, allergens, advertising etc.

Someone upthread said about their ingredients coming to £30 plus electric - so that, plus paying yourself minimum wage, plus food hygiene, plus business insurance - you'd need to charge an absolute minimum of £60 to make any kind of money from it.

The 1980’s called, they want their cake decorations back! It’s quaint but it’s not professional enough to make it worth your while even putting the oven on and car boot sale audiences are notorious for wanting something for nothing. And that’s before we get into food hygiene requirements!

I'm afraid cake baking is one of those things, like homemade cards, earrings, soap and wax melts, that people try to sell but never make any money from.

I would buy from a friend, work colleague or family member if I liked them but never at a car boot

I wasn’t including the profit and electricity as I was commenting on people saying home baking is expensive.
yes if you are selling you have to add energy costs and your own wage but a Christmas cake doesn’t have to cost £30 in ingredients alone. I just priced the bero Christmas cake and with the luxury ingredients it’s £12 and with a couple of swaps it’s £8

I think they look lovely, though we’re not fans of Christmas cake in our house. A woman local to me makes cheesecakes at Christmas and I pay around £45 for a good sized one from her.

As others have said you’ll need to check out regulations/registration requirements. But if you want to do it I’d concentrate on Christmas fairs (although you probably need to pay to have a table there) check out bigger companies who often hold inhouse Christmas events for staff to buy “craft” items. My SIL buys a chocolate biscuit cake in the shape of a Christmas pudding every year at a Christmas market held in her workplace.
I used to make my own Christmas cake, but it’s a huge effort & very expensive for all the ingredients. Nowadays I buy my Christmas cake from Aldi. €10 and it’s quite tasty. Is it better than my homemade one? No. But it’s cheaper & more convenient and as I’m the only person who eats it, much better for my waistline too.

Our Christmas cake 8" square, the cost of the ingredients last year with all the dried fruit, lemons, eggs, flour, butter, sugar, almonds, royal icing, apricot jam, was so expensive last. A proper cake fed with brandy . A friend whose cakes are made like this and decorated professionally by her sell for around £100.

Our school cake stall a chocolate sponge with butter cream sells for £4. By comparison.

Oh they look utterly charming and nostalgic
If they taste as olde worlde as they look I would be happy to pay about £35

A quick google shows you can buy an iced Christmas cake for about £7 from a shop.

All of this is irrelevant if you’re not registered and inspected. And insured. That said, it can be done relatively easily, although some councils used to not even bother inspecting at all when I first started - that may have changed. When I started out I did my food hygiene course again - I’d done it years ago but thought best to update, was registered and inspected by the council (5* rating), had insurance, allergen labelling and filled in the Safer Food, Better Business manual I had for every cake I made.

If you do go down that route, check out Nancy Birtwhistle’s video about making some in baked bean tins - the smaller ones might go down well.

I think they look lovely! And tbh if I was at a car boot sale and saw one I’d probably end up buying one! Good luck!

I second the ideas to sell slices, I think it will be a lot easier to make money that way. A lady round the corner from me sells slices during December and January, individually packaged in little cellophane bags, and she does well. It’s very time consuming to get the decoration very polished and people won’t appreciate it.

Calm down Lady Catherine de Bourgh

Honestly I wouldn’t pay for that. I think the cakes look homemade by a decent home baker, but they don’t have that sharp/professional finish I would expect. I also don’t really like the non-edible decorations stuck on, I think the decorations should be edible and maybe more artistically arranged.

That’s not to say your cake doesn’t look/taste amazing, obviously we cannot see the inside of the cake in these photos or infer the taste. I‘m sure your cake tastes lovely, but from the limited info I wouldn’t pay for this.

Personally I’m not massively interested in Christmas cake, it can be polarising, maybe your niche could be offering different flavours or combinations for customisation? As to be frank, the shops likely sell decent and polished traditional Christmas cakes at an affordable enough price, that you might not have much demand.

I'm in the US, and I didn't know what it was. But looking up a recipe, all those dried fruits are pretty pricey, at least here. I think you'd have to sell them for a lot of money, or make enough that you could but ingredients in bulk.

Yes but there's cake and cake.

Lots of people here are saying you can get a "lovely" one from the supermarket but they really are not the same thing.

Yes the icing looks as regular as though a robot did it (it almost certainly did) but they don't have the same cake quality as a proper brandy-fed traditional Christmas cake.

I’ll be honest and say I never, ever buy anything homemade in someone else’s kitchen. I have no way of knowing how clean it is. Even when it’s a charity event or a bake sale… if it’s homemade, I avoid it 😬

I work in a cake bakery. A 1kg Christmas cake with marzipan and icing on the top sell at £22 to retail. They sell at wholesale fir around £17. And we just and so cover all costs with that. (Christmas can be a big turnover, low profit time).
All the fruit, alcohol, butter, nuts, marzipan, soaking and baking time really eats into profit. You won't have the same over heads, but realistically, youre not going to make much at all.
Sorry.

so I thought this year I'd use the left over mixture to make three or four extra small cakes and see how they sell...I just wondered what price to put on them. I was thinking £5 so the fact the majority have suggested £10 seems pleasantly surprising, considering I wouldn't be spending any extra time or money.

People (i think) are saying £10 for full size, not mini

You really should have your hygiene certificate and environmental health certificate to sell food as well as insurance. Cake is a safe food but fruited cake less so and you are taking risks selling it to the general public without appropriate hygiene training, certificates and insurance. You are taking business away from people who have done everything by the book and depend on this for their livelihood. Absolutely get yourself registered and do it properly and give it a shot but unless you are competent on allergies,shelf life and safe food handling I wouldn't be selling these out of your car boot for everyone's safety. Also there isn't much margin in these cakes unless you can add value with extremely elegant decor

so I thought this year I'd use the left over mixture to make three or four extra small cakes and see how they sell...I just wondered what price to put on them. I was thinking £5 so the fact the majority have suggested £10 seems pleasantly surprising, considering I wouldn't be spending any extra time or money.

People (i think) are saying £10 for full size, not mini ones

Op don’t forget to sell to the public you need to be registered with the council, be inspected and have a level 1 food hygiene certificate. All easy to sort and doesn’t take too long. The council tend to class cakes as low risk. Ingredients have to be labelled with dates and temperature logs of the fridge etc.

Ps, pre packaged food has to have ingredients, allergens and nutritionals on too.