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 wouldn't buy a home made cake from a random person at a car boot sale.

I would buy a home made cake from someone I knew to be a decent baker. Your target audience is the people who know you already, @TheHopefulBaker. They don't need to see paperwork to trust your kitchen hygiene is good and they'll enjoy eating your bakes.

Op I doubt you would make a profit but you might actually be out of pocket if for whatever reason your cakes don't sell. In my opinion the problem isn't that your cake doesn't look professional but it is that you don't know in advance if anyone coming on that day wants to buy a cake.

Having said that I do think your cake looks absolutely beautiful and I'd be happy to buy it for £10-15 if I needed or wanted a cake.

I think a pp had a great idea: give people your cake as a gift and save on buying them a present from the shop.

Edited to add that I just read your other reply so yes go ahead and small individual cakes are a great idea.

Not wrong,you don't need a certificate for an occasional event. You need one as you're a business.

I don’t like Christmas cake. Never buy or eat it. This seems to be quite common.

Now Festive Yule log……..

They look like lovely cakes, can't beat homemade. If paid about £10/15, you would probably spend that on ingredients so wouldn't make much profit. Would you maybe consider making smaller cakes? Personally, I am more likely to buy a smaller cake so we would have a slice with a mulled wine on those evenings between Xmas and New Year. Good luck, wish you success with the venture.

The ingredients cost a fortune so what you should charge is different i would say to what people will buy for, but you would have to be careful of allergies etc. But I presume to make something and sell it is a business so you would habe to have all the paperwork behind you

Hi OP. If I were you I'd sell them for £15 each or two for £25 x

Christmas cake is relatively expensive to make. Assuming you aim to cover more than the costs of production with your sale price, I’d be very surprised if you could sell Christmas cakes at a car boot and make any kind of meaningful profit. There is also almost certainly some health and safety consideration you’d have to take into account if selling to the public, eg do the council have to sign off your kitchen as meeting hygiene standards or something like that? There will be a cost attached to that too.

People saying £10 or £15 for the cake the OP pictured – that wouldn't come close to covering the cost of the ingredients! That’s a big cake (looks about 20cm to me). OP is hoping to make a profit. I guess that shows it's unlikely.

My 20Cm Christmas cake takes £6-worth of marzipan. Nigella’s classic recipe uses half a bottle of brandy…

I might buy one from a friend (actually my friend makes one for me as a Christmas present). But I wouldn't buy a random one and as pp you'll be more expensive than a supermarket and their quality is good enough for me.

Think of all the Xmas fayre and school fetes where people bake , you don't need a certificate for occasional events.

As stated by PPs, rules are different for charity events. Donating a cake to the Macmillan bake sale at work doesn't mean I need my kitchen inspected. But if you are selling cakes for personal profit (as the OP wants to) then yes you need the certification etc as mentioned.

You don't need a certificate for charity or fundraising events.

You do need one if you're baking for profit, which OP is.

I'd bake as gifts for friends etc.

I have sold homemade things myself, and one thing I generally do (which is frowned upon) is to not count the cost of my time. But I like doing my crafting hobby, and there's only so many of the crafted items we need in the house, so I make them as gifts and sell the excess sometimes.

It's not business- minded, but I'm not trying to make a living, rather justifying the creation of yet another wooly owl!

Aww, your cakes are really sweet and I’m sure they taste great. But honestly, I’d be tempted to do away with those cake toppers and go for a more classy decoration, eg holly and red berries made of icing, with maybe some edible silver glitter. Being presented in festive cellophane and ribbon would make all the difference too.
Good luck!

You seem to be ignoring the points about food hygiene. You can’t just sell random cakes.

The best Xmas cakes I ever made (and sold) didn't have icing just marzipan with fruit and nuts/glace cherries pressed into it in a pattern,went down a treat.

I wouldn't buy one from a rando at a car boot sale. You might be baking it with a fag in your mouth and cats walking all over your surfaces as far as I know.

OP I would start off with some festive cupcakes which are easy and good sellers and you can make profit from them ( work out your ingredients and multiply by 3) . Test out the boot fair before you make lots of Xmas cakes . I do lots of craft fayres/ Xmas markets / school fetes and food is ALWAYS a big seller even when nothing else sells well. You do not need food hygiene for a few occasional boot fairs. It IS worth listing the ingredients but anyone with serious allergies won't be your target market.

Personally I wouldn’t buy anything home made from a car boot , fete , fair or whatever but plenty of people do , if you add up ingredients, time and electricity also the cost of whatever wrappings plus pitch and petrol at the boot fair I would guess it would add up to around £15 -£20 per cake , so you would need to sell for around £30 I can’t see anyone paying that , sorry

I'm quite picky about hygiene, but I am wondering what people think the issue with baked goods is going to be. It all goes in the hot oven, and few of the ingredients in a Christmas cake are like oysters or things that must be very fresh.

Yes, it does go in the oven.

And then it comes out of the oven, to be touched again and potentially put on surfaces that pets have been on, for example. And then touched again to be decorated and then put it into packaging for transport.

I'm not some mad everything-must-be-sterile person, but I like to know what I'm eating. But also, I can't deal with doggy kisses (cute as I think dogs are, and as happy as I am to pet them), for example, so maybe it's a me thing.

I mean, off the top of my head:

Is it baked properly?
How is it stored after baking?
Are there animals or small children who could potentially stick their fingers in it, or lick it?
Has it been dropped on the floor?
Does the baker have clean hands wrapping it and transporting it?
Are they aware of all the allergens?

There's a good reason why food businesses have to be checked and registered by the authorities. If OP's cake made someone ill and she wasn't registered or insured, she could find herself in a LOT of trouble.

No its not a you thing.

Lots of people are this way - including myself at times.

But when I stop and think I do start to wonder. I understand poorly cooked chicken or fish, I understand toxoplasmosis for pregnant women ( for the rest of us its better to have had it) and I understand unpasteurised dairy items and things like bagged salad which are high risk for listeriosis.

But I'm not actually sure what there is to worry about with baked goods. I mean if its gets kicked round the floor, yes, but no-one is going to bag that up, and even in cafes you don't really know. The girl at a very well-loved cafe near us steadied a scone with her finger as she slipped it on the plate for my mum the other day. That finger could have been anywhere , and the fact the place had a food hygiene certificate wouldn't have made a blind bit of difference to that incident - it was only chance I even saw. But I said nothing and mum was fine.