Sugarcraft chat

[wem]

I started a thread for cake people a while back but it got a bit lost in Chat so thought I'd try to tempt people into our lovely new baking topic.

Hopefully I'll see some of the posters from the chat thread, but for any new people popping in, introductions: I'm wem, I'm a recent cake obsessive and have been bothering mumsnetters about it a fair bit as I'm starting up cake decorating business. I don't have anywhere near the experience or knowledge of some of the posters in here, but I do have an excessive willingness to chat about cake :)

Let's try this again, eh?

oh that's beautiful wem , really lovely.
i have just discovered this thread. I used to be an avid cake decorator but have lapsed over past few years. Just enjoying looking at all your lovely cakes!

and as i'm working my way through the thread thought i'd comment on charging. I work part-time in a customer service role. One of my customers got married earlier this year, she liked to tell us in detail how much it was costing her- far too much in her opinion, apparently it costs everyone thousands to get married no matter how cheaply you do it- i bit my tongue and didn't say that you could get married at the registry office for £40 and stick to that .
Anyway...she got onto the cake and said this " she wanted £350 to make the cake , i mean £350 , its only a bit of cake". I asked what sort of cake and she said a 3 tiered chocolate one. I bit my tongue again thinking of the many hours of work and the cost of ingredients whilst she wittered on about Waitrose and M&S cakes. Nothing against people who have no money buying an M&S cake and adding fresh flowers/ribbons etc, it can look very good and is better than going into debt. Its the devaluing of what you all do that gets to me. Charge what you're worth! There are people out there who will pay, some are paying for the name, that;s why PP's cakes are so expensive , if you can do the same and charge half the price then its a winner for most people. sorry for long post but she did annoy me- " only a bit of cake"

I love the dragon cake Wem!

blackcats, I agree about the costing. I think people really just do not realise the time and effort involved in making a decorated cake. I reckon the minimum time even for a 'basic' 1 tier cake if you include spending time thinking of ideas, maybe designing it, getting it in the oven, (not the actual baking time) and decorating it, then cleaning up afterwards is about 4 hours, probably usually more. Even at minimum wage, that's over £25 without costs added on, so you're looking at around £40-45 absolute minimum for a decorated cake really.

I am absolutely certain that some of the people I make cakes for think it's about a couple of hours from start to finish, including baking time. I only charge costs, it's my hobby, but even so I was recently told that my £20 'quote' for a carved cake with a model that had to look fairly specific was too expensive. Well, how can it be, it's what it costs me!!! Of course, I could cut costs and use cheaper flour, cheaper butter, eggs from caged hens. I could use cheap supermarket boards/cake cards instead of drums and no ribbon, uncovered boards etc. but I don't want to go down that route and why should I?

There will always be people who want a £10 Asda cake and that is fine. However, if someone wanted a pair of shoes made to their own personal design, individually for them, a one off, totally unique, they wouldn't expect to pay the same as they'd pay for a pair of shoes off the shelf, so why should an individually designed, bespoke cake be the same price as a mass produced, off the shelf one?

Oh, almost forgot. Few pics of my recent cakes, but will do links as I am too lazy to put them on my computer than on my profile.

This one was huge, the board is 30" x 18". It weighed a ton when it was finished!

i40.photobucket.com/albums/e201/midori1999/111A1E5B-7173-41C4-ABFA-E2EBD97E1F85-1156-0000006AE44BCBF2.jpg

Not completely happy with this one:

i40.photobucket.com/albums/e201/midori1999/57FB2068-1749-42C6-835D-4966332AFC00-1156-0000006AF71D9F86.jpg

i40.photobucket.com/albums/e201/midori1999/E5ACCC69-8C88-4478-9F54-387005FA36F1-1156-0000006B6F32F5B3.jpg

i40.photobucket.com/albums/e201/midori1999/DA850B7E-49A9-4D6E-BF7F-31FCAD34E8B7-1156-0000006B08FCA999.jpg

Brilliant cakes midori - you've been busy! The meercats are so cute, and works really well I think, great idea :)

'Only a bit of cake' - pah. Because of the kind of wedding I had (register office, meal with about 10 close family members) I would never have spent that much on a wedding cake, but I can see now that if that's the kind of cake you want, then that's how much it costs!

Pricing "only a piece of cake" - This is one of the reasons why I havent started my cake as a business per say. I already run a construction business with 2 small children and thats challenging! I totally understand business and profit and my workings out state that it just about breaks even unless you are on industrial scale ie knocking out 2 cakes per day. I work on the principal if I went out to work say stacking shelves then I'd be on at least min wage so £35 per day excluding materials is the bear min you can allow. Cake decorating uses your materials, power, petrol, insurance etc. Lets face it there are a few hours previous to making with trawling the internet, designing and buying the bits and pieces so before you start you could of put 4- 6hrs in.

A quality 20cm cake made with bespoke detail should sell for £60 but would take you two 7hr days (incl prep time) so x2 days at £35 plus materials would more than likey cost out £90! hence no brainer!

I think the only way to do it is just to accept cash (dont tell HMRC I said that) on a very ad-hob basis.

If you are doing it as a business then you have to aim for quality and advertise you are not a 'value' producer. Perhaps having a facebook page with pictures and prices as a guide would avoid the timewasters.
The image of the business, logo, name etc can also put you into the better bracket. I can usually (through our main business) work out whose looking for cheap against quality but that takes years of listening. Sometimes when I phone someone about an item or service they will state early in the conversation that pieces start from £xxx. Sounds harsh but I think these people already from experience want to kill any bargin hunters.

I dont skimp I use my own chicken eggs, quality butter and fine flour plus real chocolate which is very expensive and I'm a very ameteur baker!

Have you seen Masie Fantasise prices for a plain cake? £1000 www.maisiefantaisie.co.uk/brooch-wedding-cake.html Yes, her reputation is fantastic but cant see who anyone cant copy them. Shes uses very expensive chocolate prop £100 worth in a cake as Amedei Toscano is top notch.

I think some of you are under pricing.

I do exactly what bacon has said, I have a facebook business page which I refer people to and I have a price sheet on there, even then the prices were worked out in 2010 and costs have gone up since then.
I have had less business since doing it but I now charge what a cake is worth and feel alot better about it.

Thanks Wem.

Bacon, I'm a hobbyist, not a business and dont intend to be any time soon. However, I'm a slow worker and even including researching it wouldn't take me anywhere near 14 hours to make and decorate an 8" sponge.

I do agree though that for those running as a business it's important to charge properly, including a proportion of your equipment costs etc. and that a lot of 'ameteurs' do undercharge.

As for Maisie Fantasie, she designs/makes beautiful cakes but most professional cake makers I know wouldn't want to copy someone else's design regardless of what they could charge.

I don't do a decorated wedding cake for less than 200. Celebration cakes start at 30. I discount for my work colleagues as I get a lot of business that way (with 5000 staff it would be crazy not to !)

I decorate very fast and knocked that fairy cake out in 4 hours from flour and sugar to fully decorated. I charged 35 for it for a close workmate

Got 4 orders in the next 3 weeks - a cake modelled as the grease car with sandy and danny in it, a 3 tier mrvel comics cake, a heart shape with headphones on and an "alien" cake (the film)

Did a wedding at the weekend, will post pic later but its on my facebook sweetlovecakes

love heart cake on profile now

Out of interest has anyone accurately worked out the cost of materials for a decorated 20cm cake? Excluding ribbon, special bits, electric etc

1. plain maderia/vanilla sponge
2. Rich chocolate fudge

I have never worked out a standard 8" plain covered cake no. When I first started I worked out for some of the cakes I was doing, but usually ended up a bit rough as I started to round up/guess partial quantities. Since then I'm more likely to look at other's prices for a guide and think about how long I think it will take me, as that is a far more significant part of the price I think, unless there are a lot of extras, such as fresh flowers or feathers or some such.

I have a question for those with businesses, what do you find are your most popular wedding cakes? I'm going to try and get some dummy cakes done, but I'm not sure what to aim for, something striking and unusual, or something where they know what they're looking for and they can tweak it for their colour scheme or some such. I've been to a vintage fair and bought some brooches and thought I'd do quite a simple ribbon and bow style with them.

bacon I had but then that was in 2010 I know my costs have gone up since then

Yes, I have worked out all my costs for popular sponge flavours in 10", 8, 7, 6" and 4" round sizes (ones I use most in single tier and tired cakes) and if it's a cake that isn't sponge, I tend to work these out as I go as I mainly make vanilla, choc, lemon etc.Obviously it also makes it easier to add on any 'extras' too. I did it as I do not want to give my (valuble!)time for free as well as paying for someone's cake. I didn't always think like that though and when I worked it out I found out I had in fact, been paying a large chunk of people's cakes and was not even covering the cost of my ingredients.

A quite plainly decorated 8" sponge with board, box, ribbon etc, costs me around £15 to make at cost and that shocked me quite a lot when I worked it out tbh.

I reckon a 20cm white vanilla sponge filled with jam costs me around a fiver

Board £1.20
Box 80p
750g icing £1.50
4 eggs 60p
8oz sugar 30p
8oz self raising flour 10p
8oz soft margarine 40p
milk 10p
half a jar of jam 50p

If it is chocolate that knocks it up to about £8 as I use a whipped chocolate ganache filling which is quite expensive.

Blimey midori, where are buying your stuff from ?

Can I give you guys a moneysaving tip ?

I use ASDA own brand fondant icing. I've tried every single brand and every own label there is out there and it is by far and away the best. It is on permanent rollback at £2 a kilo. It had good "elasticity", a good colour and can be handled quite a lot. It compares very favourably with regalice which is about £1.80 a kilo more expensive if i remember correctly.
I went at about midnight the other night for an emergency stock up and nearly had a meltdown when I thought they were out of stock !

Also I do not bother buying fancy ingredients. It's a total, utter waste of money. IME people do not give a shite whether your cocoa is organic and handground by prince charles. They want the cake to taste nice but most people are buying a celebration cake for the design. I never use butter except in buttercream and most of my customers say that my cakes are the nicest they've ever tasted. I buy value lemons, value flour and I use granulated sugar to make the sponges. Unless your customers are Paul Hollywood or Pierre Herme, trust me, they are not going to notice.

Maximise your profit margins !

The thing is OhDearNigel, I'm not interested in making profits, but covering my costs. I'm not a business, but I am interested in using quality, ethically sourced ingredients and producing quality cakes. I don't use cheap flour because the recipe I use requires Sponge Flour. I only use free range eggs, I only use good quality butter, although I do use block stork in my sponge recipe, because again, it requires either that or butter and I find the block stork works better. I notice the difference, whether my 'customers' do or not. That is what matters to me. A lot of people that have my cakes do order them from me for the taste as I get quite a few requests for 'homebakes' too.

I can't remember my exact individual costings, as I worked it out a while ago and just kept a list of the total costs for each sized sponge, but roughly, based on quickly working out, it would be:

6 free range eggs - 90p
flour - 40p
sugar - 25p
stork - £1.20
vanilla - £1.00 (I was especially suprised at how expensive that was!)
butter for buttercream - 80p
icing sugar - 80p
jam - 50p
fondant (enough to cover the cake thickly, cover the board and any basic decorations) : £5.00, I do use regalice. I like Asda but prefer the taste of Regalice
cake board - £1.09
cake box - 90p
ribbon - 50-80p, depending on type.
electricity - £1.00 (which I know is generous, but I know at the time I couldn't be bothered to work that one out. )

Obviously then on top of that there is gum trag, colours, dusts etc to add on too if they are being used.

Oh, and ingredients I buy from Asda/costco usually, boards, boxes etc from various online places.

Lovely cakes as usually by the way Nigel. I have liked your facebook page too.

How on earth do you get your posy picks so well hidden when you are using wires? I can never get them hidden like that. Do you put them in first and then cover the cake with fondant?

Marking my place to catch up. I like the dragon, wem. I need to come up with a "girly" dragon for DD which is sufficiently different from the two I have done for DS in the past.

Stealth - when I had decided on the shape of the dragon I was quite tempted to have it curled around a clutch of eggs, or would that be a bit too subtley female? :)

i don't think there are any pictures with posy picked flowers on there ? I do bury them very deep in the cakes though and then fill them with icing in the same colour as the cake to stick the flowers into iyswim

Wem - I made DS a baby dragon on a nest so I think it is going to have to be a sitting up dragon, not curled up..