where and what to buy for cake decorating.

[Twit]

I have just started to decorate my own cakes, I was given a cake decorating book for my birthday after constantly complaining about the quality of birthday cakes in the supermarket.
My question is this; where [online] would you recommend I buy my bits and pieces, and what should I buy?
I have had a look around and am feeling overwhelmed by the choice. What colour paste should I go for? I am also a bit confused about edible sparkle/glitter powder. Some websites say it it inedible, some say it is non toxic and you could eat it.

have posted some pictures of 3 of my cakes on profile...these were done with a sponge and the one with the dogs i hand painted in icing so that the fur looked real.

Those cakes look beautiful alypaly, I particularly like the boot one, and the painting on the dog one is very good too, I could never paint like that.

Thanks moosy...when i had the time i used to make them for all the children at the school where DS1 and 2 went. Then it mushroomed from recommends. I have got loads more piccys with other cartoon characters and personal ones too. People used to give me photos to make models of their partners,cars and animals. I have made lots of jokey ones too... and wedding cakes

Not sure if i should start up my own business or not...added 3 more...my favorite is humpty....

just had a look at yours,they are really good.love the fairy on the lily pad.your very talented.do you make alot.

sorry for the hijack twit

The ones on my profile are the only proper ones I've done, so far it's just for my family birthdays/Christmas etc. I made a madeira yesterday to practise carving and to try out some icing techniques too.

wish i had more time to do them ,i find it really therapeutic.

run outs are fun...Ha Ha arent they.i made so many sides to the cot before i managed to assemble it.

thanks for the info moosy I won't put them in the dishwasher.. I have a couple tins from my cake tutor and they are gorgeous but too expensive for me to buy at the moment.

I do quite alot of carving up of cakes seem to have ended up being roped into novelty cakes... got quite a few grown up cakes on the books for the next few months so am looking forward to that.

Aly I love run outs... did a gorgeous art deco royal iced fruit cake with beautiful run outs last year.. wish people wanted royal icing more.

I've just carved a 'wonky cake' and it's bloody awful! It's not very smoothly cut and when I covered it, because it tapers down the fondant wouldn't sit right so it's gone a bit wobbly at the bottom. I think I rolled the icing a bit too thin too. Good job it's only a practise one!

What's a run out?

ByThePowerOfGreyskul... was only joking about the run outs....love them because they look so different. love your cakes too...we could have a good team here!!!

a run out is where you pipe in royal icing, the outline of something like a flower on a piece of waxed paper. Let the outline dry and then in fill it with royal ciing in a difeerent cour and very slighly thinned down royal icing. You do it all in duplicate or triplicate in case you break them when you remove them from the waxed paper. You can then make 3 d objects like my cradle or items that stand up in wafer thin icing.
But do not be tempted to remove from waxed paper til absolutely dry or they will break.

Oh I did that a while ago but thought it was called floodwork. It did work well but I didn't try making 3D things, just flat flowers.

same thing . the crib on my christening cake is flood,run out...made in about 4 pieces IIRC

aly - slightly off the beaten track here (have just been looking at your fab cakes), I wanted to ask about the first two holiday pics - is that the Sheraton Algarve 'cos it looks very familiar......

Cockavita no its the sani beach hotel and spa in halkidiki...fab!

lol, it just sooo looked like the place in Portugal >

so of everyone's cakes. i've been nosying at them all and saying to dh how amazing you all are. he said if I had the right book and tools I'd be as good as all of you, isn't that nice of him? Does that mean he'll let me spend money on stuff to make myself better?

Do any of you make money out of making cakes? How much do you charge for a cake?

Debi, it is allabout practice. if you have the time desire you can be good at it, the thing that is hard to find is the creativity.. I steal alot of ideas from the internet

I sell my cakes, have been doing for about a year. things are goign well and I am just getting confident in talking about money. Part of the course that I did covered things like pricing and making sure you have costed things out properly. taking into account things like adding 50p per cake to cover insurance, 50p per cake to cover keeping health and safety certificates up to date etc, there are alot of costs aside from the eggs and butter etc.

OOH I have just waffled alot.
Anyway at the moment I charge £35+ for an 8" round decorated cake, boxed and individually designed. anything more complicated goes up in price and my shaped cakes start at £50

Ooh Greyskull, tell me more about the pricing advice you were given. I am rubbish at pricing cakes, I tend to guess and feel really awkward asking much more than about £30 for them because it seems like so much money for a cake. So I'm a bit crap at the business side, tbh .

no problem,
they asked us to work out on average how many cakes we wanted to make each month and make it up to an annual figure.
then divide the amount you spend on annual insurance (public liability) by the Minimum number of cakes you are hoping to make
Same with making sure your food hygeine certificate costs.
You are supposed to look at your gas bill and work out the cost per cake, but I can't be arsed so just add 50p
Make sure you have costed in the board and box and ribbon.
Obviously working out the price you pay for ingredients. (quite easily done one night on the supermarket website to get prices)
Remember to cost for the butter and icing sugar you use in the butter cream.

You only have to do this every now and then for an 8" cake and divide it by 8 then you have your cost per inch for a basic cake.

this is all before you have factored in extra decoration or any time.

I was surprised the first time I priced up a big cake for a friend the basic cost was £16. Before I made the footballer and footballs and goal posts etc.

The way they guided us to talk abotu money, was to say I can do this for X price please don't feel pressured to say yes or no now, have a think and let me know.

If you have a photo album of cakes you have done, leave a note by each photo mentioning price, so people flicking won't get any surprises.

But above all value the work that you do.
If you break down the cost and time are your skills really only worth a couple of £ per hour?

I know, that's the issue, isn't it? I ought to be charging at least £5/6 an hour but I don't feel I can charge for the actual time it all takes because it would make the cake ridiculously expensive.

Thanks for all the rest of that though, it's very useful. I've worked out a basic ingredients costing for size of cake but adding the extra for insurance and HSE stuff isn't something I've thought of.

Food for thought!

I don't allow a specific amount for my time but I have a spreadsheet and like to try to get a certain percentage profiton each cake so that helps me guide.

OMG what have I started? I had better get an order in for a bauble mould quick - they are going to wonder what the hell is going on with the sudden rush .

For the answer to how you get them looking like the photo - see my earlier comments about freezing them, and then once good and dry (a couple of days) paint with paste colours & a clear spirit of your choice - I find the utterly disgusting overproof rum we brought back from Jamaica 10 years ago works well.

really? Paint alcohol over them? Why? They still edible after that? So the paste is just painted on with a paint brush?

and sorry, probably being thick here, the moulds are just filled with normal fondant icing?