How much would you pay for this cake?

[Younganddumb]

The header is pretty self explanatory 😂 I made a cake yesterday and was wondering how much you guys would pay? I tried my hand at a baking business just after having my son, the orders were rolling in but I wasn't charging enough so wasn't really making any profit. Looking to start it back up but want to know how much you'd pay? Tia

@Hillrunning if she prices it like that, she'll never sell one!

Cake Decorating is possibly THE worst way to try to make money.

@Younganddumb

I used to decorate cakes & my Mum too. She did quite a few Wedding Cakes. We would spend evening after evening hand making all the flowers. Pricing is very difficult as it always sounds a lot for a cake, but it never covers your time, unless you buy in cakes & flowers & basically just assemble them. In the end Mum would only do them as a gift to the B&G.

your flowers look like silk?

personally I wouldn't buy a cake with silk/plastic flowers.

i don't make cakes anymore, but I don't buy handmade ones either, so I'm not sure about the price. But also, it seems to vary wildly area to area.

I think you just need to look as though you were trying to buy one locally & see how much different types are going for.

Have you got the appropriate certificates to make food to sell from home?

I enquired about getting a similar cake made last year and was quoted £80

If it takes you 30minutes to get a perfect finish then, and I mean this kindly, you need to practise applying your marzipan and fondant. My nan used to have me cover different shaped and sized cardboard boxes with her offcuts, now I rarely need to give more than a quick polish with scrap icing to get any cornflour off.
Or maybe you are doing nutfree and not using marzipan, that makes it harder to get a perfect finish but still, fondant on in one piece from the back of the cake should be more or less perfect first time.

@caringcarer I do make children's cakes 🎂 too 😊

Pretty sure the cake is buttercream - ‘scrape down the cake’ as OP says. Marzipan isn’t really used under fondant these days - ganache is instead. Much more delicious, even on fruit cake.

Sounds like a great job, all considering. Bespoke cakes are hard as many don't value the time and effort. We bought a cake for my sons birthday, that was £45

Its horrible isn't it

There's honesty and there's just being nasty for the sake of it

If you take the fake flowers away, essentially it's just a plain cake. It's better than I could do myself, but I still wouldn't pay for that when there's more decorative cakes out there with edible decorative pieces on top.

I think a lot of people massively underestimate the time and money involved in making cakes. I've made my Dc birthday cakes and I've costed it up and it can easily come to £30-40 for all the ingredients. These aren't even huge cakes or massively intricate.

Well that explains why they always look shit to me then lol, buttercream was always the home bakers coating when I was growing up.

I think it's a pretty cake and lovely thing to do for your mum. The flavours sound gorgeous. I wouldn't pay because buying cakes is just not something I'd do. But I appreciate all the effort that goes into them.

It's not my style of cake so I wouldn't pay for something like this but your finish of the cake is great!

As it's only 6 inches (tiny cake really) and I don't like the fake flowers on top (nor would I want real ones) and the writing isn't great, someone else would pay maybe £30 at most.

I'm sure the sponge is delicious though and making me want a lemon cake!!

I think it looks lovely op. I wouldn’t pay £70 though, probably not £50 either, and that’s the problem for cake makers I guess, it’s really hard to make a decent profit.

It looks pretty. The reason people won’t pay much is because so many people can make a cake like that themselves and enjoy doing it - it takes time but is pretty straightforward, especially with artificial flowers on top and letters cut with a stamp!

I'm in another country. My friend runs a business making cakes like this, she would charge around £70 for a cake like that (and she's doing a roaring trade).

As it's only 6 inches (tiny cake really

Yes but it's the height...you need way more sponge than you think to make a cake that's tallish

I think if you wanted lots of positive comments you’ve chosen the wrong cake to post a photo of. It looks amateurish, the finish on the letters is poor and the design is a bit poorly thought out - the studs, pink icing, fake flowers, cartoony letters. Which since you didn’t have loads of time to do it is fair enough, but don’t then come on and get pissy with people giving their honest feedback. You invited it.

it sounds like there’s a lot of scope for you to get a bit quicker too - it doesn’t take an hour to make some cake batter.

Where has op got 'pissy' with people?

Unless you're extremely talented or very well known its so hard to make profit on cakes. It's nice but personally I wouldn't pay anywhere near what you'd want for it.
I'm not a fan of non edible decorations either, when you take them out to cut the cake I think it looks a bit messy.

Cake itself is immaculately iced, very neat, well done.

For that £70/80 is what I know people have paid.

I think most people are trying to be helpful. OP would have got 100% positive comments if she'd said "look at this cake I made for my mum- I'm really pleased with it". But she's asked for views on the cake with the intention of going into business, and the answer is that to charge enough to make it a viable business (which is a lot, quite rightly) she'll also need to produce a better finish.

Agree with PP as well about economies of scale, if you have 3 or 4 cake orders for a weekend they don't take you 3or 4 x the time, you can mix one whilst one is baking and chilling etc, this is the only way you make proper money

I've seen plenty of cakes with flowers on the top? highly unusual to have that quantity edible.

I agree the lettering brings it down a bit, but if that's what people request then it's their choice.

Tbh not very much, you've got a nice sharp edge but there's something about the style and decoration that I don't like.
With lemon buttercream I wouldn't go for pink and I'd decorate with something like dehydrated lemon slices, rosemary sprigs maybe some gypsophilia.
I disagree it would take a whole hour to mix a batter and respectfully I could make something better looking myself.

Anyone saying this is an easy cake to make is correct but it would not look anywhere close to as good as this without a LOT of practice and skill.

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