It is most certainly a lot more than ‘just butter, flour, sugar and a few eggs’
‘but I can buy a cake for under £20 in a supermarket’. Cakes sold in supermarkets are either those made on a production line that will be neither bespoke nor personalized to your specifications or they will be those that are offered as ‘hand made’,
picked out from a range in a catalogue. However, neither of these offer anything close to the size, individuality, quality and skills displayed in a cake made personally for you.
1.Commercial Bakery costs
Making food for sale is an expensive business. We have rent,rates, power, telephone bills, internet, pest control, contents and liability insurance,
accountants fees, bank fees, vehicle costs, business cards , equipment to buy and maintain, to name a few.
This is before we even purchase a single cake ingredient
2.Food costs
To make your cake look beautiful and taste really great, we will only use really high quality ingredients.
Can you taste the difference? We think so.
3.Tools
Like fashion, the style of cakes and trends change. Along with that are the tools to go with it.
If you are wanting something different or sophisticated we may need to buy in tools to do the job.
Impression mats, air guns, etc are all neat tools that make a massive difference to the final finish of your cake.
In addition to the tools, there are the foundations that keep your cake supported. There are cake boards. The boards to support each tier and a cake board underneath.
Ribbons to edge the boards, and supports between tiers to stop our creations combusting before they get to the party.
For finishing your cake there can be a decent amount of icing, flowers, toppers, edible gold leaf, and all the other bits and pieces that make your cake gorgeous, and expensive.
4.Time Time is the enemy of every cake maker. Underestimate your time and it can cost you far more to make a cake than you have charged your customer.
For a three tier cake we can spend a day of labour before we even start on decoration. That time is taken up by baking, weighing out ingredients.
making buttercream & ganache, assembling the layers, smoothing the outsides of each layer and stacking cakes.
Angles need to be straight and level, and everything set up at the correct temperature.
To make sugar models you are looking at a good few hours work.
5.Labour Cake makers are skilled in their craft and it has taken many years of experience to get to the level where they can sell a cake.
As such labour costs need to be charged at a level where we can work for a decent wage.
6.Admin
Taking telephone calls, photographing work, updating a website, sending invoices and generating quotes.
They all take time, which costs money.
So please remember, if you ask a cake maker for a quote, you are not going to get it for supermarket prices – but it will look and taste an awful lot better.
It's also very stressful. Working to deadlines, regular late nights and long hours
