Thank you to everyone for having such nice things to say about the wedding cake I made. I’m definitely still learning and each time I come away with more knowledge on how I could have done it better.
This time, I kept a running spreadsheet as I was working so I could get a feel for what the actual costs and quantities were.
Here’s what I used:
- 26 eggs
- 6 lbs. powdered sugar
- nearly a gallon of milk
- 36 oz. shortening
- 18 sticks of butter
- 26 tsp. vanilla
- 11 cups granulated sugar
- 16 and 1/2 cups flour
- 1 and 1/2 tsp. salt
- approx. 5 lbs. fondant
- 3 oz. navy blue gel dye
- and a cup or two of cornstarch
Crazy, right? Even crazier is that I bought more than I used of pretty much everything. I’ve got 3 boxes of butter chilling out in my fridge that I didn’t need, and an entire tub of shortening. Keeping a spreadsheet like this will help me to not over-buy in the future as I become more familiar with exactly how much stuff I need.
So, what does it cost to make a 3 tier wedding cake? This one was about $108. Nearly half of that is the price of fondant. I could have gotten the cost down if I’d payed attention to the price of some items and was more aware of exactly how much of each item I really needed. I think I could recreate the exact same cake for $80 if I had it to do over again.
That’s just the cost of the ingredients though. I spent around 40 hours on that cake, so if I were to charge someone $200 for it, that would have me making about $2.30 an hour after subtracting the ingredient costs. Not exactly lucrative. I’ll need to figure out how to get my costs down, and more importantly my time expenditure down, before I can even think about trying to use this skill as a source of income. I’m more than happy to do it for family and absorb all the costs myself, but I’m not interested in working that hard for spare change for people I barely know.
I’m making another cake in September for some friends of ours and I will be charging them the material costs this time, but still no labor costs. I’m still really happy to do this though because I see it as a gift we can give our friends, and it’s another trial run to see if I can lower my costs and time expended. I’m pretty excited to use this cake as my little “guinea pig” to show me if this is a viable business venture for me.
One great thing about making wedding cakes…leftover jam.
I canned the rest of the strawberry vanilla jam and I’ve been putting it on everything. I can’t believe I’ve almost finished this jar! I’ve already bought some figs I intend to turn into jam too. I’m hooked!
Alot of ingredients!!! You forgot to mention the case of strawberries and gelatin and whatever else to make the strawberry filling. I know that cake baking and decorating is long tedious work and I can see how it probably would not be a good source of income. UGH. But you should definitely start charging at least for the ingredients. Good job Alayna.
Huh, I can’t believe I forgot the giant pallet of strawberries. Nice catch.
I have some ideas for how to cut down costs and time dramatically next time, which is good because I think this next cake is going to be bigger and probably more expensive too. If wedding cakes turn out to not be lucrative for me I’ll probably still do smaller cakes and desserts for events from time to time.
But you are so good at it and with time and more experience you’ll eventually get faster and maybe you could start a small side business from home. Give it a try!!!
How about a birthday cake for meeeee? 😉
Seriously, I ran into the same thing catering. I managed to cut costs from job #1 to #3 (also using a spreadsheet to track it), but the time I devote to it is a lot. Maybe you just get faster as you get better?
I think you could charge a lot more than $200 for a cake. I’ve seen them START at $550, and that was 7 years ago.
Laura @ Sprint 2 the Table recently posted..Planning to Eat Healthy + WIAW
I’m convinced that the reason wedding cakes are expensive is because you’re paying an entire staff rather than one person, and there’s also charges to offset the costs of their expensive industrial equipment. And of course, anything with the word “wedding” attached to it is marked up by 1000%. I really want to figure out a way to be more affordable than commercial bakeries and still have it be worth my time. Even Publix cakes start at like $250.
I bet you could also cut down on quite a bit of time when not trying to dye fondant as dark as you did here? I know you said it gave you a bit of trouble.
That is an expensive cake – with 26 tsp, I would go with cheap vanilla for sure:)
Emma recently posted..chef paul liebrandt shines (and swears) his way through film documentary ‘a matter of taste’
Yup, if I could find small quantities of pre-dyed fondant, that would make my life much easier. And yeah, I used nearly an entire bottle of $7 vanilla. I’m sure there’s cheaper stuff out there that tastes just as good.
Hopefully, by the time you’re making my wedding cake extravaganza for my imaginary fiancee, you will have figured out a way to make mathematics work so that I can pay you $200 but you’ll make a $5000 profit. I love maths when it works like that.
Plus, with my cake, you’ll have leftover salted caramel and leftover peanut butter frosting.
Hannah recently posted..Icicle Frosts, Chestnuts, and When Daikon Attacks
The leftover salted caramel and peanut butter frosting is payment enough for me.
I am still so in awe of that cake! And all of the work that went into it. I hope you’re able to cash out on your skills some day (if that’s what you want), because you really have quite a talent. Leftover jam is a good perk of the job!
Megan recently posted..Leave no banana behind
Thanks lady! I hope it all works out with this next one.
I wish I had known you wanted figs! Next time let me know, I’ll bring you some from my family’s tree if we’ve had a recent crop!
Your cake turned out gorgeous and I found it really interesting how many ingredients you used. Thanks for sharing that information!
Carol @ Lucky Zucca recently posted..Homemade Grilled Portobello Sandwich
It sounds so nice to have a fig tree of your very own. Some day I’m going to have to plant a donut peach tree so I can have unlimited donut peaches! That would make me so happy.
omg – that cake is so damn beautiful. I love them simple and yours just hit the spot!
But damn, now I get why wedding cakes are so expensive. Never thought that there is so much work going into it and definitely underestimated the mass of ingredients… 26 eggs O.o?!
Before I started making cakes I also wondered why they’re so expensive. I’m definitely starting to understand.
Just stopped by and got wow with your cake!
If I got married, I know who I should email for making me wedding cake
Hi! Your cake is beautiful! I’m doing a wedding cake for a friend in a couple weeks and seriously, your blog has been so helpful for planning! Thank you for writing all this stuff down! You’re awesome! lol I’m just wondering what size cake pans you used for this cake. I feel like I’m always going back and forth on what sizes to use, what dimensions look good and all that. Could you help me out?