celenes

Wendy, I have the Cupcake Cafe book and I was always intrigued with their flowers too. In the Wilton method of teaching, they use flower formers to give the flowers curves and when I taught this is how I instructed my students. Whether it was pansies, daisies etc. we always use the flower former to let the flowers dry. When I learned a few years ago another instructor had us pipe a bit of frosting on the cake and then place the flowers to give the height and dimension to the flowers. I still follow that for my cakes today.

I agree on the wealth statement. I wish I could get away too, hmmm let's see don't I need to visit some of our offices there for some reason.... This is the time when having a corporate job alongside your own business does have its benefits. If only the timing were right for a business trip. I can't wait to see the pictures and read also.

Gosh, you know, I think I could start another thread all about cake pricing! I must say, as long as I've been doing it, it's still kind of a puzzler. But I've gotten better over the years at how I price my cakes out. First, though, you are SO RIGHT about the questions you get from brides......! The stories I could tell.....my oh my......! I always knew I was in trouble when the bride came in with the Martha magazine. "I really LOVE this cake! But I only want to spend $250!" Yarrrrgh. Pricing cakes that I do over and over is a cinch. I know exactly how much time it will take me, and better yet, because I do them all the time, I'm more efficient with them and it's more profitable for me. Although I curse, and continue to curse, and will always curse Martha for as long as I shall live, she does provide me with a lot of brides that request the designs in her mag. This can be a "good thing", because I can crank them out without a whole lot of effort. For instance, a few years ago her mag featured a cake with a fancy monogram on it. That really set a trend, and I've done tons of them. I now consider that design to be boring, but it's easy money. But since I'm an artist at heart, most of the time I wish they'd just put the magazine away and let ME design something for them because I know it will be better, and more fun for me. I really enjoy doing my OWN designs....not other people's. But back to price. One thing I always do early in the consultation is the money aspect. I may not know exactly how much to charge them at first, but I always know within a short period of time if we are talking about "big money" or not. If I suspect that their idea does involve big money, I tell them upfront......you are talking about spending at least "x" amount of dollars here. Either they blink, or they don't. If they don't blink then we proceed. If they do, then we start talking compromise, and I design something that better fits their budget. Often, when I take an order for a project that could be difficult and it's something I've not done before, I will tell my client that it will be at LEAST "x" amount of money, but I have to think it out and estimate my hours and methodology before I commit to a final figure. I think better when people aren't staring at me expectantly to pop out a price. I've done that before under pressure and severely underpriced myself, and cost my shop money. This is not a good thing to do! When pricing wedding cakes, my prices start at $3.50 per serving and go up from there. $3.50 per serving includes some very nice basic piped designs. Every decorator has to come up with their own pricing system. We all have our "specialties" or "fortes", and some of us will take longer with a certain design than another.... we're all comfortable with different things. For instance, I can crank out a Swiss Dot cake with my eyes closed, so I don't charge a whole lot for those. Another decorator may hate doing Swiss Dot, or it's more of a struggle for him/her to get the dots spaced out right without spending a lot of time at it, so they may charge more. If I get a bride who is "shopping around", I always encourage her to do so, but also tell her that I don't negotiate. My price is my price. If she prefers to get a cake elsewhere for cheaper, then by all means. There's nothing that annoys me more than to have a bride call back and try to bargain me down by saying that "so and so" only charges "such and such". Well, great, then you need to get your cake from "so and so"! People DO have a hard time understanding why cakes cost so much. In their mind, it's food, and food should be cheap (relatively). I just keep it simple because most people don't want to be lectured. I just tell them that time is money, and these cakes take time, plain and simple. Oh, one more thing......before I discuss money with a client, I bring up the most important thing before we even START talking design.....and that question is, "when do you need it?" Would you believe that more often than not I get the answer, "this Saturday" or "tomorrow"? Yeah, sure ok, and for my next trick, I'm gonna pull a rabbit outta this hat!! ← Love your scenerio about brides who want a Martha cake or some other world famous design. It is truly amazing how much folks don't know about the labor involved with cakes. While I will do wedding cakes, I have decided that wedding cakes will not be my niche because I feel I can't be creative as you mention because I have to make a copy of what people see in a magazine. I like to create my own designs based on what my client's needs are.

I have been moved to tears Absolutely incredible work and to take the time you have to instruct us was above and beyond. What I appreciate about you even though we have never met, is the fact that you are about sharing the details. Some folks who have talents won't because they are selfish. Not you. Everytime I read something on the forum it keeps me encouraged and challenged to do bigger and better. I must say I have kicked up my cakes a lot over the last few months but I'm still not quite where I want to be. I saw a flower pot cake (retail price $80) on Dean and Deluca that I thought was cool. But that takes a back sit to this creation you have done. Kudos to you.

Yes thanks so much for being our tester. I wondered about that stuff myslef and was considering making a purchase. So now I think I will try it out since I want to give my cakes some diversity. We'll see if I can follow directions

I have only used Wilton's. My royal icing always seems to stay white.

One of my goals for myself this year is to learn airbrush technology. What's a good place to purchase the equipment and how should I begin to learn?

Bakery Crafts also in Ohio has a large selection too.

Bravo to all who posted their pictures!! I am envious. Also this is cruel and unusual punishment too. I could eat a little bit of everything

Well here's my two cents, since I have become a small business cake decorator I use mixes because at the end of the day it is a lot cheaper. I mostly use Duncan Hines but I do doctor up my mixes using pudding, pure extracts, sour cream, milk etc. I have never made a sheet cake from scratch and would not be so happy if I used a ton of ingredients and didn't get a good result. I also own the Cake Doctor's book and the Cake Bible which unfortunately, I have not made one cake from the latter yet. But I plan on doing so in the near future. When you are baking 7 or 10 cakes a week it's just a lot easier to use the mix in my opinion. I go back in forth on my frosting just depends on if I have time and again the sheer volume of what I am using, I am better off buying a huge 25lb pail and doctoring it up.

Gee I lucked up on this topic because I was speaking to my big client yesterday and the topic of chocolate covered strawberries came up as a special offer for Mother's day offering. I was wondering what to charge too. Here's the scenerio, my client services several cafeterias in Corporate office buildings. Periodically depending on the upcoming holidays etc. they will have special offers like this Mother's Day deal. My primary focus is cakes, however I have done strawberries before and they have worked fine. I don't expect the volume for the orders to be extreme (so I say now) but I am clueless on how I would like to position the offer to my client. It sounds to me like based on the comments on this thread I should offer them a per piece price and then let them take it from there? Correct? I would think they would want me to put the strawberries in some type of pickup and go packaging, then that calls for different pricing. Thoughts? BTW the local chocolate company here, Malleys sells their chocolate covered strawberries for $13 for a box of 12 if I remember correctly and of course Godiva is much more.

Hi Folks, I am glad I came back to check out the chatter on this topic. Marina I also saw the birthday cake challenge and I too was rooting for you. Bravo. So here's my deal, I have decided as I mentioned before to leave my corporate job in the next few months. Thanks to a very supportive husband, I think we'll be o.k Since we're in our early forties, there's not much from a materialistic standpoint that we want. Just to assure we can make the mortgage payment, maybe get a new car to accomodate my business deliveries and a vacation every so often. While we have children from previous marriages, no one lives with us so that helps alot. My corporate account has picked up a lot which is why I haven't been able to keep up on my forum participation. Also my private clients are still ordering too I wholeheartedly agree with the comments about having to do everything yourself until your business is solid enough to hire help and if you're as crazed as I am, no one can meet up to my level of service in my mind. That's why I decorated 4 cakes last night, got up a 4 this morning and decorated another cake and then went to my fulltime job by 7:00. I know that's insane and I know I can't keep this pace up much longer. I will have to leave my other job soon. Plus I have another potential client in my back pocket too. It is quite apparent to me where my passion lies. On the topic of targeting in on your offering, I have learned somewhat the hard way that you really have to only take on what you are best at. For me that's birthday, anniversary, baby shower type cakes. I tried the wedding cake arena, did some tastings with clients and then didn't end up getting the order. It was very frustrating for me until I realized, I can't compete with the Italian, Hungarian etc bakeries here or the bakeries that do really intricate design work. I am not versed on that yet and don't know if I ever will be. But the good news is, I think I'm o.k with that. My business is still in the infancy stage and it probably may sound ridiculious to you but I am so excited that I have already surpassed my cake sales from last year at this time. Word of mouth is my best friend and like most of you I started out taking cake in to my co-workers projects I did in my Wilton training or recipes I wanted to try out etc. Next thing I knew they were asking me to make cakes for their special event. I think my customers appreciate the fact that I design what they want not what's in a bakery book at the local grocery store. I mean I delivered three Elmo themed order today to one woman for her daughter's birthday. Extreme if you ask me, but she told me when called around to the grocery store they would do a round cake only sheets. She ordered a 8", 9" and 2 dozen cupcakes. She was thrilled with what I provided her and I had fun designing the cakes. That's what it's about for me, fun even when I am having a problem with a cake, like when you turn it out of the pan the bottom sticks or the frosting texture won't work no matter what you do. Another thing that has come up too is that my neighbor is running for our Mayor position and I might even get an opportunity to provide cake for his events. If I do that's another step forward. So that's what happening in the world of Celene at present.

I have never seen pink boxes used by any bakeries here in Cleveland. However, I have seen the pink boxes before and thought they were cute. I thought about ordering some for my cakes because my logo is a black oval with fushia writing. I have ribbon that I put on my boxes to make it look fancy and my customers love that extra touch. But for larger cakes like sheet cakes it takes too much ribbons for the boxes so soon i hope to have some labels done versus imprinting the boxes. With that said, I too use white boxes.

Greetings, In response to your question, while I don't have a store front shop yet and not sure if I ever will, I have built a small bakery business that I run from my home. Here's how things have gone for me, first in late '01 I started out taking some general cake decorating classes (Wilton) made it through the first two courses was held up on the wedding cake portion because the instructor went on medical leave. I lucked up and found another baking supply store that taught classes started all over with the basics and went through to the wedding cake course passed and viola!! I work fulltime and many of my customers are my co-workers, family members and friends. My husband and I had a house built in '03 which allowed me to design my kitchen for baking and in '04 my business really picked up so I thought until this year where I am baking on average 3-5 cakes a week. Not a lot for most but considering I work a fulltime job and do my cakes part time it's a lot. I have only made one what I consider to be a WOW cake so far which is when I received a request to make a red hat cake and I was impressed with myself and so were my co-workers and the customer. I have gained alot of my knowledge from people like chefpeon and sinclair from the this forum. I am not at their level yet but know I will be in the near future. I have also had the pleasure of meeting nightscottsman too who gave me some invaluable operational information as a pastry chef working for the Bellagio. I most recently took on teaching cake decorating classes once a week which gives me an opportunity first to teach others the basics and also to test my skills too. This past Friday I secured my first commercial account with a very large company that operates across the country. While my services will be within my area here in Cleveland, again another opportunity to build a reputation for myself and my company. I would agree the support in the community helps alot and right now my little one person business is running very well. My hope is to focus all my time and energy into my business, enjoy it, make money and leave the corporate job for someone else.

Thanks for posting Anne, they are awesome as I knew they would be. This helps me alot. I have never worked with modeling chocolate before so I will have to test that out one day. My timeline is short so I don't think it will be with this project. I think I will do the 3-D on top of a sheet cake which is what I feel most comfortable in such a short timeframe. Which means I'll be using cupcakes and probably cookies to accomplish the hat. Sound like a plan? I'll see my customer tomorrow at my 40th birthday party so I'll briefly have a discussion with them. That is before the alcohol flows to much for my guests. I'm not much of a drinker but to appease them I'll nurse a glass of wine for a while.

Ann would you post a picture of two of your hats. Another question for all, would you make a large hat or a small version of the hat it put it on a sheet cake? I am still trying to figure out pricing? I would like to tell her something today or tomorrow.

No unfortunately I don't have one of those yet. Can I accomplish the same thing by using the spray on color that Wilton has? Or do you think that is not a good idea?

Greetings All, I have received a request to make a birthday cake for a customer based on the Red Hat Society. It's a rather fancy hat with purple trim. Any suggestions for a cake that will serve approximately 20 and what would be a reasonable price. I went out to their website so I could get a clue as to what it looks like and I think it would be fairly easy. So I say now. If I accept the assignment, I need to work on it next week because the party is February 1st. I am a little concerned about the frosting being red. I know I can use no taste red but due to the amount of frosting I will need won't it be bitter or perhaps I could use edible glitter but that too would like a lot. Hopeless Society Baker

You're certainly right about that. About this time of year I get requests for King Cakes too, and I don't take them on because they're overrated, ugly, and don't taste that good. Yeah, you want a big-ass cinnamon roll with a plastic baby and yellow, green and purple icing? Go here! ← O.k got it and wow I didn't realize the pricing was quite that high. Gee, and the one in the picture is not even close to looking nice. I think I can handle it, doesn't look as complicated as I thought.

Hi , Has anyone ever made King Cake? My customers are starting to inquire and I would love to accommodate them. Is it difficult? What about the baby? I assume that is inserted after the cake is baked. Anyone have a recipe they would be willing to share or a site where I can obtain one? Thanks in advance for your assistance.

I just would like to add that although I haven't ventured down the path of gumpaste flower making I own Scott's book, several of Collette's books and an autographed copy of Kerry's book. I owe my library to my egullet friends Good luck and I am going to perhaps learn how to do these this year too.

I love the cake plate too!!! I am also jealous because my mother-inlaw typically gets me a new one for Christmas and this year she got me jewelry. Don't get me wrong it is beautiful but I was looking forward to adding to my cake plate collection. Never fear though as my birthday is fast approaching like "40" going north I am sure I will get my new cake plate!!!

I would say for me it was the fact that I had great sales for the month of December which will enable me to go out and by some new baking toys. I also have a big birthday coming up in a little less than a month so I also plan to be on a shopping extravenganza in January in honor of me!!!

Sounds interesting. Joint compound. Never considered that. On the topic of covering with fondant don't you have to cover the styrofoam with something so the fondant will adhere. Also I failed to mention the customer who I will be delivering this display cake to intends to rent it out. She does floral arrangements and also the decor for the reception and apparently has an customer segment that has asked about renting the cakes. I know you are probably thinking why doesn't she just refer the business to me? I thought too but just not a battle I choose to take on right now. I am busy enough with my own customer and to be quite honest I never considered the rental of dummy cakes until she approached me. I will have a few designs made up and if the customer is in need of something elaborate but can't afford it then that can be the backup plan. Also since I teach cake decorating it will be a nice way to show off various cake designs to I think.

Hi All, I recently made a display cake using royal frosting and needless to say it is already becoming discolored. Anyone have suggestions on some other covering to use? I spoke with a company yesterday who specializes in making display cakes and they said they use something like spackle. Apparently the covering they use stays flexible. Also how much would be fair to charge for a display cake for example 3 tier with swiss dot design? I have a customer who has interest in purchasing a display cake from me and I have been dragging my feet on providing a price because I don't want to over or under charge for this item. Thanks in advance for your help.