As a cake decorator in a bakery that is too old school to use anything but buttercream and frosting, I have to get creative sometimes. Piping the pixels for Minecraft themes is so difficult because they need to be nice and square. It's a struggle. So this time around, I made a square cake. Mixed up my buttercream colors. Spread them thinly on parchment-lined sheet pans. Froze them. And cut them into squares. Then assembled them on the sides of the cake. What a chore. And not as perfect as I'd like because I clearly cannot cut uniform squares despite my best efforts. And alas… This cake took me way too long.
I need to talk to some of y'all about pricing – I know, a common topic here – but my bakery has such a confusing decoration policy. If someone wants a drawing, it's supposedly $1 per minute that the decoration takes. In practice, for something like this that I haven't done before, it took me several hours and there's no way I could charge $1 a minute. Also… How is that fair for the customer? I would much prefer they are told up front how much they will be paying. In reality, we end up undercharging for everything because you can't blindside people with exorbitant fees at the end. Not if you want repeat customers.
Anyways, here's the cake. I'm soliciting pricing advice for any that want to give it. Location is New England in US, not a fancy city neighborhood but a town that is pretty comfortable economically.
by pinetreesandcake
5 Comments
I make cakes and play so much Minecraft I could have a channel- this cake is freaking amazing and I applaud you because it is incredible!
$80-120 seems like a decent price. It’s definitely a specialty cake.
Minecraft is the best!! And this cake is awesome.
I dread making Minecraft sheet cakes and all I do is use an air brush and top with a deco pak lol. I made a creeper cupcake cake that was pretty fun to do though.
Edit because I remembered you have a question. I decorate for a grocery store chain, and they tell me to charge $4 for 15 minutes. So if it takes me 30 minutes to finish a cake, it would add the $4 charge. Between deco paks and an edible image printer I can cut a lot of corners time wise to keep our customers cost down but still get a pretty cool cake. So I usually recommend those options because it’s still an additional charge for an image or pak, it definitely tends to cost less than if I have to hand pipe the entire thing.
Charging $1/minute for a drawing is nonsensical. A rainbow could take me 2 minutes to pipe but 10 minutes to mix all the colors. Is that an extra $12 then? Does time spent searching for reference photos count? What if someone can draw like Picasso in 5 minutes and everyone else takes way longer? A far more simple way to do things if you’re charging by time is to charge an hourly rate. I charge $125 for a 6” buttercream cake, for example, and that price includes a “base” level of decoration like borders, piping, simple (20 minutes or less) drawings, etc. If a customer wants a more complex buttercream design or drawing, I charge an additional $20/hour. If they want fondant, that usually starts at $40/hr to account for extra cost of materials as well as more labor. I provide a price quote and take payment prior to pick-up – the only surprise I want customers to experience is liking my work even more than they thought they would haha.