Hi!! Before I began cake decorating, I played around with polymer clay for years. Since I've entered the cake decorating world, I am receiving more and more requests for fondant sculpting on my cakes.... any where from sculpting a 'whimsical' version of the person receiving the cake, to fun animals. I have a few of my cake pics posted, but this is where I am running into a problem..... I don't know how to charge!! As much as I LOVE designing a custom cake , they obvious are time consuming. After I deliver the cake and look at my supplies and time, sometimes I am only making $3 - $5 per hour!!! Since I quote a price for the cake ahead of time, I am uncertain the amount of time it will take to actually sculpt the fondant figure (I have a rough guess with my past figures). I was just hoping someone out there in CC land may sculpt fondant and would be willing to share their pricing. HELP!!!
Thanks!! ~ Jaime

Sculpting fondant figures is a lot more time than ingredient cost. You have to figure out how long it will take you and then multiply by how much you want to make per hour. I'm normally kind of liberal with the how long will it take, because there is always some kind of hold up that will make it take an extra hour. When you're looking at 4 hours of sculpting that becomes 5, that will greatly decrease your pay per hour.

A local cake friend of mine sculpts fondant people for cake toppers, they are amazing! She'll take a picture and make them what they want, like she made one bride a mermaid! It was perfect. She charges $250 to make a fondant bride and groom. Some people balk, some people pay...

Charging what you're worth will scare some people who love walmart prices away, that's not a bad thing...

I got an e-mail for a bride two weeks before her wedding desperate to have a hand made topper of a bride, groom, and cake w/ child sitting on top. She said she was referred to by Charm City Cakes. I quoted her a price of $150 and never heard back from her. Honestly, what did she think she was going to pay? From charm city cakes, no less? On cakes I've done int he past, I usually charge about $15-$20 per figure, but I know that's WAY underpriced. I usually do it because I want to, not because a customer asked for it, so I feel bad charging an arm and a leg for a design element that they didn't request.