Hello ladies! I've been watching and reading and enjoying everybody's posts and pics for awhile now, but am a complete amateur and so far have simply been having fun with it.
Now, I made a castle fondant cake for my 3-year-old daughter this past weekend, and I had one person inquire into making a very similar cake for a quinceanera birthday party. It is a torted 3-tier round cake, covered in white fondant, with seven pastillage/fondant turrets, royal icing details, sugarcone towers ... completely edible. I've posted a picture on cc, if you want to take a look ... and naturally, the cake board would be covered.

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-photo_1279543.html

Please let me know what you think! I have NO IDEA how to charge for this sort of thing, I've never done it before and despite looking through the boards, I'm still at a loss for how much to ask. Please help! Thank you for any suggestions!

-Emi.

In my neck of the woods, fondant cakes start at $3 a serving. How many servings does your cake make? You'd need to charge extra for the turrets and extra work you do. How long did you spend making the cake? How much did it cost you to make?

Pricing all depends on your area...

HTH a little bit.

I start my cakes at $3 a serving for buttercream with an extra $1 serving for fondant. The turrets would be extra. If it were me, I would figure how much time it took me to make it and multiply $25 an hour to that time. So, say the cake serves 50 people (which is my guess - 12", 10", 8" round tiers) - it would be $200. Than, I would guess the turrets would take about 1-2 hours. So, the cake would be about $250. That's what I would charge. HTH.

Like I said, I'm a complete novice (I'm so sorry!), so I'm sure it took me longer than it would take someone else. For that matter, though, I'm sure it will take me far less time to do next time I make it, now that I know how to do it ... The hard part about the towers was really that it was a several-step process, first making a frame out of pastillage and letting them dry, and then covering and decorating. Several days for drying, but actual work would probably be about 4 hours. I'm sure this would be much speedier for somebody else! The cakes Themselves did not take long to cover, it was the towers that took me awhile. The cakes were 10", 8" and 6" each.

Thanks for your help!

The last time I made a castle cake, I swore I wouldn't do another one for less than $500. You'd better believe that's at least how much a shop would charge. It's a premium design.

Thank you so much everybody! I appreciate the tips and the PMs ... Some very good suggestions here. And like I said, I know this won't take me as long on my next time round, I just need to keep practicing. I'm so excited to have asked! Thanks again!