Just a quick one to see how different prices are here and in the US. I am just wondering how much it costs to make a cake just plain iced with board and box for example a 10" square. In the UK I have costed it out to about £17 just wondering how much this would work out in the US
Thanks

a 2 layer chocolate cake with buttercream, a simple board and a box would cost me about $8 in the US to make

Wow thats about £6 in the UK a lot cheaper than here!

A 6-inch round cake torted and filled with IMBC would cost me at least $17 to make, this includes the cost of the cake box, cake circles, etc.

a 10" x4" square cake would cost me around $13 with a plain board and box and just iced w/ minimal amount of icing used in decorations.

The materials-only cost of my 8" double-layer scratch yellow butter cake with basic buttercream (not IMBC/SMBC) and simple decorations, including cake board and box, is $19.50. I am not a business and do not buy in bulk, so this is based on retail prices for standard quantity premium ingredients. No overhead is included, and for the ingredients I did factor in the cost of only the portion of ingredients used in a recipe.

this is an interesting post! I hope more contribute

I agree, it's a really interesting post. I really didn't know how much $$$ went into making a cake until I sat down and did the tedious computations. I'm not including the gas $ for the car to go shopping to get the supplies or the shipping costs, or the cost of gas for the oven. I bake and decorate at home as a hobby, pay retail, and I use high quality ingredients. It's eye opening to calculate the cost.

Oh, and my gas oven needs to be fixed! It's not working at 100%. It's much cheaper to fix what's needed than buying a new oven, though. I'm amazed that the cakes I've made recently have turned out well in spite of it.

Speaking as a hobby baker now:

2-layer, 10" square, I would use 3 or 4 cake mixes ..... $4.00
16 eggs .... $2.75
4 envelopes of dream whip ..... $4.00
oil ....... approx $0.50
double cardboards .... $1
box .....$1.25
4 lbs p.sugar ...... $4
crisco .... approx $0.75
vanilla ..... allocate $0.20

Total: $18.45

Does not include:
gas to pick up supplies,
cost of equipment needed (mixer, oven, refrigerator, pans, spatula, rubber scrapers),
cost of misc supplies (wax/parchment paper, paper towels, soap, disposable decor bags, pan grease, food safety gloves, etc),
labor expense (which varies greatly depending on the experience and talent of the decorator so my cost is arrogantly expensive! ),
cost of gas and time to go BACK to the store to get something I forgot the first time,
cost of buying KFC for dinner because our kitchen is tied up in baking a cake.
I don't have this as a hobby baker, but cost of insurance for delivery vehicle and liability and equipment coverage.

There's a reason I would have charged $150+ for a cake of this size (serves 50).

indydebi....you just made my night. lol. Nothing could be closer to the truth than running BACK to the store and running to the drive-thru for dinner

ha ha ha So if you run to the drive-thru for dinner because your business ate your kitchen... is it a write off? A business expense because you are working through dinner?

You girls kill me !!

Basic cake and frosting cost for a 4" x 10" square including board and box, but no other overhead is 58 shekels (about $16)

this makes me feel so much better to know that I am not the only one that quits cooking meals when there is a cake going on in the house.
My family says that if mom has a cake to make we wont eat for days...

10x4in square, filled & decorated only with buttercream (3 layers filling, 4 cake) with box and board = 24,89 euros ($33.85 or £21.85). Change that to a plain ganached & fondanted cake = 41,40 euros ($56.29 or £36.32).

I made an Excel spreadsheet and calculated my costs-somehow it comes out to $1 per serving for me, a hobby caker. This includes ingredients for cake mix and buttercream, some kind of filling, candy clay decorations, and boards. It might even include a few paper towels although I normally use a whole roll per cake.

This does not include shipping charges and cost of cake toys I buy on-line and at local stores. It does not include gas, electricity, and Press and Seal. It does not include the millions of hours of my time, nor the cost of drive-thru (thanks for reminding me Indy), nor the cost of the housekeeper I have come every two weeks because when I am caking I don't clean anything except my mess in the kitchen. Don't ask about my laundry....

So, $1 per serving. This is how I justify giving "just a cake" as my gift. So why do I still feel "cheap" when I do it?

kimblyd, never feel bad about such a wonderful gift!
The downside to this is, that I am EXPECTED to bring a cake as a a gift every time I am invited anywhere. I would love to go out and buy some useless nicknacks, but no... I have to bake!

A simple 10x4 sheet cake with IMBC and cake board will bring me down around 15 Euros (around 20 $) as I buy eggs cheap locally and most of the other stuff in bulk.

this may seem like a silly question, but I really don't know...when figuring how much a cake costs to make, how do you determine how much (for example) gas to run your oven for that cake costs you? Or the electricity that you use while making that cake, how much that costs? (Does that make sense?)

I guess it depends on if you used box mixes or make it from scratch. I like to make mine from scratch, so I guess I spend about $7 or $8 at Walmart. From box mixes I would spend a dollar or two less.

It would cost me close to $30 depending on whether I found some good bargains or not.

This is an awesome post!! When you break it down like this you realize how much time and effort goes into this.