So I took on the challenge of creating a handy manny cake out of fondant for my
nephews 1rst birthday, I have created some of the characters so far, and well to
be honest I NEED HELP. Can you ?




I told her I couldn't do copyrighted characters....but really? Do people do this? I can't imagine writing a cake decorator with this request.

I have had customers email me and ask for my cookie recipes,icing recipes etc,..I mean really..I'm gonna share that with you so you can make a cake or cookies instead of ordering from me...Nope!!!

Well, it doesn't sound like she's selling it as it's for her nephew so what exactly does she want? Does she need help making more figures for the cake?

The top part of the post is the email that karateka from the person asking her to help her make the characters.

I would not do it. Tell her that you don't do licensed characters and you are not going to risk your business by doing so.

What if you quoted her for a tool box cake then she could at home add the tool chacaters she made?

I agree. If it's copyrighted, that's something you don't even want to mess with. If it were something general like a zoo cake and she wanted to purchase a giraffe and an elephant from you, I would consider it for a nice price, but not copyrighted stuff.

I agree, the copyright thing has gotten me out of so many Dora cakes.... I share info with fellow bakers, but customers.....that's called lessons at XXX per hour.

I told her I couldn't because of the copyright issue. I just couldn't believe she was asking! I mean....really? Help you? Wonder what she would expect me to charge for this service?

I usually tell people if they have a specific question, I can try to answer it for them, but if they need hands on instrution, my fee is $25.00 per hour for private classes, otherwise, I teach at the local Michael's.

And yes, people ask all the time! I probably get one or two questions like this a week.

Ohhhh people ask all right! They ask many things. I recently told someone that if they want answers, they can look on the internet, if they want private lessons, the cost is $50 hr, plus materials and I will give them a list of equiment they need to bring with them. That price usually gets me off the hook

People will ask for anything, because they never know who's kind or crazy enough to give it to them. I get requests for recipes and such all the time and I have a 'standard' answer. "I'm sorry, but sharing that information would be detrimental to my business." I have had bakeries call me trying to get recipes from me because they had my product at such-and-such event and it blew them away. It never hurts to ask, but you don't always get what you want.

So much bitterness over past unreasonable request, in the pasted clip of her email request I see nothing about her expecting it for free? Perhaps she would have been willing to pay? She wanted a Handy Many cake which you can't do due to licensing why not offer what you CAN do? The Handy Manny people don't own everything construction perhaps she would have accepted a generic construction themed cake and been happy to pay for it since she had promised a cake to her nephew and was in a bind.

It just sounds like she's realized tht she's not skilled enough to do this, and she's panicking. Did she specify whether she wants you to make the figures, or teach her how to do them? If she wants you to teach her how to model figures that's one thing, but if she's looking for someone to make them that's totally different.