I am making cupcakes for a friend (two bridal showers and a rehearsal party). She has offered to pay for them but I insist she only pay for ingredients. (I'm new at this and still trying to figure things out.) I was wondering if anyone has taken the time to figure out the cost of ingredients only for one recipe of WASC and one batch of BC?

If she is wanting to pay for ingredients, and not your time and talent, then if I had to buy a whole dozen eggs so I could have 6 to use, then I'd charge her for the whole dozen. This is no different from if she had offered to buy the ingredients and bring them to you ... she'd have to buy the whole dozen. If you want to give her the leftover 6 eggs, fine, do so.

But if you are going to do it for cost of ingredients, to me that means out of pocket costs ... the whole bottle of vanilla and the whole dozen eggs.

Or she can pay the regular price and be done with it.

I agree with Debi about the pricing.

It just seems that you want to sort of do this as a favor or present. It's that's the cake or case! Just estimate it.

Cake box $1.99 (my cost now)
Flour $2.75 5lb I will use 1/20 so $0.15
Sugar$2.00 5lb again $0.10
Sourcream $1.00
Vanilla $.50
eggs $0.60
and so on if you just approximate it, you should reach about $9.00 for the cake part and about $7.00 for crisco or butter BC.

Then you consider the cupcake papers, box and eveything else about $20.00 and you are good.

I hope that helps.

Good Luck.

Costs really will vary depending on your area. I am a home baker and buy where the ingredients that I like to use are cheapest - WalMart, Sam's Club and Kroger are my choices. For me to make a single recipe of WASC it only costs $3.13 ($6.26 for the 2 box recipe listed). That just went up today because the cost of DH cake mix went from 0.98 to 1.08 per box at my local WalMart... That's including my local tax (10%), but not gas, transportation, cake boards, cupcake liners, etc.

I use Sugarshack's BC which makes a whole 5qt mixer bowl full. It costs $9.56 per batch for me to make it, but it will ice about 2.5 cakes - for me, a "cake" is usually a double-layer 9" round or a 13x9".

It really will vary a lot. If you're charging her only for ingredients, then you may be best off to just go buy everything (even if you have the ingredients in your cupboard) and charge her for all of it. Then you can either give her the leftover flour, sugar, eggs, etc or you can keep them as a bonus...

kbrown - I'm in West TN, very near the Mississippi River - in a rural county.