WOW!!! Stop and Shop has DH 10 for $10 this week. I think they also have BC mixes 3 for $5. They have these sales at least once a month.

Since we talking prices: dozen eggs in ALDI's this week goes for $1.09. If you have one 'round: check it out.

For a 8in round and a 10in round you need about 19 cups of batter. A box mix makes about 6 cups each therefore you would need 4 boxes mix and you will have extra left over. thats what I use.

Just when I was thinking about possibly going to boxed mixes, I went to the store and realized the pricing was not favorable for me. Stayed with my scratch baking. I just figured it was God's way of telling me to stay with what I know. I think once things level out it will be 6 in one hand and half a dozen in the other? I was really, really shocked at how expensive the mixes were but now I see that the pricing was not "normal"? I will watch for sales (now that I know they do go on sale). This economy is horrible. At least eggs, milk and butter have started to level out a little bit. I buy my cake flower and regular flower in bulk at Winco Foods. I will see if they have mix too! I never even thought about checking!!!!!!!!!

Thanks waterlily so I'm not crazy. I think I tend to over fill my pans. I'm going to measure it all out this time around

when I used to use straight box mixes, my BC mix was about 4 1/2 C batter.
my WASC recipe is a little over 6 C (based on one box).

measure it out. you also might want to do it by wieght.
it's in the neighborhood of 1lb/ 2C
so I put about 1 lb in my 6" round pans.

HTH!

Last week at our Wal-Mart, I paid $0.88 a box for PB cake mix. I paid $0.84 a box and $1.56 a bag for Dominos PS. I was paying $28.25 for 50lb. of Alpine, within a few months it jump up to $54.00...but from some prices I have seen on the internet, I am still getting it cheaper.

Just kidding, I said to DH once (over the cost of meats), "we would be better off getting some cows, hogs and chickens"...he reply with, "why?, we wouldn't be able to afford the hay & feed it would take to feed them". Even if I did get a giggle from what he said, it is the truth.

God Bless,
Sharon

Jen,me too. I get about 4 1/2 -5 c batter w/ 1 regular mix & can get up to about 6 3/4 c with WASC. I had to laugh a couple weeks ago when I got my OLD wondermold pan out that was given to me. It said use one box mix (1 mix = 7 cups). I'm thinking, are you insane? So, not only have they raised prices overtime they have decreased the volume by almost 1/2l!!!!

You girls should try shopping here in Shanghai, all your prices are cheap aompared to here. I only bake from scratch, because baking with mixes would be much too expensive (all imported), but even there prices have gone up like crazy, but people want to pay less,....go figure. It P.sses the H.. out of me, BIG TIME!!

One thing I've noticed about Walmart is that they seem to have items they raise temporarily for no apparent reason. I'll go one week and find an item I regularly buy suddenly much more expensive. Then, the next week or so, it will be back to normal. And sometimes I find them out of step with everyone else. When the other stores were dropping their milk prices, my Walmart raised theirs for a time.

So perhaps there is hope that this is not a permanent price increase. Perhaps.

On Monday my Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market (a smaller, less annoying Wal-Mart) had BC cake mixes for .98. I don't go to the "real" Walmart very often, but weirdly enough they are usually more expensive than the small one by my house. I guess they raise the prices at the store where more people shop.

We have a 18 wheeler (DH huals coal), we paid almost $50,000.00 for fuel last year...and thats not even a full year of hauling. When fuel went down, talk about 2 people doing the happy dance...but now it has started climbing back up again.

We seem a lot of our friends who had trucks, have to park them or sell them, because they couldn't keep up with the cost of fuel. It's so scary with everything that happening now in the world.

Amen! Debi on your stimulus package comment, it's so true!

God Bless,
Sharon

Well we pay $5 at the moment for BC cake mix....., and our price increases havent come in yet....... $6 for a dozen eggs and $4 for a stick of butter........

I live in Australia

I spent all morning yesterday doing research/pricing on buying bulk instead of flour, sugar, etc at grocery store prices (for scratch baking), and I found I was delighted with what my profit margin will be after I can store bulk ingredients instead of my current small-quantity storage. Everything went down a lot, and it looked good on the P&L I had to do for my SBA loan. So I'm happy.

On the other hand, I pay almost $4 for a HALF GALLON of organic milk now. Geez, we're starting to think about getting a dang cow...lol

[quote="dkelly]

Boy you're not kidding! They should have given the stimulus money to us taxpayers so we could start spending again.........that would stimulate the economy![/quote]

My DH & I, with so many other people have said the same thing. IMHO that seems like it would have been the best thing...they could have done. Who better to stimulate the economy then us the tax paying people...because the way they (gov.) have/and are doing it, so far doesn't seem to be helping.

Chef_Stef, at one a few years ago, we were paying $4.99 a gallon for milk...thank goodness it has went down.

God Bless,
Sharon

........doing a 10 and 8 inch rounds and I will use 4-5 boxes......

If you fill your pans 2/3rds full it will come out just right -- not over filled - not raised above the top of the pan that you would have to level off & waste.
For a 10"x2" round one cake mix is just right
For a 8x2" round pan - 1 1/2 (or one of my *original* WASC recipes) will be just right for 2 layers.

So if you are making a 10x4 and 8x4 you would use 3 1/2 mixes total.
Measuring is sooooo messy and unnecessary. Do you really scrape every bit of the batter out of each cup? Are you sure you are using XXX # of cups? Why go thru that trouble? Just learn how much each pan uses and keep record for future use.

Just a few amounts for you to memorize OR mark w/permanent marker on the bottom of your pans:

Two 8x2 rounds OR 8x2 sq OR one 9x13x2 sheet- one recipe WASC OR 1 1/2 box mixes
10x2" round OR most Wilton shaped pans OR 12x8x2 sheet - 1 box mix
12"x2 round OR 10x2" sq - 1 1/2 mixes (OR 1 WASC recipe)
14x2" round OR 12x2" sq OR 12x16x2" sheet- 2 mixes (OR 1 1/2 WASC recipe)

Some things down here in Louisiana have gone up in price--powdered sugar I could get for >$1 now it's closer to $2 for a 2lb bag!

At Albertsons last week, DH was .88/box. I bought every box they had on the shelf and then got a rain check for 30 more boxes!

I went to Walmart in San Antonio today. All DH mixes and the others too were 96 cents each. I bought every French vanilla they had in DH and a few DK Choc Fudge.

The tags had the discontinued star on them so once these are gone from the shelves I am sure the price will go up significantly.

And as a sidenote ... has anyone else noticed their walmart is no longer carrying the walmart brand (Great Value - GV) of cake mixes and canned icing? I used to use their choc cake mix for my choc cookies and they stopped carrying it in every walmart I've been to. I've just noticed, while in Aisle 8, that there are no GV brand cake anything in there anymore. Any walmart employees on here who know why?

I don't use boxes, BUT my soy butter is now almost $5.00/lb!!! It's rediculous, and my organic shortening is now $7.79!!!
I'm definitely going to be making adjustments...

Hmmm, I just had this arguement with the cafe owner I'm about to halt all business with... he told me yesterday (after charging a whopping $2.00 more for a cake) that I had no right raising my prices because if I was "making cost" than I was doing just fine!!! Interesting theory...
Are people really this self-serving? I'm with you on an increase.

stop and shop is great. they frequently run their 10 for 10 sales. I have gotten cake mix, and even domino's ps. The powdered sugar runs anywhere from $1.29 - 1.79 normally so when I saw it at $1.00 a box I stocked up. Also if you have supermarkets near a stop and shop to be competitive they have also started running local 10 for $10 sales. Don't think that making from scratch is cheaper. Everything has gone up in price.

Someone had mentioned the bulk mix at GFS. Well, I tried it once and it was a waste of my money. I had some stuff coming up for a fundraiser and thought it would be easier to make one mix in bulk. Even doctored it didn't turn out well.
Luckily, I tested it on my parent's Birthday cake before using it for the public and they were not pleased.

I use scratch mixes and box depending on what and who I'm making stuff for, but the biggest price change I've seen is in the powdered sugar for my icing.

I like to put Jello instant pudding in my DH cake mixes and its amazing that the box of pudding costs almost as much as the box of cake mix!

I think the DH is 1.18 at Walmart and like 1.07 at Target (although they rarely have the regular yellow there) unless its gone up.

I was thrilled to see the price of butter and cheese (my family eats alot of cheese, eggs, milk) at Sam's Club the past two weeks...Yeah!

I have been buying powdered sugar in seperate bags lately at Walmart or Target. I was buying the bulk powdered sugar at Sam's but had ALOT of problems with lumps so went back to individual packages, generic. Not much difference in price and much easier to measure out and use.

I've been raising prices big time... mostly because I get so many sculptured cake orders and when you think about it...I could do a three tiered wedding cake with fondant, scrolls, and ribbon for like $4/serving for 100 people and get $400 for something that would take me the SAME amount of time as it would to carve somebody's 25 serving 3D Mustang cake for a birthday party...for less money! Even $10/serving for the Mustang is only bringing me $250 for the same amount of work. So...I haven't raised the prices quite that high yet....but working on it, as the 3D cake market allows. I have put a minimum $150 order on sculptured cakes (I don't care if they want the cake to serve just their family of 6).

BTW...if anybody read this entire post of mine...haha.... is there any certain percentage of profit/expenses that is standard? When you tally up your numbers each month...what percent of the money should be profit and what percent should be expenses....or is that just something that is different for everyone?