Hi guys!
I must start by saying, I just discovered CakeCentral and its an amazing site. I've been baking for a while, mostly cakes, cookies, squares etc from scratch and un-iced cause I like the natural flavours of the food to come through. I have recently taken up cake decorating and am loving it too.
People have been telling me i should sell my stuff....and I got my first order. A friend's brother wants 4 dozen cookies (I know its not a lot, but a start) He wants 2 dozen White Choc-Macademia Nut, and 2 dozen Chocolate Espresso. I dont know what I should charge. Nuts are really expensive, and I use premium Cocoa (Ghiradelli) and Vanilla (Nielson Massey) etc. I had a look at the pricing matrix, but it only takes cake mixes in to consideration. I know ppl on this site say one should charge 3 times the cost. But my problem is figuring out the cost. I mean I buy a 10 pound bag of flour ($6.99 Canadian), out of which I'm only gonna use 2-3 cups for these cookies.
Any ideas?
Hi,
I have my first cookie order due next week. They are for decorated Christmas cookies. I called around to our local bakeries to figure out what they charged and then based my price off theirs. I live in a small East Texas town, so I'm sure in Toronto you could get more for your cookies. Hope this helps! Good luck! 
I mean I buy a 10 pound bag of flour ($6.99 Canadian), out of which I'm only gonna use 2-3 cups for these cookies.
When something like this happens, you need to figure out what percentage of the product you actually use to make your cookies and multiply that by the cost of the product (don't forget any sales tax you had to pay).
Take the flour for example, 1 pound of flour is roughly 4 cups, so a 10 pound bag would be about 40 cups. If you only use 2 cups out of that bag, then you've used .05 of the flour or 5% (2 cups divided by 40 cups then times 100%). So, you take .05 times the cost of the whole bag of flour ($6.99 plus any tax) and round up. In this case, the cost of the flour that you used would be $0.35 (based on using 2 cups and not figuring any sales tax on the flour because I don't know how that works in Canada).
You can do this with all of your ingredients. And don't forget the cost of packaging! You can use this method for that as well. The 3x method is really probably the easiest way to get started with pricing; I still use it for items that I don't sell regularly.
Hope that helps! Let me know if I can be of any more help! 
Oh, BTW, WELCOME TO CAKE CENTRAL!!! 
I agree with cakesoncall. I just went through and costed out all my recipes (it took half a day)!!. First you have to shop fore everything from flour to butter, or just go to the store and jot down the prices, then break it down by oz., and try to cost out your recipes. I multiply all my regualr cookies by 3, all my labor intensive cookies, like painted sugar cookes, checkerboard cookies, etc, times 5.
It really is amazing how little a dozen cookies cost to make. I was actually charging cost times 7 before I figured it out! No wonder no one was ordering my cookies! Best of luck!!
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