Today I decided that I will time myself to see exactly how long it takes to do a cake from start to finish. I am doing baking today and will decorate later in the week. My cake is in the oven now. From pan prep to completing the clean up was about 30 minutes for a 10X15 cake.
I'm going to keep track of my time for checking the cake in the oven, taking it out, removing the cake from the pan and wrapping. I will also include washing the pan. I'm thinking probably another 15 minutes. That would be 45 minutes for the entire baking process. Does that sound about right or am I really slow?
I used to time myself just to see if I was getting any better. I used a stop watch to time how long it took to make the cake, the icing, color the icing, do any prep work (cake board, cut dowels, etc), and actual decorating. I never did cleanup but that is smart because it probably took me long to do that too.
I did this for about 5 months. I did see myself getting better so I stopped.
45 mins. for just mixing the cake batter and wrapping up the cake doesn't sound too bad. However you should also time how long it is in the oven too. If you're like me, I check my cake the whole time it's in the oven so that is time invested too.
HTH
I've thought about doing that but just for the decorating process only. I'll have to try because when you're making 4x a scratch recipe it can be really time consuming what with multiplying all the ingredients and hoping you get it right after losing count!!!! 
Yeah, that happens to me from time to time.
I do know however that I have seriously sped up the process of my actual decorating from frosting, smoothing, and final touches.
Let us know what you find out and which part you see takes the longest i.e. baking, clean up, torting, filling, decorating.
Amy
when you're making 4x a scratch recipe it can be really time consuming what with multiplying all the ingredients and hoping you get it right after losing count!!!!
Write down the quantities you need before you start, and measure by weight.
I am so s-l-o-w ....................
.... However you should also time how long it is in the oven too. If you're like me, I check my cake the whole time it's in the oven so that is time invested too.
HTH
Agree. The entire baking time is part of the work. Look at it this way..... if you owned a shop and got an order for this cake and if you had to pay someone in your shop to make this cake .... would they clock out when they put it in the oven and then clock in and out when they checked it? Absolutely not! You'd be paying them the full 30-40 minutes that the cake was in the oven, even if all they were doing was sitting around and filing their nails (although not in the kitchen!). You'd pay them thru clean up and put-away. You'd pay them to deliver the cake and you'd pay them to drive your company car back to the shop.
THEN they would clock out and go home.
I think if I timed myself, I would end up in complete and utter tears! My problem is not the baking/cleaning up part. It's the part when I think I am done decorating and then I do "one more thing" (20 times)- Yes...I am a textbook Aquarian! Please let us know how it works out for you. I always wonder about stuff like this too.
-Michelle
I have never actually timed myself from start to finish bc I always start everything on different days. So if I hav to do a fbct I'll do it on like thursday night for a saturday cake, and do my icing on weds, and actually decorate on friday.
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Airforce wife...........who's about to go crazy with Bush
if you owned a shop and got an order for this cake and if you had to pay someone in your shop to make this cake .... would they clock out when they put it in the oven and then clock in and out when they checked it? Absolutely not! You'd be paying them the full 30-40 minutes that the cake was in the oven, even if all they were doing was sitting around and filing their nails (although not in the kitchen!).
Would you pay someone to sit and file their nails while a cake was baking? Or would you have them doing other productive work?
I did it on one of my last wedding cakes. Including prep work, baking time, decorating, delivery and setup. My time was 16hrs, 10min. That didn't include any cleanup time though.
I have timed myself on a few cakes, and I am always shocked to see how long they actually take. I feel like the world's slowest cake decorator because they seem to take upwards of 10 hours. And I am not talking wedding cakes here!
I think if I timed myself, I would end up in complete and utter tears! My problem is not the baking/cleaning up part. It's the part when I think I am done decorating and then I do "one more thing" (20 times)- Yes...I am a textbook Aquarian! Please let us know how it works out for you. I always wonder about stuff like this too.
-Michelle
You're so funny! I call that "overdecoritice"! I am so bad at that. I just never know when to quit. 
Amy
When I think about how many hours go behind a finished cake. It makes me think about whether it is worth it. If it wasn't for my love of cake decorating I don't think I would do it for the money. Does anyone really get back ($) for all the work(hrs) that goes into it.? Or am I the only one that doesn't charge enough. My family think I don't charge enough anyway. I usually put my self in the shoes of potential clients and think 'would I spend that much on a cake?'. Does anyone feel the same way I do?
I would be faster if I didn't always mess something up!!! but now I'm realizing (I hope that's the problem and not that I'm just stupid) that my oven temp is probably off... So, usually an hour or more gets added needlessly.
For most FBCT cakes I've done - start to finish is 4 hours (including baking) because it's when it's baking that I make the FBCT part). I ALWAYS ALWAYS make extra buttercream to freeze, so that saves me 1/2 the time on a future cake. (usually make it using 6 lbs of powdered sugar at a time).
If I'm making one 8" double cake, I will double the recipe and bake a second one and freeze it for later. It doesn't take me any longer really to double a batch of cake or triple a batch of icing.
I always have in the freezer in small ziplocs colors in red and black and any other vibrant color I might have used. I put them in teh deep freezer to last longer. So, I NEVER have to make that one or two dots of black frosting or red - it's there for the taking in the freezer.
The only time I haven't counted in is clean-up time and that's because it's NEVER that I have just cake dishes. breakfast and perhaps dinner dishes will be waiting to be done too. Cake dishes take longer because so many of them can't go in the dishwasher very easily - big items take up so much space (and we ALWAYS have dishes to be done and need the space) and some things just don't stay put and would flip over and get more dirty (measuring cups for example). So, most of my dishes get done by hand after a cake is made and that just sucks up time! Probably 30 minutes for clean-up when counting in cleaning counters and floors... maybe longer.
I never keep adding to a cake. I get too tired and too worried I'll botch it up! LOL
Melissa
if you owned a shop and got an order for this cake and if you had to pay someone in your shop to make this cake .... would they clock out when they put it in the oven and then clock in and out when they checked it? Absolutely not! You'd be paying them the full 30-40 minutes that the cake was in the oven, even if all they were doing was sitting around and filing their nails (although not in the kitchen!).
Would you pay someone to sit and file their nails while a cake was baking? Or would you have them doing other productive work?
Of course they would be doing other productive work, but the point is even if there was nothing else to do, they would not clock out while the cake was baking. "Productive Work" can also be defined as "you have to be there while the oven is on and the cake is baking ..... you cant' go to walmart or run the kids to a soccer game." It's still time dedicated to making that cake.
There was another post in which someone was asking "do I really count my time when the cake is baking?" YES!!!
At a wedding reception, there is what we call "down time". There are those times in which my crew is literally standing around doing nothing waiting for the festivities to get started (or move along). They dont' clock out during that period. They are still on duty and still getting paid. We are not in my kitchen so there are no "other duties" I can assign them.
When I think about how many hours go behind a finished cake. It makes me think about whether it is worth it. If it wasn't for my love of cake decorating I don't think I would do it for the money. Does anyone really get back ($) for all the work(hrs) that goes into it.? Or am I the only one that doesn't charge enough. My family think I don't charge enough anyway. I usually put my self in the shoes of potential clients and think 'would I spend that much on a cake?'. Does anyone feel the same way I do?
My husband thinks I don't charge enough but I agree with you. "Would I want to pay that much for a cake?" Only if I knew I was getting the best ingredients, and the attention to detail I desire for the design I want.
Amy
Debi--Yes, of course. But in your catering kitchen? You're paying people to wait? They're not loading the dishwasher or making icing or greasing pans for the next round of baking or torte-fill-and-base icing cakes that have cooled? Staff at an event are inherently inefficient. In a kitchen it seems that one would be able to use hours paid for more efficiently. I'm a one-person kitchen and I manage to plan to both be present while any heat-making appliance is on, and not to be idle waiting for the heat-making appliances to finish what I need them to do.
To help you understand a little about how my biz works, I am more of a caterer than a cake decorator. My biz is 95% weddings. I don't do birthday cakes or onesy-twosy type of orders unless it is for family or for a large commerical customer.
In Dec/Jan, I had four events in which I served breakfast, lunch and dinner to over 100 people for 3-4 days for each event. It was an off-site event, but I had full access to the kitchen at the facility. I arrived at 6:00 a.m. and I didn't leave for the day until about 8:00 p.m.
Once we finished one meal and cleaned up, we started the food prep for the next meal. There was still down time between the meals. THe site location was on the other side of town (actually out of town) and it would not have been efficient to send my people home just to have them come back again (by the time they got home, they would have had to turn right around and come back. I could not have them clock out and then hang around and kill time by sitting in their car listening to their radio. If I am requiring them to be there, then I am required to pay them.
As an off-site caterer (i.e. I don't own a reception hall) not all of my work is done at my place .... my crew is paid door-to-door, meaning from the time they arrive to load the van until they get back to my place and get everything unloaded.
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However ..... you guys are making my point without realizing it. YOU COUNT THE TIME THE CAKE IS IN THE OVEN! You cannot leave your kitchen/facility/home while it is baking. You are tied to the oven until the cake comes out because you have to be there, you have to watch it, you have to check it. YOUR TIME IS ATTACHED TO THAT CAKE.....YOU ADD THAT BAKING TIME TO THE TOTAL TIME. It does not matter if you are doing other things or not ..... that time is allocated to the cake because whether you/they have other things to do or not, you still have to stay there with the baking cake and you still have to pay for those man-hours.
I'm not sure how else I can explain this. You don't hold a stop watch and say "Oh...I'm checking the cake now, so add 15 seconds." If you want to time yourself for how much time it takes to bake and create a cake, then you have to include the time it takes to BAKE and create a cake.
When I first thought of timing everything for a cake (my DH brought it up), I said 'well, how do I figure the time when I have several cakes in the oven at once'. Then it hit me that each cake would be clocked at the same time because it would take that time whether I had a single pan in there or 3 at once. If I'm timing Mary's cake when I put it in the oven, then Sue's cake gets the same time because it's in there too. I wouldn't divide the total baking time in half because it was for 2 orders.
I don't know why I just brought that up, I guess just sharing the dumb thought I had when I considered timing things.
I once did a 12x18 cake in 2 hours. 
My siste in law ordered it for her day care graduation and I had the wrong date.
My brother called me in the morning and said he would pick it up abou 9.
With the help of a couple of fans I did get it finished, but I don't want to repeat that again. 
Well, I finished the cake I was timing. I started out good. Wrote down my start time. Had to stop for awhile so wrote down time I stopped. Started again. Phone rang. Started again. and so on and so on. Needless to say I lost track of my time and haven't a clue how long it really took me, but all I can say is, I know that I am very very slow! lol.
Timing yourself is a great idea. I never really timed myself before until I had to rush an order. I got a very late start on two baby shower cakes that were both due by 2:15pm on a Sunday. I began preparing pans and baking exactly at 11am that day. I finished decorating both cakes by 2pm. This doesn't include cleaning up the kitchen.
I was so afraid I wasn't going to finish in time but thankfully I have gotten faster at decorating due to an increase in orders.
I too had a super rushed "decorating" job this week. Now, I didn't make the buttercream, I as I had some waiting in the fridge, but I would have done it while the cupcakes were baking, as I just took a shower instead. I still had to color it though.
Anyway, from start to finish the cupcakes with the bee and bird chocolate transfers - 12 birds and 12 bees, 24 cupcakes and very sloppily made grass on the tops of the cupcakes took me 3 hours start to finish - including cleaning time (as I did it as I was going and threw the rest in the dishwasher).
Melissa
I have timed myself on a few cakes, and I am always shocked to see how long they actually take. I feel like the world's slowest cake decorator because they seem to take upwards of 10 hours. And I am not talking wedding cakes here!
Hey, I thought I was the slowest decorator! It takes me forever-even for "simple" cakes! It took me 10 hours for a sheet cake-I'll eventually get my film developed and post my pics!
dittle wrote:
When I think about how many hours go behind a finished cake. It makes me think about whether it is worth it. If it wasn't for my love of cake decorating I don't think I would do it for the money. Does anyone really get back ($) for all the work(hrs) that goes into it.? Or am I the only one that doesn't charge enough. My family think I don't charge enough anyway. I usually put my self in the shoes of potential clients and think 'would I spend that much on a cake?'. Does anyone feel the same way
I do! I would never pay someone else to make me a cake for $30 or more- but I make them for my family all the time-go figure! 
I just made a dragon cake and timed myself. I was curious how long it would actually take me becouse I have to start and stop alot. It was a total of 6 hours 15 minutes not including baking time. i even counted the scales, 587! I have to say it was AWESOME! but could I actually charge $70-$80 for this cake assuming i want to make at least $10 an hour?
Why WOULDN'T you charge $80 or more for a take that took that long to make? 
If they were having a dress made by a skilled seamstress, they would expect to pay a premium rate per hour for a custom designed, custom made dress, right?
If you can't convince yourself of the value of your work, how can you convince the customer of it's value? YOU are the one who needs to stop thinking "it's just cake!"
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