HELP I need pricing advise ASAP. I co-worker just called to ask if I remembered about doing a birthday cake for her son's 3rd birthday THIS Saturday> I knew she wanted me to make a cake , just didn't know when. Anyhow, she wants me to make the Wilton Giant cupcake, filled and frosted and also 50 cupcakes filled and frosted to match. What do you think is a fair price for all this. She wants to know ASAP, but I didn't know what to tell her since I did not know she wanted that much cake. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

What is the going rate in your area? Does she want filling in the cupcakes?

I charge the same for cupcakes as I do for a serving of cake since they are the same amount of cake. What do you normally charge per serving? It says in the instructions that it takes 10 cups of batter.. that's the same as a 14" cake which serves 70. That's a lot of cake.. 120 servings. But if that's what she wants then I'd charge her for it. Done in BC I'd charge $540.00 for 120 servings. But you need to figure what you will charge per serving..

As a fellow newbie who has agonized over what to charge for different types of cakes, gumpaste flowers, exotic designs etc, the best advice I can give you is exactly what jkalman said. Figure out what you want to charge per serving and go by that. Honestly thats the best advice ever.

I am fairly new and my area is a bit on the not so hip side so I decided to charge $3-$4 a serving. Works well for me.

Check what your local bakeries charge per serving, and what you feel comfortable with, and go from there. Makes the whole pricing thing much easier and alot less stressful. So far I have been using the Wilton serving chart http://www.wilton.com/wedding/cakeinfo/cakedata.cfm to determine how much to charge.

Good luck!

I can't imagine actually getting 70 servings out of the giant cupcake! I think, realistically, it could make about 20-25 servings (I always cut pieces on the large side, however). I guess I would be seriously undercharging, as my suggestion was going to be about $100!! As you can tell, I am not in the cake business (yet). Good luck!

I looked at the cupcake pan set today I'd agree.. you'd be hard pressed to get 70 servings from that. I'd say 40 wedding servings. It's essentially 2 cakes and I would put a cake board in between them.

So that would be 90 servings.. and I would charge $405.00 in BC. If the cupcakes weren't filled it would be $315.00. That's a lot of cake and I would torte and fill the cupcake cake.

You need to sit down and figure out what it will cost you to make this cake and cupcakes. Once you do that you can have a better idea at what you would need to charge to make a decent profit. Take into account everything.. gas and time to get ingredients, time to mix and bake, time to torte and fill, time to make fillings and frosting, time to decorate, time to clean up.. it all adds up.

Thanks to all of you for your responses. I left a message with the lady because I really don't think she knows how much cake the giant cupcake is as she was not at work when I brought one in. Started to think that she would have an awful lot of cake with 50 additional filled cupcakes. Waiting to hear back from her, but I will definately go with your suggestions. Thanks to all of you, I really didn't know where to start as I am fairly new to charging people for my cakes.