I know I've seen this topic here before, but it's not coming up in the search. A friend wants me to teach at her daughter's birthday (11 yr old). There should be about 10/12 girls..Wants me to quote her a price. Don't know where to start with this one. I would think I am bringing all the supplies..Any advice? Per hour? per child?

To teach her how to decorate a cake? She doesn't want a finished cake for the party, she wants you to make it there? Well, definitly however much you would charge for the finished product and then maybe like $30 per hour of teaching?!?!?! Never heard of this.

Wow, that's a lot of carrying back & forth, supplies, materials. Figure your costs on 12 6 inch boards, wrap, 12 4 inch single layer cakes, a double batch of buttercream and piping bags & tips for 12 little girls.

Figure up that total cost for yourself, then add whatever you want to for "profit" on top.

I've heard of this before---

You're teaching the kids....???? I wouldn't do it. I mean like the above poster said... tons of everything and what do 11 yr. olds need to know how to decorate cake for anyway? Plus cleanup..... If you do it definitlycharge for a finished product and then I would think that sinche you are teaching 10-12 kids... $15 per kid per hour. At least. Don't get me wrong I love kids... I have two but to teach them mhow to decorate at cake.....shewwww

I've been thinking a lot about this. Ever since I taught my daughter's Brownie group, the Mom's have been asking me if I'd do it. I was thinking $12-15/child and providing one cupcake for them to eat there and one to take home. There's a YouTube video

that shows some really cute and fairly easy to learn cuppies that I would teach them.
It's tougher to figure how much to charge for a cake I would think. Are they all going to help do the cake? Or small individual ones? Are you licensed? I don't care whether you are, I'm just saying... I'm not so I would buy plain cuppies and icing for them from a local bakery so I figured in that cost. When I taught the Brownies the one thing I underestimated was the amount of edible glitter and various sprinkles and stuff that gets absolutely wasted!

I've done this before, though never charged for it... I'd DEFINITELY charge at LEAST as much as you would for a decorated cake! It'll probably take you MORE time to do all of this! And I would think you would charge per child, since you'll need MORE supplies for MORE children... Bring parchment bags, with several bags of each color you plan to bring (like THREE colors, I'd think...). Perhaps even frost the cakes yourself, as that will be time consuming for a newbie, and all they WANT to do is put pretty colors on a cake...

Bring, say, pink, purple and green icing with some drop flower tips in pink and purple, some leaf tips in green, writing tips in pink and purple, and MAYBE a shell tip. Don't bring too many tips either... Obviously these will be permanently attached to whatever bag they are on for the WHOLE party, so make sure you have plenty to go around. 24 bags of icing would NOT be overestimating, in my experience... You'll have an hour or two, I'm thinking, and you can't cover EVERYTHING in that time. Less detail will be your friend.

I wish you the best of luck with this! I hope you end up with a group of really fun little girls who are excited to learn!

Thanks, my shoulders were tensing up just reading the replies! She's lucky she's a good friend.

Wilton has a program that offers ideas and such for teaching kids. You can download the material from their site. Here is the link http://www.wilton.com/classes/icing-fun/

They sell sample kits too. I have thought about doing this for my cousin's daughter, but I don't think I could deal with that many girls at one time.

Good Luck!

I found this site a while back, she does cake decorating parties, maybe you can get some ideas.

http://www.cakedecoratingparties.com/index.html

I have done it for my daughter's 8th birthday. I had a help from a friend, so 2 adults for 10 of her friends (similar ages).
The cake decorating part maybe took around 1 hour.
It's managable as long as everything is prepared, limit each kids with the quantity of decorations.

I recently did this too, took about 3 days of work to get everything together but it was worth it. I didn't get paid for it, it was for a kids church class. Here's a link to the thread I posted:
http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-622302.html

We had a great time and all the girls (ages 8-10) had their own cake to take home. I showed them what to do and let them practice on the boards first, then they decorated their cakes.

Here is the link to my decorating parties info. It is at the bottom of the page.

http://www.cakes-divine.com/Classes.html

Kiddie parties are $10 each person with a minimum of $100 per party.

I recently did this for my niece. I made 2 small 4" cake layers for each of the girls. I made fondant butterflies for them. I had a ton of sugar flowers, sprinkles, and whatnot to add to the cakes. First thing I had them do was to paint/decorate their butterflies. Then I taught them to make a dam, fill, and frost the cake. Then they went back to their butterfly decorating station and finished decorating the cakes. After that we had a brownie cake (niece's fav), and while the girls were eating I packaged up all of their cakes to go. (They fit nicely into 6" clear clamshells I get from Smart & Final.) They had a blast and I kept them occupied for about 2 1/2 hours which is a pretty good party length.
I didn't charge, but I would charge $25/child with a minimum of 10 girls.