To become licensed by the state of Washington to prepare and sell cakes out of my home, I found out that I'll need to have an entirely separate kitchen to prepare these cakes from. I'm in the very beginning stages of starting a cake business and there's no way I could justify getting a second kitchen without having ongoing business to support it yet.

My question is whether any of you still made and sold cakes from your home until you built up a business base and then proceeded to become official and licensed. Or do I have to give up my dream of baking cakes until I have an extra $10k to construct an entirely separate kitchen? Or have income to support renting a kitchen space?

This tends to be a very touchy subject on this board. Many posts have been written about it, and some tend to get heated. If you do a search for "illegal", I'm sure you'll find some of the posts.

Answers range from:
"Yes, I do it illegally."
"I charge just for ingredients." (some debate as to whether that is illegal or not.)
"I only do it for family and friends."
"No, way. The fines are not worth the risk. I do a lot of donations so I can practice."
"I rent a kitchen so I can run a legal business."

It's very frustrating for those of us who love to bake and decorate but live in states without cottage food laws, but that's they way it is. Several states have tried to get the law change, so maybe you can be a part of changing your state's laws. Good luck in whatever you decide to do.

Welcome to CakeCentral!

This is a common problem. Please check out the links that jammjenks posted in the thread below for other conversations about this issue. It stirs up a lot of passion around here.

http://www.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-635434.html