Sugar Beer Bottle Cake Cost?
Sugar Work By jillmakescakes Updated 9 Jul 2009 , 2:59am by Steve-AngelCityCakes
So I tried the sugar beer bottles after a craptastic attempt at making a beer can out of cake. I'm in love!! They are so awesome. Now, just a few questions:
1. how much do you typically charge for beer bottle cakes? I don't think anyone else in my area does them?
2. how do you do the labels? i've found a few places online that will customize them for about 1.00 per label, including the neck labels.
3. do you deliver them or allow customers to pick them up?
Thanks in advance!
It's very frustrating trying to post on this site sometimes. Let me try again.
We recently made our first sugar beer bottle cake. We originally were going to charge $300 for this cake as it feeds 60, but nobody was ordering it, even though they seemed to love it. So we've lowered it to $3.00 a slice = $180.00 in the hopes we get orders for it. We're still a new company so hopefully once we get a steady stream of customers we can up our prices a little. I think it's worth $300 easily. Don't you?
As for the labels on this cake they are non edible. I found them online by typing beer labels in the search bar and then printed them out. But we just bought a Ebson NX400 printer,scanner,copier from Best Buy for $99.00 and edible cartridges for it at KopyKake for $72.00 and some frosting paper from there also. So from now on our labels will be edible too.
Delivery is free up to 10 mile radius, then $25 for up to about $30 miles. Or they can pick it up, but they assume all responsibility once it's in their hands.
Hopes this helps a little.
There was a little trial and error when making the bottles. Especially the Corona bottles because they are a lighter color. We finally got the cooking time down though. Also, pouring them into the mold while turning the mold so the sides are completely covered is no fun either. But again, after some practice we got that down also. Give it a try, all in all it is a lot of fun.
As far as the bottles go, I just LOVE them. I found that making the mold is the most difficult part. Someone in the sugar bottle thread suggested putting the mold in a larger cup before you pour in the sugar to help with the turning and I haqve to say that was a BIG help. I just need to do a few more so I don't get a small glob of sugar in one place.
Same here. I finally figured that for a full bottle, I use 1/2 cup of sugar and 1/2 cup of corn syrup and that seems to be the perfect amount for me. 1/4 cup measurements were just not enough for a full bottle, but would probably be good for a half beer bottle, which is really what I should be making. I also kept turning the mold around and around and around over and over again until the mixture stopped moving. Then I made a hole in a box and put the mold upsidedown in it to cool off. The base of the mold held it in the hole.
Steve, LOVE your beer bottle cake!! The ice cubes are great, too - are they gelatin? That cake should be flying off your shelves. With all the work involved in creating this, it seems like it should be much more than $180. Just $3 a serving for a cake like this can't be correct. Those bottles add a lot more value.
That cake is absolutely to die for! What are the ice cubes made of?
What did you use for the bottle caps? It all looks very realistic. I too, think that 3.00 a slice for all that work is low. Cake muggles don't seem to realize what all goes into a cake like that. They probably think that you bought the bottles from somewhere, not that you painstakingly made them thru trial and error. Great job! Wish I had enough confidence to even attempt something like this.
Thank you Spuddysmom and Bohnlo,
The ice cubes are made from sugar also. I just cooked them for a little less time and got them to come out clear. You may notice a little green glow from some of them, on those I had added a little blue food coloring and cooked them a little too long that the yellow color it turns along with the blue made green. Another lesson learned.
I really think the cake is worth more than $3.00 a slice also, but it seems that many people just don't want to plop down that kind of money on a cake. So for now, until we build clientele, we'll have to undersell them. This cake really looks harder to make than it really is anyway, so that's okay. After I had made the mold, the actual work time to make the bottles and ice and cake was probably under two hours.
steve- super cute cake- I totally understand about people not necessarily wanting to pay what the cake is worth.
Two additional questions for you.
1. What size cakes did you use? (sorry if you already said this, I'm a little sleepy)
2. How do you prevent the sugar bottles from being sticky?
Thanks Jill,
For this cake we used 12" rounds and made it four layers high. We used a cake board to separate the top two layers from the bottom two so it would feed 60.
I couldn't figure out how to keep the bottles from being sticky, but it seems the cooler they are the less sticky they are.
If you have an extra bottle, try what I said about rubbing it with your fingers dipped in warm water. It looks so much more realistic when it removes the fog from the bottle.
Thanks Steve. I'm in the process of getting some more bottles made. I've got two bottle molds working right now, so I am hoping to be able to whip out a few bottles at a time. The molds just take so long to get done
I'll try to post some pics of the bottles when I finish them!
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