Hmm, lets see.
Stuff for cake mix: Guess $10
Buttercreme: say, $10 more...even though thats on the high side, since I have alot of stuff on hand.
Maybe $5 in extras
So, I may pay $25 max....then profit 25 on top of it...not a bad day.
Why would you think "stuff on hand" would not be included in the cost? Just because you don't have to pay for it in this grocery trip, doesn't mean it's a free ingredient. You did pay for it at some point.
A recipe costs what a recipe costs. It has nothing to do with what you do or don't have in your cupboards. It has to do with what you use to make it.
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Why would you think "stuff on hand" would not be included in the cost? Just because you don't have to pay for it in this grocery trip, doesn't mean it's a free ingredient. You did pay for it at some point.
A recipe costs what a recipe costs. It has nothing to do with what you do or don't have in your cupboards. It has to do with what you use to make it.[/quote]
I was thinking the same thing.
My cheapest price is $1.75 per serving. I figured if the Health Inspector was ok buying his daughter a cake for that price (plus and extra fee for the fondant accents), then I must be ok. I do charge more for fondant covered accents, but in the town I live in people are SO, SO, SO clueless on what goes into making cakes. When they ask what I base my prices on, I tell them that my time is worth more than my ingredients. 
...However, the stuff that is on hand, is left over from other cakes I've done. None of it is coming out of my pocket.
Of course it's coming out of your pocket. You bought the ingredients, didn't you?
If you run out of salt, baking powder and baking soda all at once, do you run out and buy a box of each and consider the entire purchase as part of the cost of the cake you're currently baking with none of that cost applied to the cost of future cakes that use those boxes, cause it's leftovers? That's not how you compute the cost of a product. You compute the cost by figuring the cost of 1 tsp of salt and add that to each cake you use a tsp in, etc. Doesn't matter when, or for what, you purchased the ingredient.
Under your logic, the same recipe would never cost the same...but it does! otherwise, how would you know what to charge for it? Do you charge people different prices for the same cake, depending on when you did your grocery shopping? The same recipe costs the same to make, every time you make it, regardless of what you have in your pantry. Ask any business in the world.
i'm a hobbyist not a business and had one lady last week ask me for a "regular" size cake.. i could not get her to understand that there really Isn't a "regular" size cake.. took me even longer to get out of her "how many" servings were needed. in the end i just ended up making a two layer 8 inch. imo for all the teens that were there and a few adults it wasn't enough But i think they made do. (its the piano cake in my pics) all in all though they loved it- i was very glad for that 
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