I've seen plenty of cakes in pictures here and I've been asked to make one but I have NO clue how to price it in terms of time. I figure how much the ingredients and materials are to make it and that is my base then I pay myself $10/hr. On average, I am trying to get a feel of about how long it should take me to make this cake?

TIA!

It's really hard to estimate how long something is going to take you, especially if it's your first time doing it. Also, the cost of your ingredients and your salary aren't the only things you have to take into account. There's also gas, electricity, rent (even if it's your own house!), transportation both to get the ingredients and to deliver, and a profit for your business (over and above any salary you're paying yourself). In other words, don't be too quick to offer your goods at a low price. Think about everything that goes into your final product and what you need to derive from the business. Try to figure this out as closely as possible for a few of the things you make, and then you can come up with a fairly standard per-serving price that you can quote your clients.

Thank you, I do try to figure these things out and I just cannot figure it out. I've been taking the cost of ingredients then adding $10 per hour to get the cost of the cake, I don't know if that is low-balling it or not but this particular cake will have carving involved and she wants it in buttercream so I have to play with some shadowing of the horses nose and ears. I just have no clue how long it should take me.

Yeah, I know what you mean. I think if you're just taking those two things into account, you probably are low-balling it. Also, if I have to carve a cake, I quote the per-serving price of the cake that I actually have to make to get it down to the size I need. I mean, if your customer wants a cake for 20 people, but I have to make one that serves 30, say, in order to have enough cake to carve, the price is my standard $3 per serving times 30, not 20. That's an exaggeration, of course. There's usually not such a big difference between the size of the original cake and the size of the carved one.