I am a recent culinary school graduate in Georgia.  I made a few cakes in school and recently I made a cake at cost for a friends daughters 3rd birthday (in my pictures).  It was my third cake.  I loved it, the whole process (they loved the cake too).  I had been kicking around the idea of a little home based cake business but feel I need practice.  I was thinking of offering friends and family cakes for events at cost (plus a little extra to put towards buying tools and such) while I practice and get better.  I am buying the Ultimate Cake set from Wilton this weekend with the money I got from Christmas.  I plan to enroll in the Wilton courses (I have a friend who has started them and she is amazing) as soon as I have the extra money.  I figure in a year I could start charging full price for my cakes.

I guess I am just looking for any advice (I live in Georgia, and we now have Cottage Laws which will make the legal end much easier).  I have read tons on these boards already, but can always learn more ^_^

Thanks so much in advance!!

yay

cool

a caker is born

i like your plan

consider an idea

going forward provide an invoice with each cake showing the real price of each cake and the generous  'portfolio discount' you are giving to each client

that accomplishes two things

• makes you study that much harder now to get all this straight so it will be easier later
• gives your early customer base a heads up that this won't last forever

be careful to collect and pay your applicable sales & use taxes

best of the best to you!!!

no i think it's a real good idea

i understand funds are not flowing briskly at this point

but maybe learn about cake boss software

have you checked out earlene moore's website

www.earlenescakes.com

tremendously inspirational for professional home caking

hey--print your own invoices or get a sales order book at

office max/depot whatever--something like that maybe

your mom is a sweetie!!!

best of the best to you!!!

First get the Cottage Law rules straight, because even if you're just collecting money for ingredients that coutns as getting paid. You should figure out what you need to do to be legal.

Once you do that, decide what kind of cakes you want to focus on when you do start selling for real. That way you can tailor the types of cakes that you do for friends and family to the style of the cakes that you want to sell. There's no point in doing little kids' birthday cakes at cost if what you want to focus on is weddings, for example. If that's the case you could do small tiered cakes so that you at least have photos of tiered cakes, or dessert cakes if that's what you're going to be selling, etc.

Taking a Wilton course is okay, but there's a lot that they don't teach. I've also heard from friends who are instructors that they've changed a lot recently and the classes aren't the same as they used to be. You should watch videos on youtube to see how people do things and to learn other types of techniques that Wilton doesn't cover.

AI've taken a couple of Wilton courses and felt like they were mostly commercials for Wilton products, as well as being pretty outdated in terms of style. I bought a bunch of Craftsy courses in recent sales and they've been much more informative, and inspiring.

Leslie, Welcome to the forum! 

About six months ago I collected a pretty extensive list of threads and links that had proved enormously helpful to me in my caking journey so far (since early 2010).  Perhaps this information may prove helpful:

How-To tutorials/videos for Cake Decorators

http://www.wilton.com/forums/messageview.cfm?catid=8&threadid=160184

Sounds like you're on the right track; you've gotten great advice.

A word of caution about buying your tools. When I started I bought just about every Wilton thing I could lay my hands on. I took those classes and as someone mentioned, they're like Wilton commercials, so it's easy to get carried away buying all that stuff. As I have grown I have found that some brands are good for certain things (I love Wilton icing tips and cake carriers) and I am in the process of replacing some items (like Magic line pans to replace the Wilton pans, Americolor gel pastes to replace the Wilton brand). Other things I've found I can do better without the tool. Buy as you go, and read reviews from advanced cakers before you buy.

I LOVED my Wilton class experience and would recommend it to anyone. No it's not going to make you a fancy caker but the basics are covered at a very cheap price. 

Agree with vgcea. I also started out doing cakes with Wilton. Doing their classes, buying their products. But I have outgrown them now. I prefer other brands over wilton now. Most wilton gel colors doesn't give the exact color. Americolor does. And their tools are over priced sometimes.