AI had a close friend ask if she bought me the ingredients, would I bake her a cake? Since I already have a cake to do, it'll be easy enough to do two at once, so I told her sure.

I just sent her a text telling her all the ingredients I'll need and she sent me one back that said "Okay now what all do you already have? So I won't have to buy flour and eggs and stuff like that. "

She's younger than me and pretty naive, but I still couldn't believe that she said that. I'm not sure how to respond.

AI'm not sure what to say. People truly feel the cake business is so easy and can't understand why people charge what they charge. A very close and dear friend of mine said "how long does it take to make a five-tier cake? It shouldn't take more than a day."

Well it's clear she doesn't value your work, soap, or electricity. This will end badly... I can see it now, "So you only needed 4 eggs, where are the other 8? And the bag of flour, minus the 3 cups you used..."

If she has no concept of the work and time, she can't value it in any way. There in no polite way to say, "Well, for the time, soap, electricity and tools I would use- I won't charge you so I assumed you would be happy compensating me with the leftover eggs, flour and sugar I asked for (you cheap former friend- idea cloud over your head). "

I would just say, sorry... something came up... maybe next time.

A

Hahahaha!

ATell her you have to buy supplies for every single cake you make. Simple.

You may have to make a list and show it to her. She may think you save everything just waiting for the next order. Most people think you just whip it up with what ever you have in your pantry.

It just doesn't occur to a lot of people what it takes to make a cake or how we do it!

Since she is a close friend, you may wish to have her "help" with the entire process including clean-up.  She'll never ask dumb questions again.

Tell your friend either you keep the ingredients, or you charge her for the electricity and gas used to make her cake and the wear and tear on your electric mixer :). Edited to add, plus the use of water for cleaning up. 

Maybe say you need all of it now but you'll give her back the leftovers?

I'm not sure how I would respond to that either but if very close friends ask me for a cake, I either charge them a flat rate for ingredients and buy them myself or gift them the cake.  It's a headache otherwise as they are never sure what to buy.  I once gave a cookie recipe to my little brother.  He was old enough to go to the shops by himself and he wanted to make something for our parents...he called me about an hour later..."I couldn't get plain flour so I got self raising...I couldn't get caster sugar so I got muscavado.  There was no butter either so I got Lurpack..ow, and they didn't have chocolate chips so i got chocolate raisins...will that be OK?"  I didn't have the heart to tell him it would probably be a complete disaster...he called back about 3 hours later..."they are like frisbees...you could take someone's head off if you threw them at them".  Thankfully he thought it was funnier that he had completed something completely inedible rather than being upset that his gift for our parents was a disaster :-D

Tell her you'd be delighted to do a swap, a real nice cake for about $300.00.cant see a problem myself  x

Ai just wanna say the idea of "ingredient fairies" is very appealing in general-- i like it -- i want some -- i hope you can get more than one -- i'm sure i'd keep a chocolate one so busy they'd never have enough time for other ingredients -- i think two at a rock bottom minimum

do you have a link/webpage 

AGood grief. You reply with "sorry, I don't accept outside ingredients or materials, I can't vouch for their quality. Minimum order is xxxxx"

ASorry to be a Debbie Downer, but this is the kind of thing that gives us a bad rep. A cheap, cutesy doing it for loooove rep. No. Not even close. It's my job, you respect that.

AI am already married to several people, what's one more? You do? I do. Done. :D

I did that for my dh's cousin ONCE.  She brought me a box of Always Save chocolate cake mix, a bag of off brand confectioner's sugar that was soooo lumpy it took forever to sift out the hard chunks, and several Glad disposable containers full of the ingredients listed on the back of the box of cake mix.  I was like, seriously? 

I used her crappy ingredients and returned her plastic containers when I delivered the cake.  The cake was terrible, so dry and tasteless.  Of course she complained that it wasn't like the ones I always make ::cries::  and I reminded her I was very specific that she HAD to buy the brands I wanted and I bake the cake she wanted from scratch, not a mix which is what she gave me etc.  She tried to cut corners on the cost so I baked for her what she obviously wanted, a cheap cake that tasted like a cheap cake.  Buuuuuuut that's not what she wanted.  I guess she expected me to wave my magic wand over those junk ingredients and make it take like the high quality stuff I asked her to buy? 

I know there isn't a huge difference in taste, quality etc. when it comes to cooking and brand names vs store brands.  Often times I find the store brand is better.  But in the baking world it DOES mater.  A lot.  And you can taste it.  I can taste the difference between one brand of box mix vs another. 

When I do cakes for family I buy all my ingredients and give them the receipt.  I don't let them buy them.  They'll see that cheap off brand ingredient that's a couple dollars cheaper then what you've asked for and they'll think "oh what's the difference?  Butter is butter, cream is cream, sugar is sugar etc."  and then you'll end up with crap to work with

A very good friend of mine makes baby slings.  I asked her to make me one but I wanted to pick out my own fabric and she was fine with that.  She gave me a general idea of how much fabric to buy and I went out, picked the pretty fabric I wanted and gave it to her.  She didn't end up needing all my fabric so she made two baby slings out of it and gave me first pick of which one I wanted.  Then she sold the other sling to another mom.  I paid her to make the sling but she deducted the cost of the fabric from the total price of the sling.  She sold the other sling at full price to the other mom.  I had no problem with this.  I gave her too much fabric (even though she'd asked me for that amount) but she deducted what I paid for it out of the price of the sling.  She had enough left over to make a second sling and sold it for full price.  It was her fabric once I handed it over to her.  I might have paid for it but I gave it to her to use and I was out nothing since she deducted the cost of the fabric out of my balance.  What was I going to do with a bunch of leftover fabric shreds anyways?

 

Now why? Dont get any of that from the bad ingredients to the extra material for baby slings? Butter flour eggs etc is just that unless you have access to special ingredients. material? Cotton silk, some mix?

Dont understand if you are buying an ingredient that's "pure" ANYWAY...WHY WOULD A FEW PENNIES /CENTS MATTER?

sorry for caps x