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I have been asked to make a cake similar to this. I would use 8,6,4 inch pans. I am so bad at pricing, I always way undersell myself. Costs of materials to me would be about 30-40 (though I would not be using all of the fondant that I would buy). I can only guess how long it would take me to roll, cut, assemble all the fondant pieces. I would guess 4 hours? I am by no means a professional, so these things can take me a long time. I was leaning towards 80-90. On one hand I feel like this is a lot of money, but then on the other I feel like maybe this is low. I am so bad at this, help please?

AIf this is what you are happy with...ask for the price. It's not your job to twist your brain if other people can afford it

you are correct you are way low -- 40 servings give or take and $2.00 per serving is way way low -- that cake should be in the neighborhood of $5 per serving minimum not to mention the copyright thing --

AHoly crap.

You are going to charge $80 for this cake. Minus your ingredients (have you added up everything - including all ingredients - including even that half teaspoon salt, and all non-edibles such as boards and boxes and supports and such?).

You say that you estimate four hours of labor - does this include all customer contacts, shopping, mixing batters, icings and fillings, torting, filling, crumbcoating, kneading fondant (and making fondant if you don't purchase it), coloring fondant, covering the cake, stacking, and decorating.

$80, which is your price, minus $40, which are your costs, leaves you with $40. Assuming your estimated four hours DOES include everything I mentioned above (which I doubt as I really think you underestimated how much time you think this project will take), that's only $10 an hour.

I would charge 411 USD.

Ditto what Jedi Knight said.  Based on some quick calculations for a 3 tiered fondant cake with additional decorating, our minimum price would be $240.

Ditto to the other answers, you are way underselling yourself. You will be worn out in no time if you keep going like this because anyone looking for a cheap cake will come knocking and you will find yourself spending way more time than you think on the cake which then = 0 profit.

You can be exhausted anyway in this business but if you're making money doing it it's a different exhaustion then working at a minus.

A@Jedi Knight, I think she was referring to the fondant part only which will take her four hours.... But you are right, even if it would be for the entire cake, the profit is not huge.