My niece had a graduation and celebration afterwards and I reached/texted out to my sister to let her know I been baking and decorating cakes that if she was going to be ordering a cake to consider me and I would give her a family discount. She ended up responding back with oh I thought you wanted to give to her as her graduation gift. I thought on it before responding back and thought since I'm so new and not experienced that I would do it as a gift but I really didn't want to because grads want money not cake as a gift but the cake cost a lot of money on ingredients and took me about 10 hours total between baking and decorating. Do you think this was reasonable giving the circumstances? I think next time I need to make it clear that it takes money and time so I have to charge and can give a discount. Here is a picture of the cake. My first fondant cake and first two tier cake with homemade LMF fondant. They really loved it.

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Link to duplicate post:  https://www.cakecentral.com/forum/t/851377/pricing-for-family-and-friends

I did my niece’s wedding cake but it was a gift to her grandmother too (who raised her and paid for and arranged the wedding) but my niece was blessed by it all too — 

bottom line for real close family I would gift but ask yourself — like for your sweet little cake there — is that an 8x6 for 40 servings like $200 — would you ordinarily spend that much on a gift —

and that brings me to an epiphany — my idea for you to consider is subtract the amount of the gift you would normally purchase — $20, $50? Let’s say, you would get a $35 gift — so for a $200 cake charge them $165 — the price less the amount of the gift you would give — but invoice them for the $200 and show the discount —

however #1, they get to order the cake you don’t get to wax eloquent on it —

however #2, if you want to flex your decorating muscles when they would ordinarily go for a sheet cake then you gotta gift it —