Bake or buy?????
DARE YOU BUY YOUR CAKES IN?
I thoroughly enjoy a cakey Facey spat about baking from scratch. I guarantee that at any one time there is a heated debate consuming cake makers on some group or another about how important it is to bake from scratch.
I’ve not baked a cake for four years, not counting the cupcakes I make with my little niece and nephew. I don’t enjoy baking and I’m not very good at it. I buy all my cakes from Sweet Success in Nottingham. They’re fantastic quality, moist, delicious and completely level.
When you start selling wedding cakes, you'll be under time pressure. A large four tier cake could take two days to bake. Your options are:
Bake from scratch
Use a mix
Buy your cakes baked by a professional bakery
Pay someone local to bake for you
Let’s look at the pros and cons of each.
Baking from scratch
Pros: Cheap. More expensive than it was a year ago, certainly in the UK, but by far the cheapest option. For example, to make a two layer 8in cake 5in deep, today’s cost (March 2023) would be approximately £3.60 if you bought all ingredients from a mainstream supermarket.
Cons: Time-consuming. Messy. Can go wrong. Also you’re using your own electricity to bake and wash everything you’ve used. Short shelf life. Unless baked at a very low temperature will need levelling, which is wasteful and again messy. Cooling cakes take up a lot of space.
Also you should log where all your ingredients are from and how they have been stored for food safety reporting. Long.
Using a mix
Pros: Easy. Some mixes can just be mixed with water (like the Craigmillar). I used this for years and loved it. Available in 12.5kg boxes, this has a long shelf life and makes beautiful and reliable madeira cakes with a good vanilla flavour and even texture. There are red velvet, chocolate and carrot variants, all delicious: my customers loved them.
Cons: Some mixes require eggs and oil, so not much easier than baking from scratch. Also quite expensive. At today’s price of £55, a 12.5kg box would yield just five of the 8in cakes described above, so £11 each. And the price is going up, I’ve noticed a few suppliers charging around £70 for a 12.5kg box.
And you still have to bake and wash up. And some customers may be put off, I don’t know why.
Buy cakes ready-made from a professional bakery.
Pros: Where to start? My cakes arrive the day after I’ve ordered them; safely wrapped and boxed so they’re super easy to store. They have a FIVE WEEK shelf life. They are Genoese sponge, so super light and elegant but with an even texture and level tops, so not levelling or waste. All ingredients are obviously listed for straightforward traceability. All the packaging material is recyclable and the boxes flatten easily for disposal.
Cons: Ah, so yes it’s the price. Our little 8in cake would cost a whopping £25.20 ( and that’s with a trade discount, which you can secure if you can show you will regularly place orders of at least £70).
I was going to add that some customers may be put off by the fact that you buy your cakes in but that’s not my experience at all. Certainly your neighbours may scoff at your cake mix boxes on dustbin day, but they’ve no doubt got Pot Noodle tubs or Cheese String wrappers in theirs so you can have a pop back.
Employ a local individual to bake for you.
Pros: Saves you a job, freeing up time for decorating, which is your strength. Gives someone else an opportunity to enjoy a flexible job that they can do at home. I’m guessing that this would be more expensive than using a mix and less than buying in from a professional bakery.
Cons: Quality control. You have to ensure that your baker follows your recipe exactly. They’ll have a different oven and different ways of doing things. They’ll also expect to be able to go on holiday, most likely during the busy wedding season, and they may become sick or have to take on caring roles for relatives. It’s quite an unpredictable situation, that could damage your relationship if this person were a friend or relative.
So these are the options, I guess, like me, that many professional cake makers work their way through them all. If you have quiet periods and enjoy baking, you could make your cakes from scratch then, and buy them in when you get super busy. You just need to ensure that your customer has tried the cake they’ll end up with!!
Think about it. I have persuaded pretty much all of my students to buy their cakes in. There is a 15% discount voucher for Sweet Success included in the Floral Cake Revolution online course.