The Mrs has got it into her head that our soon to be 3 year old MUST have a special cake made for him. I believe she wants a Spiderman design but not one of the offerings by various supermarket chains. Eg; This has to taste nice and look even better.

Has anyone got any suggestions on who to use? Friends/releatives/companies?

I am Cannock based if that makes any difference and I believe the quote of £80 she had previous was outrageous.(Am I tight for thinkin that?)

I can recommend this – either as is or as a starting point.

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/10865/birthday-bug-cake

For my son, we make that and then buy a rice paper type topper (£8 IIRC) from ebay – he’s had Transformers ones and will probably be having an Angry Birds one this year. Hey presto, ‘special cake’ at not-silly cost.

I could probably email you a pic if you need to prove that it looks sufficiently ‘special’ 🙂

My Mrs has a small sideline in cake making, and £80 really isn’t that bad.

If you think about the cost of ingredients, and the persons time to make the cake, then it’s not a lot of money.

They’ll probably spend £30/35 on ingredients, and get a miserly £45 for about 5 or 6 hours work.

My Mrs has never made money doing it, so only does it for friends and family now.

Thanks for that Clubber, while I’d happily accept that, Mrs AD would rip my knackers off if I suggested such.

Funny because Mrs Clubber would probably be the same in requiring a ‘special’ cake and this passed muster. Not to mention that you can claim bragging rights having actually made it…

Still, I realise I’m applying logic and there probably is none in this situation 🙂

mmmm cake
.
I have nothing further to add.

Mrs Ddmonkey makes special cakes for our boys, Thomas the Tank engine, number shaped race tracks, that kind of thing. I can confirm that the number of hours of effort that go into them if charged out at the minimum wage would easily exceed 50 quid of labour, before cost of ingredients, cooking etc.

Mind you, as long as you can make a sponge cake and cut it up into interesting shapes, stick it together with jam and then slap colourful icing over it half decently its mainly time-consuming rather than diffcult? I would fall at the first hurdle of course… 🙂

Make your own! 🙄
The one in this vid uses paint-on colouring…this will taste much nicer than coloured icing (especially black).
[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=baxoe8KYwcw[/video]

There isn’t many replies I don’t normally like, but this time you lot are not making me happy.

Also due to my none existent culinary skills, I stand no chance of making one myself.

you don’t need culinary skills to make good cake, just by using decent ingredients, you end up with something better than most shop bought pap.

£80 is quite cheap for a decent single layer custom decorated cake. £40 on materials quite normal!

We have done wedding cakes for 3 people and we calculated they would have cost between £500-£800 each if they had to be paid for, we did them as a present to the couple.

A lot of the ones you buy over the counter are awful compared to a properly made one.

Your best bet is to find one at a supermarket. Should be able to find a Spidey one!

+1 z1ppy. Cake making is not cooking, its measuring, mixing and heating in set amounts for set times at set temperatures. If you follow the instructions precicely and use good quality ingredients there is not a lot of skill involved, more being organised really.

You can’t beat a proper home made personalised one…

One of the girls in the rounders team I ‘coach’ makes cakes for a living. She did this one for our little girl’s 1st birthday (Our little one is lovingly known as “little Moo” )


The main 8″ cake and cupcakes cost us about £40

£80 is probably about right for a custom cake.

to Zippy and DDmonkey, that’s similar to building a bike. No matter what you tell people, how easy the process is (to you), there is always someone who will make a complete pigs ear out of it…that is me with Kitchen duties.

I thought this idea was cool, and easy to do yourself- simple round cake with an action figure breaking though:

I Should mention that’s one of many made by my mate’s sister – Mum’s Cake Company worth a look for those of you in the Sussex area.

Stevied.

What you got was a bargain.

The Wife does cake making for friends and family. £30-£40 for ingredients for something single layer and basic. Minimum wage at 8-10 hours. £50-£65. You get what you pay for really, so £10-£12 an hour is not being extravagant. £80-£120 labour.

I made a batman cake for my son’s third – the sugar paste icing was £22, the cake ingredients probably another £5, and although it was only the second cake I’d decorated, it still took several hours….
You can see why the pro’s charge what they do!

Looking forward to making next year’s one!

DrP

8-10 hours to make a cake?

Now either I’m stupid or I am missing crucial parts of the process?

Are you charging labour whilst the things cooks/sets/icing hardens?

The first wedding cake we did took both of us about 2 weeks each full time when we calculated the hours it took. Even if halved that for a pro who could do it quicker it would still be £400+ in labour. Materials cost was £130. Someone baked the cakes for us (a cake professional) and the cost of the ingredients was £35!

Cake making is not cooking, its measuring, mixing and heating in set amounts for set times at set temperatures. If you follow the instructions precisely and use good quality ingredients there is not a lot of skill involved, more being organised really.

Cooking is just measuring, mixing and heating in set amounts for set times at set temperatures.

You’re right, it’s mostly about being organised and methodical. But also wrong, as it takes a lot of skill to be any good.

The first wedding cake we did took both of us about 2 weeks each

I’m assuming these had a lot of hand made decorations, sugar craft flowers or something? Got any pics? (I’ll see if I can find some of one I did the other week)

8-10 hours to make a cake?

Now either I’m stupid or I am missing crucial parts of the process?

Measuring the ingredients and baking the cake are straightforward – though there are often ‘many cakes’ within a big cake (the batman one has 4 cakes in it). But the planning of the design, rolling the icing, cutting and laying the icing takes an age (well, for me it did).

as you can see from the pics – Blue sugar paste doesn’t behave as well as the others (and watching ‘ace of cakes’ on TV, they too confirmed that the blue paste is dryer than the others, so harder to work with!)

DrP

To mix and bake a cake 2 hours. To prepare coloured icing, 2 hours. To roll, and lay icing on a simple round cake and make it smooth 30 mins.

Then you are in to “decorating”.

Not so simple as it first appears.

Also bear in mind that there is a trade-off between fancy looking cake and nice tasting cake – that blooming great thick roll on icing is pretty grim to actually eat. Most kids birthday cakes are horrible roll on icing, with a pretty bland sponge cake inside.

They look fun though. If you want something that tastes nice, I wouldn’t waste time smothering it in horrible icing or making it shaped like your favourite superhero.

I guarantee that I have the easiest most foolproof way of making cakes. It’s incredibly easy. You cannot possibly mess it up.

Would you like the instructions to test out and possibly save £80?

I can mess anything up Molgrips but worth a shot if it means saving 80 beer tokens

PS. DrP…you’ve created a monster….mrs AD has now seen that Batman cake of yours and she likes that a lot…this is getting worse!!

Top tip- make a small funky looking cake for kids and tasty cupcakes for the adults!

I’d also advise against making 50 odd Danish pastries and croissants for a morning party. Half-past-bloody-four I was up on Saturday and only just got them done for 9:30 (tho’ I did go back to bed whilst they were rising)!

Cheers,
Jamie

Right choose either 3 egg for a reasonable cake or 4 egg for a big-ish one. 3 will prob cook better. Then double that number for the number of ounces of everything else:

3/4 eggs
6/8oz self raising flour
6/8oz butter/stork marge
6/8oz sugar

Mix it all up
Put it in a cake tin whose sides and base have been rubbed with butter or grease.
Put in oven preheated to 180 or 160 for a fan oven
Leave 40 mins
Remove, cool. Absolutely piss easy, foolproof, and takes about 5 mins.

– You can check it’s done by sticking a knife in it and seeing if it comes out clean.
– Do not keep opening the oven door, this causes the cake to sink.
– you can mix in a blender, if mixing by hand it’s a little easier to mix fat and sugar first then eggs then flour.
– if using butter soften it up in the microwave first, doesn’t matter if it melts.
– if you want to be flash, divide the mixture between two shallower tins and make the top and bottom half separately for more even cooking and neater cakes. You do however need two shelves in your oven for this. And it might take less time to cook – not sure, I don’t usually do it :P)

For flavouring, you have several options:

2tbsp cocoa powder
4tbsp coconut (my fave)
juice of a lemon and fine gratings of the rind
a layer of jam in the middle

etc.

Icing is easy, usually inovles icing sugar and a tiny bit of water mixed into a paste, not too runny for the top. For the middle, slice in half and add jam, butter icing, cream, whatever you like. If making chocolate cake simply melt dairy milk on the top and in the middle. Coconut in butter icing is nice, both on top and in the middle.

If you want it to look like those shop bought birthday cakes, slice in half and add jam. Then slice the rounded top off to make it flat, get some icing from the shop, roll it out (or get it ready-rolled) and drape it over the top. Buy icing in tubes and write on it, or draw spiderman, or whatever.

For a laugh, buy coloured fondant icing and make little plasticine figures for the top.

hungry now…

DrP

molgrips, isn’t that basically how you make any cake? 🙂 I was expecting something clever!

Well some people faff about with egg whites, milk, fancy procedures and whatnot. Just not necessary, I was just showing how easy it is.

Er DrP.. .did I mention that it was my birthday this weekend? I’m 12 and like The Avengers. 😀

Dez – I’ll buy you a beer with the curry, and stick a Moshi Monsters sticker on it…

DrP