Can you go to the shops for me please?

So a very good friend of mine has asked me to create her birthday cake for this weekend, and she has kindly offered to help me pay for ingredients/supplies. Without giving away the design, the cake will be a white chocolate mudcake, filled with coconut flavoured buttercream and homemade pineapple curd. Covered with white chocolate ganache and fondant. The cake will feed approx 38.

I thought this might be a fun challenge for you to participate from home (if there’s anyone out there reading this blog lol). Can you (hypothetically) do the shopping for me please? I have broken the lists down into 2 for you – one list is for stuff you’d find at the local supermarket.  The other list is for the stuff you’d find at a cake specialty store. Can you work out how much everything is going to cost? You might like to undertake this exercise if you’re intending to make a cake from scratch yourself and thinking how much it’d cost just for ingredients/supplies.

Stop 1 – The supermarket

  • 2428g white chocolate
  • 1209g butter
  • 898ml milk
  • 693g caster sugar
  • 35ml vanilla extract
  • 11 large eggs
  • 3 egg whites
  • 359g self-raising flour
  • 539g plain flour
  • 449g icing sugar
  • 20ml coconut extract
  • 120ml canned pineapple juice
  • 2 tbspn cornstarch
  • Baking paper

Now I bet you’re wondering: surely you get these supplies from your wholesaler? Well – no, I don’t. Because while I do have an ABN and do have a wholesale account, I find that because I work my day job everyday, I am not at home and so unable to receive deliveries from my wholesaler. Bummer yeah? Mind you, I do buy in bulk when things are on sale (where possible) and I know where these ingredients are the cheapest so buy things when I just happen to be at a particular store.

Why don’t you open up a new tab and figure out the cost for me for those ingredients – at your supermarket/s of choice. If you find some things cheaper at one over the other – you could take the extra time/fuel to travel between those two or three and get the cheapest options available. But please don’t charge me for that – surely I shouldn’t have to pay you for time/fuel as I am not passing those kinds of costs onto my customers. After all, I’m sure you’re already going to the shops anyway, this is just a few extra things 😉

Stop 2 – The Specialty Cake Shop

  • 1500g fondant
  • 250g gumpaste
  • 20 floral wires
  • Safety Seal (let’s say 50c for this one as I don’t need to use much)
  • 8 bubble tea straws
  • 1 centre dowel
  • 20g gold lustre dust
  • Rose spirite (alcohol)
  • 9″ cardboard round
  • 12″ marble masonite cakeboard
  • 12x12x12 cake box

I’m located in Canberra – so your major options are going to be either Cake Decorating Solutions (Fyshwick), La Torta (Majura Park) and/or Across The Board Cake Decorating Supplies (Greenway). You’re welcome to buy things online – but bear in mind, this stuff would need to be ordered at least a week or two in advance to allow enough time for delivery. Also, postage and handling fees.. surely they can deliver for free so I don’t have to pay for that, right? 😉 haha Oh and again – for the local options, if you could not charge me for the time/fuel for that, that would be grrrreeeeaaat (if you haven’t seen Office Space, I highly recommend you do lol). Again – these are the kinds of costs I don’t pass onto my customers, so I cannot afford to pay you for that.

So – have you got your price?

I came to $92.47. How does yours compare?

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