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?