Occasion Cakes

Time
Smaller occasion cakes take somewhere between 8-20 hours to make.

The more detailed the cake design, the higher the price will be and just because a cake looks like a “simple” design, doesn’t mean that it is.All of our recipes are developed from scratch and the ingredients are sifted by hand and combined in the mixing bowl. Things like, multiple flavours (made from scratch with fresh ingredients), different coloured layers inside, hand painted designs and writing, stencils, airbrush, edible gold, sugar flowers, lots of little sugar pearls placed on the cake, all translate into beautiful designs but will increase the price to varying degrees. Believe it or not, high quality sprinkles are some of our most expensive ingredients gram, for gram.

For example, if it take us the minimum 8 hours to: consult, design, shop/special order, mix, bake, frost, decorate, sugar work/coordinate & special order with our florist, drive and pick up fresh flowers, make a cake topper, final setup, box and then clean up.

If your cake total is only $100.00 then that is $100.00/8hrs = only $12.50 per hour before the cost of your cake ingredients is factored in. Say its $40.00 in ingredients (it's not, it's more) and $10 in supplies (cake boards, boxes, etc.) then thats $50.00/8hrs and now thats $6.25/hour.

Costs
We know you can always find a cake cheaper somewhere else and we understand if you choose to go in that direction.

At Loblaws you can get a cake for as little as $5.00 - $30.00. But it's a single layer, its not custom, you can't choose your flavours, your fillings, you can't request how it's decorated because it's already made. How do you know it was even made that day or even the day before? It could be a week old. Then look at the ingredients list - do you know what is in the cake or the frosting?

Other bakers may be able to provide things at a lower cost. However, we use the best ingredients and the best cake supplies (boards, boxes, vanilla, food colouring, etc.) and we choose to operate legally with regular health inspections, insurance, and business licensing costs (Federal & City). Unfortunately, that does mean we have to factor in operating costs but it ensures our customers peace of mind that their food is made in a safe environment. Also, if they book months out for a wedding or event that we won't be forced to close by the city or health unit and then cancel and not be able to complete your order.   

Saving on cost by making it yourself - we totally understand, its just a cake.
Consider a scenario where you have all the equipment to make a cake (an oven that keeps a constant temperature, a stand mixer, cake pans, parchment, food dyes, scrapers, disks, palette knifes, something to slice and level cakes, a turntable, cake board, ribbon, a cake box, etc.) but you have you have no ingredients at all in your kitchen.In order to make one layer of our chocolate cake using our recipe with a simple vanilla bean frosting you would need to go to the store for 10 ingredients and if you only got the smallest possible size of every ingredient it would still cost you a minimum of $75.00+ HST (Loblaws.ca,  August 31, 2022) (without sprinkles, without chocolate for drips, without a custom cake topper, no cake board, no box etc.)

Then you would have to go home and spend time making the cake and if it does't turn out (happens from time to time, even to us) your have to start over using more ingredients. It will also cost you even more if you have to purchase any of the equipment above.

We think about it in terms of Cost vs. Time - sometimes we order a pizza and we end up paying for delivery. We could always make it ourselves or drive to pick it up for a fraction of the price but we would rather do something else with our time.