Hi - I had an enquiry today for a cupcake order, for a 16 year old birthday. I told the customer my cupcakes start at $2.50 each for vanilla/chocolate with buttercream icing and a simple fondant decoration.

She wants to know how much I would charge for these (attached) cupcakes!!! They are poured fondant - which I hate because I can never get it to look neat and smooth and it's soooo much messing around. Plus there is a fair bit of work in the flowers - esp the one with 16 (I counted) mini roses!!

Should I get out of my comfort zone and take the order? And if so can you help me because I have NO idea what to charge. Or should I gracefully decline the order?

What would you do?

Those would be difference prices. The one with the ginormous rose would be about $8, ditto the one with all the smaller roses. The one with the pearls, about $6. All the others are approaching normal, but I think they look more like they have a fondant cap. It could be poured fondant, I guess. I be at $3 -$3.50 each for those.

And that's just a WAG.

Oh! And I see that we're not in the same country, so your prices may well be different.

hiya,

i just wanted to say that they don't look like poured fondant to me either. the fondant topped ones look like rolled out fondant circles sitting over domed cupcakes, and a couple are smoothed buttercream. so maybe you can get the same look without messing about with the poured fondant.

as for the extra decorations, calculate how long all the necessary flowers, pearls etc would take to make in one sitting, ie 5 hours, or 10 etc and add the total of your hourly rate to the basic cupcake price. so if she's ordered 50 of these, the equation would be (50 * $2.50) + (no. of hours to make all decorations * your hourly rate) = total order price.

i wouldn't look at it as being outside of your comfort zone, imagine the decorations are for a big cake, you'd make them beforehand and once your cake is ready you'd apply them as final touches. same with these, you can easily prepare all the toppers in advance so that should give you a confidence boost knowing you can get them right beforehand.

hope that helps!

by the way i think the pic came from Fair Cake, based in London, right?

The little roses also look like duff roses, way faster and easier to make than reg. roses.

I agree that they aren't poured fondant, they look like fair cake ones so they are just fondant covered. Maybe take some fondant/gumpast and try to copy one or two of the designs, if you can do it take the order, just price your time accordingly.

I loved these and saved that exact picture for future reference. If it's worth the money, I would definately take the order assuming it fits your schedule. I agree with Leah_s' pricing assessment.
The single large rose takes me almost 30 min to make. I know I'm slow but that's how long it takes me. I agree Duff roses are super fast because for the Duff roses, you are actually make 2 at a time.

My only thought is do you have the smaller flower cutters, probably plunger cutters? If not there should be an up charge for ordering specialty materials, or present her with an alternative design that still fits. And I would use fondant or modeling chocolate rounds because I don't like poured fondant either.

Those are gorgeous! I think they would be so fun to make, as long as you're being compensated for your work.