Home-based cake business in FL

As long as you follow the rules of the FL cottage food law (link below) you do not need to operate out of a commercial kitchen.
http://www.freshfromflorida.com/fs/

Your first step should be a business plan, which would include research on the demographics of your target market, your product assortment, pricing, marketing strategies, your competitive advantages, etc.

For your business structure, if you are operating the business yourself you are a sole proprietorship by default, but you can elect to form a LLC (limited liability company) to help shield your personal assets. In both cases you'll want to file for an employer ID number (link below) and get business liability insurance.
http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=102767,00.html

Forming an LLC is pretty easy, but if you need additional help you can try legalzoom:
http://www.legalzoom.com/llc-state-requirements/florida-llc.html

If you do not form an LLC, you would need to file a d/b/a (doing business as) notice with your county with your business name. Contact your county government for more info on that.

Next is zoning, in some areas cities and/or HOAs have rules against operating home-based businesses, so check with city hall and your HOA (if any) to see what the rules are.

Finally you'll want to make sure you are carefully tracking all your expenses and income and saving your receipts/invoices. You can either handle the accounting yourself with a program like QuickBooks (you'll probably need help to set it up initially) or you can pay a CPA to do it.

Thanks for the info. I to am interested in a home based business here in FL. I live right outside of Tampa and this info will definitely help.

You can go take a look at www.sunbiz.org You can set up your LLC directly with the State of Florida, it is easy. There is also some info on the types of businesses you can set up. HTH