Starting a cup cake business

Yep, there's a whole segment of bakers who use mixes for their cakes. Do a search for 'doctored mixes.' If you can find Mac'sMom's profile, she has a humongous list of fancy box cake tweaks in her signature. Also Kakeladi has a WASC recipe that a LOT of people use.

 

If you want to learn scratch cakes, a good place to start would be FromScratchSF's white cake recipe. Google it. BE SURE to READ ALL of the instructions and follow them. Scratch cakes are not as forgiving as box cakes.

Before you even go near starting a cake business please know how to bake well first. Practice, practice, practice.

And while you are honing your baking skills you can also work on the business side of the cupcake business, including any necessary licensing, a business plan, your pricing strategy, market research, and so on. There's nothing wrong with sticking with a box mix, but if you do you'll probably need some other competitive advantages to make you stand out.

The baking class is not so important as long as you continue to bake on a regular basis.

 

What you need to do is take the local food safety course, the certificate is usually good for 3 years.  

 

You then need to do your homework about your state/provincial regulations.  In some places you simply cannot bake out of your home kitchen for $$$.  If that applies,  you would go about finding a foodservice job instead of opening your own business.

 

The advantage of working at least part time in foodservice is that you get to learn the nuts and bolts of how a working kitchen runs, without the risk of losing a lot of money.

 

After that you would know whether you should invest in a year of baking school.  Look for one that has an internship as part of the course.  Take any business management classes that are offered.