These days, cake baking is one of the trending lucrative businesses you can start from your home. Cake baking is an ever trending business because people need cakes for different purposes. Count it; from birthday, to wedding ceremony, wedding anniversaries, etc. Since people can’t stop celebrating, cake making trend will continue to trending. Also, the ingredients are very much affordable. All you need is to grab the required skills and make sure you keep up with the trending cake dressing, decoration and packaging styles. You will learn how to make, decorate and package a simple homemade cake. Also, you will learn how to make huge profit from baking cake and decorating it.
How to Make Money with Cake Making & Decoration: Business Guide
Just like any other business out there, to make money from making cake there are some tips you need to know.
Get the Necessary Baking & Decoration Skills
To make money from cake making, you need to be the best in that field. You can only be the best if you have the necessary baking and decoration skills. You can learn this skills online for free via YouTube, or you enroll in good catering schools or event planning schools. Make sure you know what you want and go for it, no matter what it takes.
Have a Good Business Plan
The key to every successful business is a good business plan. To succeed and make money from cake making and decoration, you need to craft out a good business plan and stick to it.
Some of the basic things you should include in your business plan are:
- The Products and Services You Wish to Offer: What types of cakes will you be making? Cupcakes, birthday cakes, wedding cakes, vanilla cakes and (or) chocolate cake? Are you taking cake baking and decoration as a part time or full time job? Will be baking only on demand, on special season or will you bake and sell to retailers?
- How to Raise the Startup and Running Capitals for your Business: Will you use your personal savings, as startup or running capital? Will you borrow from family members, friends or banks? Are you going for fund raising option?
- How to Locate your Customers and Your Marketing Strategies: Who are your customers and how do you locate them? Who will you sell your cakes to and where will you sell your cakes?
- Your Business Expansion Strategies: At what scale will you start your business; small scale, middle scale or large scale? It is always advisable to start on small scale and expand with time. Then how will you scale up your business? Will you need extra funds for the scale up, and how will you get the required funds?
Always give your Customers What they Want
To make money from cake baking and decoration, make sure you give your customers the best. Customers’ satisfaction should be your utmost concern at every point in time. Also, new cake decoration styles and trends come up from time to time, both for birthday and for wedding. For example, there are now different trending cake decoration styles and types like, doll cakes, fault line cakes, textured buttercream cakes, half-wrapped cakes, cupcakes, sugar-free and low-carb cakes, subtle novelty cakes, macarons, etc.
But the popular types of cakes we have are:
- Vanilla cake
- Strawberry cake
- Milk cake
- Lemon cake
- Marble cake
- Carrot cake
- Red velvet cake, etc.
Most of these types of cakes are distinguished by the flavour used in making them.
So, ensure you update your baking and decoration skills so that you can deliver exactly what your customers want.
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How to Bake Wedding & Birthday Cakes: Step by Step DIY Recipe Guide
Things you need to Do before You Start Baking Cake
Make sure you prepare your Baking Pan: Rub some amount of margarine and then dust it with some flour.
Preheat your Oven: You can also use your stove with a pot as an alternative if you don’t have an oven. Whichever you are using, make sure you preheat it for about 20 to 30 minutes.
Level out your Dry Ingredients: When measuring your dry ingredients, make sure you level them out first. Don’t pour them when you measure them in the cup with the tip.
Beat your Eggs Properly: Beat them until they turn foamy.
Cream your Sugar and Margarine Vigorously: Cream until they are fluffy. That is if you are doing it manually.
Make sure you cover your oven properly before baking.
Don’t Bake at a very High Temperature: The optimum temperature for baking cakes is between 325 to 450 degrees F. For conventional ovens, you can lower the temperature by 25 to 50 degrees F. Also, make sure you cover your oven properly.
Ingredients and Quantity
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 3 medium size eggs
- 1 tsp. vanilla or any flavour you wish to use (depending on the type of cake you wish to bake)
- 1 tsp. baking powder
- 50 g butter
Equipment Needed
- Baking pan of any shape or size
- About 4 bowls for mixing
- A mixer
Cake Recipe
- Make sure you have prepared your baking pan and preheated your oven as specified earlier.
- Also make sure you beaten your eggs until they turn foamy in a small bowl.
- Then in another bowl, cream your sugar and butter very well, till they are fluffy. Do this step very well, so that your cake will come out moist and nicely.
- Mix your dry ingredients separately and your wet ingredients separately in different bowls. Your dry ingredients are flour and baking powder.
- In another bowl, sift in the dry ingredients.
- Now, combine the wet and dry ingredients together and mix very well, until everything is well incorporated.
- Next, pour your barter into your baking pan you have prepared earlier.
- Now put the baking pan with the barter into the oven.
- Bake for about 30 to 45 minutes, depending on the capacity of your oven and the size of your barter.
- When the cake has baked for about 30 minutes, check if the cake is well baked. To do this, dip a toothpick into the cake. If the toothpick comes out very neat, then your cake is well baked. If not, bake for some minutes more before removing it from the oven. The exterior of the cake should be golden brown in colour when properly baked.
- Enjoy your tasty cake!
Alternative to Oven for Baking
If you don’t have an oven or can’t afford an oven for baking at the moment, there is an improvise that works perfectly well.
- Get a big pot in which your baking pan or tray can properly fit into.
- Then use sand or stone to fill the base of the big pot, about half to one inch thick. You can also use that your Stove’s metal stand that supports your pot when cooking with a stove. The concept is to make sure there is no direct contact between your baking pan and the big pot.
- Now place your baking pan or tray with its content on top of the sand, stone or the stove’s metal stand inside the big pot.
- You can use a foil to cover the baking pan or baking tray. Then cover the pot with its cover.
- Place the pot and its content on your stove or gas cooker. Use the stove or gas cooker as the heat source for baking.
- This improvise will comfortably serve as an oven for baking anything, including cake, peanut, chin chin, bread, etc.
Homemade Buttercream Frosting Recipe
A buttercream icing is needed for crumb coating and for exterior frosting of your cake. You can make buttercream frosting of any flavour. One the most common flavour used is vanilla extract. Here are the ingredients and recipe for making a buttercream frosting for your cake.
Ingredients and Quantity
- 1 cup (230 g) unsalted butter, softened
- 3 cups icing sugar
- 4 tbsp. powdered milk, or heavy cream
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract or any flavour you wish to use
Recipe
- In a bowl, with the aid of a mixer, beat the butter, until smooth, for about 1 minute.
- Sift in half of the icing sugar and mix until smooth.
- Sift in the remaining icing sugar, the powdered milk (or heavy cream), the vanilla extract and the pinch of salt and mix until well incorporated. You might need to scrap the side of the mixing bowl and mix again to make sure everything is well combined.
- Congrats! You now have a homemade buttercream icing for your cake decoration. If you don’t want to use a homemade buttercream, you can buy from any baking grocery store.
NOTE:
You can make other buttercream variations by replacing the vanilla extract with any of the following:
- 1/2 cup (40 g) unsweetened cocoa powder
- 1/3 to 1/2 cup caramel sauce (if using salted caramel sauce, then omit adding salt)
- Blend 1 oz. (140 g) of dried, frozen strawberries with a blender or food processor and process until smooth. Then use the processed strawberries in place of the vanilla extract.
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How to Decorate Wedding & Birthday Cakes
Remove the cake from the baking pan and transfer it to a cake board.
Now crumb coat the cake with buttercream icing you made earlier (or bought). Note that if the cake has different tiers, you need to first join the different tiers together using the buttercream icing before crumb-coating. You might also cut out a card board and then cover it with foil, and then place it in between the different cake levels, when stacking the cake before the final exterior frosting. It all depends on your design pattern.
It is now time to start decorating the cake (exterior frosting). This is where you show your expertise and creativity. It is always advisable to stick to simple decoration, done in a stylish way.
Trending Birthday & Wedding Cake Decoration Ideas
Below are some of the wedding and birthday cake exterior frosting styles and ideas.
Video of How to Make Some Trending Cake Decoration Ideas
How to Package Wedding & Birthday Cakes for Sale
There are different packaging styles for cakes for sale, depending on the types of cakes you wish to make.
- For birthday or wedding cakes, you can use a bakery packaging box, or a clear nylon bag tied at the tip with a ribbon.
- For cupcakes, you can use a small bakery box or small cupcake clear cups and then seal the top with fancy paper and gum. Also, there are special cupcake boxes with cover, which can contain up to ten or more cupcakes. Alternatively, you use a cheap, small clear nylon bag, add your label inside and then tie with a colourful ribbon or you seal with a sealing machine. This last option is cheaper for packaging a large quantity of cakes for supply, especially if you are to supply your cupcakes to supermarkets or shopping malls.
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Conclusion
You have learnt how to make any type of cake (DIY recipe) and how to decorate wedding and birthday cakes. Also, you learnt how to make money making and selling cake. Try out these tips and enjoy your cake and make money as an entrepreneur.
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