Price Comparison

Have you ever sat down on a weekend day off and price flour out by the cup?  It's fascinating work.

Let's do a math problem, shall we...

If the flour I buy comes in 5lb bags, and there are approximately 3 3/4 cups of flour per pound, and my recipe uses 1 3/4 cups of flour in every recipe, how many servings of cupcakes can I make with one 5lb bag of flour?

With some slight rounding (let's be honest, I spill flour from time to time), the answer you should have come up with is 10.  I can make 10 dozen cupcakes with one bag of flour.

To continue the math problem, if one bag of flour costs $1.39, how much do I spend per serving to add flour to a dozen cupcakes?  If you move the decimal point, you'll find I spend approximately 14 cents per dozen cupcakes on flour.

Is your head hurting yet?  Try doing this with every single ingredient in my recipes.  I might have just popped two Alieve :-)

In all reality, though, as much math crunching as I have done today, it's for a good cause...I wanted to make sure that what I'm charging customers is right on price point for where it should be.  I have been basing my pricing on local competitors, but never sat down and figured it out for myself.  Guess today's as good of day as any to whip out the ol' calculator.

My discoveries...??  My price is right on the money.  For most basic cupcakes (we're talking no thrills and frills, no gluten-free, no 20 hours of work) I charge $21/dozen.  Sometimes $20 if I'm feeling nice.  And calculating for supplies, electricity used, and time I donate, The total price for me to make 1 dozen cupcakes is $20.17.  That includes electricity to run the oven, boxes to store the cupcakes, money to pay myself, and cupcake liners.  Pretty spot on, isn't it ;-)

Calculating prices also helped me pinpoint where I can save some money too...the biggest expense in my cupcake baking is vanilla bean paste, a wonderful creation, but $8.99 for 4oz. of the stuff.  I've been dumping a tablespoon of it into my cupcakes, resulting in me spending $1.12 per dozen cupcakes just for vanilla flavoring.  Hmmmm....maybe this needs reworked.  So I'm going to play around with quantities a little, maybe swapping some of the paste out for vanilla extract.  I like the paste because it does provide us with actual vanilla beans, but as far as flavoring goes, vanilla extract does the job just as well.  So we'll play around with some volume, and hopefully get the cost down even more.

Number crunching is over for the day...pumpkin pies are in the oven as we speak, just waiting to be consumed by the holidays this week.  I cannot wait to eat them and share in Thanksgiving with friends and family this week.

If you're traveling this holiday week/weekend, be safe.  And to all I wish a happy and healthy Thanksgiving holiday.  I am thankful for all the support, advice, and help you have offered to me in this past year!

Lis

The Weekend Warrior

What a crazy weekend this is shaping up to be.  Lots of baking.  Lots of bakery-ing.  Little time to blog about it.

Yesterday was my first actual decorating class, and boy was it interesting.  For those of you who don't know, I've never taken a baking/decorating/business class in my life.  I am what the French call "Le Self-Taught".  But since I'm trying to open up a bakery, and convince people to buy my goods, I feel I should do everything in my power to get as much training, practice, and information I can about baking, decorating, business, etc.  So I signed up for a beginner's decorating class.

I was a little hesitant to sign up for this class, because, let's be honest, I do know my way around a kitchen.  I can fill a pastry bag and decorate cupcakes and cookies and cakes.  I can make delicious icing, in a million different flavors, and easily ice a cake.  I can roll and dye fondit, spread it on a cake, and decorate fun designs all over the top.  So a beginner's decorating class seems a little...redundant.  But, at the same time, I have to be humble with my skills: everything I've learned, I've taught myself or Googled "How to..."  What if I learned something incorrectly?  Or could do something more efficiently   I needed to start at the beginning, to make sure I didn't miss anything.

How many holidays did I celebrate with my cookie cutters this weekend?

The class was pretty dull, because it was the first one.  We learned how to fill pastry bags, how to make icing, and how to ice cookies.  Pretty slow.  But next week we're going to start in on some actual skills: creating leaves and vines on a cake, torting a cake, making a floral display.  None of which I've actually done.  So I'm trying to keep an open mind, because I do believe there are some things I can learn from this class.

Last night I had a huge blessing, for which I couldn't be happier about.  Ever have a pretty stressful week where you think, "Honestly, can I NOT catch a break this week?"  That was my week.  I was feeling pretty bummed out, and then a good friend came to me with several gifts.  Not only did she decide she wanted to donate supplies to my Christmas fundraiser (flour, sugar, powdered sugar, butter, etc.) but she needed me to make 150 cupcakes too.  Yay!!  Business, and supplies, and a way to keep my mind off of the craziness that is my life.  Talk about major blessing!!

Now it's time to study, and study hard.  My ServSafe exam kicks off in less than 24 hours, and I'm nervous about it.  It could either go really well, or really awful.  A lot of it is common sense (for example, do not put food in chemical bottles), but then there are all these small details I need to remember, like the distance shelving units need to be from the ground, and the height that a sneeze guard needs to be at on a salad bar.  Time to memorize, memorize, memorize.  And maybe write out a few flash cards too.

So, it's time to turn on the Office, throw in a load of laundry, eat a sugar cookie or 10, and get studying.  Par-tay!!

Lis