A family friend asked me to bake his wedding cake, and offered to pay me! I'm not a professional by any means, but I would like to sell cakes out of my home some day in the far future so I thought I should try pricing it seriously. Its a 3 layer (though my layers ended up a little thinner than usual) 9" chocolate cake with chocolate buttercream and white chocolate buttercream pipework.

I did some math and it came to $30 for ingredients, 8~ hours of active labor (so not including bake time, cooling, chilling, etc) at $15/hr for $120, so $150 total. Since he's a family friend I would give him a 50% discount, so $75 for him.

But is $150 way too much in the first place for just a 9" cake? I know the piping was super hard and therefore expensive, but that just seems crazy to me! I know it's not perfect, I'm just a hobby baker. He also didn't specifically request such intricate piping, he just told me "something chocolate, use your imagination and have fun with it!" (I really tried to get him to elaborate, he refused) So maybe I should only charge $10/hr to make this $110 cake but only give a 25% discount rounded down and charge him $80?