Alice's pricing matrix

Hi lili, Give this link a try: ” http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopic-148801-75.html":http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopic-148801-75.html

Version “S” is the one that I work from, but there may be another updated one out there. This one works just fine for me though. As long as you have Excel you will be just fine. Good luck! :)

-- www.facebook.com/SadiesCakes

Thanks :-)

-- Cakes by lili --- Bloemfontein, South Africa

Hello. I am having trouble understanding the Matrix??? [confused look] Maybe I rushed through it, but there were so many columns and information, my mind couldnt process it at a glance, lol. I’m going to go back and view it and REALLY look at it and dissect it. Thanks alot for the link

-- Yum-B Cakes: Where you can have your cake and eat it too!

I am in the process of making a less confused one! I have one which is a cake portion guide, another which is ingredients costings which works out the prices automatically and I am working on one that tracks time input too.
I agree – my mind just went blank trying to process all the information contained on the one sheet, so am setting about to simplify!

-- Karen MacFadyen - London UK - http://www.facebook.com/cakecoachonline http://www.cakecoachonline.com

Oh…that sounds good, Karen….let us know when its up & running :)

-- Crystal Memories in the Baking

That sounds great, Karen! I tried to make sense of Alice’s one as well, since I mainly want to use the ingredients costing, but it just has so many variables, and then I was also trying to update it to metric (I am in South Africa), but I just gave up after a couple of hours.

I am sure there are a lot of us who would greatly appreciate a simplified sheet, if you would be willing to share all your hard work!

-- Cakes by lili --- Bloemfontein, South Africa

Thanks Karen! Keep us posted on how it turns out

-- Yum-B Cakes: Where you can have your cake and eat it too!

OK – so I am in London UK – and we can weigh in both ounces and grams. Could someone please give me a lesson as to what ‘cups’ are all about? If I can get this sheet to work for each kind of measurement – without being massively confusing, I am guessing this would help! So first is there a standard cup size? And is this USA and Canada that weigh in cups, and UK in grams (and in England using an older recipe it might be in ounces and lbs) Let me know. Cheers,

-- Karen MacFadyen - London UK - http://www.facebook.com/cakecoachonline http://www.cakecoachonline.com

Hi Karen. A cup is usually 250 millilitres, (ml), no matter the weight.

-- Cakes by lili --- Bloemfontein, South Africa

Thanks for that. OK another question then – litres measure water and fluid. Do you use cups to measure flour?

-- Karen MacFadyen - London UK - http://www.facebook.com/cakecoachonline http://www.cakecoachonline.com

So in my store cupboard – in London UK everything is in grams or in ml (if it is a fluid) Only the pickled onions – onions in vinegar – are different only because they have a weight and then a drained weight. So need to get to grips with all the differing ways of weighing outside UK. What do your recipes normally quote as a measurement. We have grams and ml. (Rarely use the word cup) Let me know how you measure butter, flour, sugar dried fruit etc. It would really help me. Cheers, K

-- Karen MacFadyen - London UK - http://www.facebook.com/cakecoachonline http://www.cakecoachonline.com

I am in South Africa, and we mostly use grams and ml for measurement too. The cups (and teaspoon/tablespoon) is just a more “informal” way of measuring I think – it all depends on what your recipe uses. But for butter (unless melted) and dried fruit, etc. weighing will obviously be more accurate. I think weighing is probably the most accurate way of measuring in any case, as long as you have a good (electronic?) scale, especially for baking, although I grew up with using cups in many recipes (especially hand-me-downs) as well. If you are not sure about conversions (i.e. your recipe specifies cups/tablespoons and you want grams/mls), I find that doing a quick search on Google usually gives many conversions – sometimes this is just easier than for instance measuring out 8 tablespoons of something. This is also handy for finding out how many grams of a specific item is in a cup for instance, since it will differ between flour, sugar, etc.

-- Cakes by lili --- Bloemfontein, South Africa

Karen,
Here in the US we use cups/tablespoons/teaspoons to measure dry or wet ingredients. Now that is not to say that we don’t weight our ingredients too. It all depends on the recipe I guess.

An example a lot of my recipes say 1cup of butter which equals 2 sticks.

Hopefully that explains some of it.

-- Jennifer, https://www.facebook.com/PrimacakesPlus

This is very useful! I really hard a tough time finding a good pricing matrix. Alice’s seem to be a very robust one. Now to find time to understand how the entire spreadsheet works ^^

-- Promises to wow you over at http://mydearbakes.wordpress.com =)

Tell me about butter then – what weight is on the pack that you buy from the store. We do not have butter in sticks in UK. We have sticks of celery and that is about it!!! My simpler pricing matric nearly ready – just having it checked over to make sure it all works – and will let you know.

-- Karen MacFadyen - London UK - http://www.facebook.com/cakecoachonline http://www.cakecoachonline.com