Advice on calculating portions in a carved cake please?
Hi
I have been asked to make a car cake for a friends 50th birthday. I have made a couple small scale ones, where the size of the cake/number of portions was not important so it just used a combination of tins and carved until I was happy :)
My friend wants the cake to serve between 70 & 80 people, proper sized portions. How do I start to work out how many cakes I want to get the cr the right size?
I think I am panicking because of the size that I can’t even think where to start!
Thank you
Angela.
6 Replies
Hi, I think you’ll have to take the portion size your customer wants eg 2″ × 2″ × 2″ and multiply it – so 9 × 2 = 18 . So an 18″ × 9″ car will give 9 × 4 = 36 portions from the first layer. Then depending on how tall your car will be – you’d have to make a template – you could work out how many more portions you’d get.
It is going to be one mahoosive car though – I would try to convince your customer to have a car on top of a big square cake to get enough portions.
Mike McCarey has an amazing tutorial on Craftsy – Classics car but it is very big and teaches great techniques :-D:-D.
Hope this helps – also you’d have to charge so much money for a car that size!!
Lulu
X
Thank you Lulu.
I was looking at the craftsy class, especially as they are on offer this weekend.
Angela.
Sometimes, If I am concerned about the servings on a cake, I will plop the main figure onto a sheet cake and use the sheet cake as a background. That way I can be sure there are enough servings. I hope this helps. Mike McCarey is an amazing teacher and you can’t beat the prices of the Craftsy classes right now plus you will own the class forever. I always purchase the classes when on sale and look at them later. (I think I own almost 20 classes now!) but I can honestly look back at my work and see where it gets better after each class I take. I highly recommend Craftsy classes! Good Luck on your cake!
Psalm 127:1 Unless the LORD builds the house, the builders labor in vain.
Thank you, I have long been a fan of his, so I will buy the class.
Angela.
I made a car cake for my husbands birthday and put the car on a torted sheet cake, so it looked like a road and grassy area. You get a lot more easy to cut servings that way!
Good luck!
Theresa
I agree with Donna, put the car on a sheetcake road then make the car the size you’re comfortable with. If you have to make the car serve 80 you’ll be a total wreck thinking about it. If she is truly your friend, she will understand Non-cake people have no idea how time-consuming planning something like this out is and most of us don’t get paid properly for our pre-baking planning sessions.
