How to store a cream cake
Cold, covered and taken out at the right time: keeping a cake as good as the day it arrived.
Why a 1 kg strawberry cake costs ₹1,450
Butter, cream, fruit and time: a plain breakdown of what goes into one of our most-ordered cakes.
Supermarket cakes of the same weight sell for ₹600 to ₹800, so it is reasonable to ask why ours costs ₹1,450. Here is roughly where the money goes for a 1 kg strawberry cream cake.
Ingredients come to about ₹520. That includes 200 g of butter at ₹110, 300 ml of dairy whipping cream at ₹180, fresh strawberries for the filling and top at around ₹120 in season, and flour, sugar, eggs, real vanilla and a little mascarpone. In the months when strawberries come in from Ooty and Kodaikanal they are cheaper; out of season the fruit alone can cost ₹200.
Labour is next. Baking the sponges, cooling, levelling, filling, frosting, decorating and writing the message take about two and a half hours of hands-on work across two days. With wages for our three bakers, that is roughly ₹350 a cake. The box, cake board and candle cost ₹55. Gas and electricity for the oven and fridges come to about ₹60 a cake. Rent of the Saibaba Colony kitchen, the cakes we remake when something goes wrong, and payment charges add another ₹180 or so. Delivery is charged separately at ₹80.
That leaves about ₹285, close to 20 per cent, which pays for slow weeks, new equipment and the next recipe test. A cheaper cake usually saves on cream, butter or fruit. If budget matters, a smaller 500 g cake from us at ₹780 may serve a family of six better than a larger cake made with topping.
