Celebration Cakes by the Numbers: Servings per Tier, Frosting & Fondant Quantities, Ganache Ratios & Custom-Cake Pricing

What you'll build

What you will be able to do

Each lab ends with a concrete result that you build yourself and the checker confirms, cell by cell.

• Build the studio's servings chart: the top area of every round and square tin, the party and wedding servings it gives (rounded down) and how many servings a square tin adds over a round one.
• Turn a guest count into the servings needed, count only the real tiers, size the kitchen cake that covers the rest, work out the height of the finished cake and chart the servings per tier.
• Turn one test bake into grams of batter per cm³, scale it to every tier by area, depth and layers, total the order and work out how many batches of the base recipe to mix.
• Work out the top and side surface of every tier, the grams of buttercream for the outer coat and the fillings between layers, and the total batch to make including the extra for crumb coat and bowl loss.
• Size the fondant circle for every tier – including the diagonal of a square cake – weigh each rolled sheet from its area, thickness and density and work out how many packs to open.
• Turn chocolate-to-cream ratios into shares, split each ganache job into grams of chocolate and cream with a lookup, and scale the buttercream base formula to the amount an order needs, rounded to 5 g.
• Look up decoration hours per tier by complexity, add the sugar-flower and piping time and round the total up to the quarter hour that goes into the quote.
• Price every order in the December book from ingredients, materials, decoration hours and overhead, compare the price per serving, charge the right delivery band and set the date by which each design must be confirmed.