There is probably more potential for a cake decorating business in the childrens' birthday cake niche than any other. Every child celebrates their birthday once a year, and most like to do so with a cake. Just think of how many people you know with children, including friends, family, work colleagues, your children's friends and classmates, church acquaintances – the number is probably much bigger than you realise, and indicates a potentially very large market.
Your entry into this market is likely to be through making cakes for your own children's birthdays, or those of close friends or family. This is your first and best opportunity both to practise your craft, and to get yourself known, so it is important that you take as much care over these cakes as you would those of a paying client, and also that you don't miss the opportunity to promote your service.
What type of cake to make? This of course depends on the requirements of the client – or, more importantly, the child concerned. They will most likely ask for a specific character or theme, so your job is then to discuss the details with them and find out exactly what they want. If they leave it up to you to decide, then you should go back to them with a final proposal before making any firm decision. This will avoid any disappointment if you deliver a cake with a picture of Elmo on it, instead of the sculptured 3 dimensional Elmo the child had their heart set on.
Stock Designs Some themes are perennially popular – aeroplanes and racing cars for little boys, and pirate ships or trains. Little girls have been wanting princess doll cakes since I was a child, and they are still popular today. And of course there will always be a demand for number cakes to match the age of the child. With all these standard cakes, it pays to keep your templates as well as photographs of the construction process and final product so you can re-use them, but it is also important to vary the design and decoration of the more popular styles so you are not repeating yourself within the same market. Children go to a lot of birthday parties and many of them will be at each others, so you don't want to provide identical versions of the same popular character to all of them. It is easy enough to make changes in size, shape, colour, etc, and if you keep good records of all your cakes with details of names, dates and photographs, this should not be a problem.
Here are a couple of videos - the first one shows a very simple method of making a train birthday cake - as you will see there are endless opportunities to vary the decorative scheme here.
This one shows how to make a princess doll cake for a wee girl. This video is really good for showing some basic techniques - applying a crumb coating, using the freezer to speed up setting, etc. Again there is plenty of scope for creative variation. Enjoy watching these - then get to work on your own!
The children's birthday cake niche is a very enjoyable one to work in – there is endless scope for your creativity, and - apart from receiving the cheque! - there can be nothing more rewarding than seeing the look of delight on a child's face when he sees a perfect rendition of his favourite television character in a cake you have made. That look is worth good money to you, so study and work the niche, and maximise the fun and profit that are available within it.
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