How to Calculate Ingredients Costs for a Cake

Before you can calculate the cost of a cake, you need accurate ingredient costs. That’s why this example builds directly on the principles explained in Ingredient Costing for Baking (Units, Waste & Bulk Buying). In that guide, we cover how to standardize units, handle ingredients like eggs, and account for waste so your numbers are reliable. In this post, we’ll take those rules and apply them to a real cake example, showing how ingredient costs are determined before they ever go into a full recipe cost.

Calculating ingredients cost for a recipe is one of the hardest parts of running a home baking business.

Not because you don’t know how to calculate — but because no one ever teaches you how to price your work with confidence.

Many home bakers guess their costs, copy competitors, or undercharge out of fear of losing customers. The result? Long hours in the kitchen, lots of orders… and very little profit.

At Stirva, we believe your baking passion deserves to be profitable. Let’s break down exactly how to calculate ingredients costs, with simple formulas and real examples you can apply right away.we’ll walk through a real-life example of how to calculate the ingredient cost of an 8-person chocolate cake, step by step — using the exact method professional bakers rely on.

Step 1: Define the Cake You’re Costing

For this example, we’ll cost a classic two-layer 6-inch chocolate cake, suitable for about 8 servings, with chocolate buttercream frosting.

This is important:
Ingredients costing always starts with a defined recipe and serving size.
Without this, costs can’t be accurate.

Step 2: List the Ingredients and Quantities (for 8 servings)

Chocolate Cake Batter

• All-purpose flour — 190 g

• Granulated sugar — 200 g

• Unsweetened cocoa powder — 200 g

• Baking powder — 6 g

• Baking soda — 5 g

• Salt — 3 g

• Eggs — 2

• Milk — 240 ml

• Vegetable oil — 80 ml

• Vanilla extract — 5 ml

• Hot water — 180 ml (often negligible in cost)

  
  

Chocolate Buttercream Frosting

• Unsalted butter — 200 g

• Icing sugar — 400 g

• Cocoa powder — 40 g

• Milk or cream — 30 ml

• Vanilla extract — 5 ml

This is the exact recipe we’ll use to calculate ingredients costs.

Step 3: Note the Pack Sizes You Actually Buy

Here’s where many home bakers get stuck — and where mistakes often happen.

You don’t buy 200 g of sugar from the store. You buy 1 kg.
So the key question becomes:

How much does the portion I used actually cost?

Let’s assume these are the pack sizes and prices you paid:

Step 4: Use One Simple Formula for Every Ingredient

This is the only formula you need for ingredient costing:

Cost Used = (Recipe Quantity ÷ Pack Quantity) × Pack Price

Let’s walk through a few examples.

Example 1: Cocoa powder (200 g used, 454g bought)

• You bought 454 g of cocoa powder for $4.00

• Your recipe uses 200 g

$4.00 ÷ 454 g = $0.009 per gram
200 g × $0.009 = $1.76

So the cocoa powder in this cake costs $1.76

Example 2: Eggs (priced per piece)

If a dozen eggs cost $4.20:

$4.20 ÷ 12 = $0.35 per egg
2 eggs × $0.35 = $0.70

So the eggs in this cake costs $0.70.

Example 3: When Units Don’t Match

If sugar is priced per 1 kg, but your recipe uses grams:

Convert first to grams → $2.50 ÷ 1000 g (convert kg to g) = $0.0025 per gram

Multiply by what you used → $0.0025 × 200 g = $0.50

This simple conversion keeps your costing accurate every time.

* Note there are instance where you may use units such as tsp, tbsp and converting between ml to g. See How to Convert Recipe Units in Baking (Grams, Cups, Tsp, Tbsp) for detailed guide on how to calculate cost of such ingredients.

Step 5: Calculate the Cost of Each Ingredient

Step 6: Total Recipe Ingredient Cost

When you add everything together:

Total ingredient cost for this 8-person chocolate cake = $9.31

This number is powerful — because now you’re no longer guessing.

What This Cost Includes (and What It Doesn’t)

This $9.31 covers ingredients only.

To price the cake for sale, you’ll usually add:

• Cake board and box

• Utilities and overhead

• Your time and labor

• A profit margin

That’s how you move from “I think this price is okay” to “I know this price works.”

How Stirva Makes This Effortless

Doing this once is manageable. Doing it for every recipe - every time ingredient prices change is exhausting.

With Stirva, home bakers can:

• Save ingredients with their pack size and cost

• See how much each ingredients costs in each recipe helping bakers decide on brands, quality and pricing.

• Build recipes once and get automatic cost calculations when the ingredient purchase prices change.

Final Thoughts

Pricing isn’t about charging more — it’s about charging right.

When you understand your recipe costs, you gain:

• Confidence in your prices

• Control over your business

• Freedom to grow without burnout

That’s exactly why Stirva exists — to help home bakers turn passion into profit, without the headaches.

Start your free 30-day trial of Stirva.app and see how easy it is to automatically calculate your true recipe costs, track all your expenses, and set prices that actually lead to profit!