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What exactly goes into pricing a thousand-dollar cake? According to Texas baker Pamela Wooten, it's all in the details.
Wooten — the owner of PamCakes Bakery in Liberty Hill, Texas — recently went viral on TikTok, sharing what she called a "thousand-dollar cake" made for a child's 7th birthday party.
And while commenters were quick to weigh in — with some arguing the cake was "absolutely not" worth $1,000 — Wooten, 35, points out that a lot of effort, time and materials went into the confection.
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The cake — which actually cost the client $810, including a $200 discount — is a fondant-covered, 12-layer, superhero-themed confection.
Each of the cake's three tiers depict a different superhero: Captain America, Iron Man and Spider-Man, with the Hulk's bright green hand topping things off and Thor's hammer resting alongside.
According to Wooten, the detailed cake took an estimated 15 hours to complete, from start to finish.
"This includes the time spent on drafting the client contract, shopping for the ingredients and materials, baking the cakes, making fillings and buttercream, icing all the tiers, sculpting the 3D pieces and adding final decorations," Wooten tells PEOPLE.
As Wooten explains, custom confections like those she bakes are a much more involved process than the boxed varieties so common at the grocery store.
"Not a lot of people are aware of the time it actually takes to put these types of custom cakes together," she says. "It takes forever."
The superhero cake would normally cost roughly $1,000, though Wooten gave her client — a repeat customer — a $200 discount.
"These are the types of clients you want to make sure you keep happy and have them keep coming back to you so I try to offer discounts when I can," she says.
As for how pricing typically works, Wooten says she uses "a specific formula" when calculating the cost of her cakes.
"My formula is Materials + Ingredients + Labor X 30 percent," she says, adding: "This gives me the least amount I should charge for my cakes. I then round up that final number."
For the superhero cake, materials cost around $35, ingredients were $85 and labor was around $450 (which amounts to $30 per hour). Adding in the extra 30 percent, plus a $60 delivery fee, Wooten landed at $810.
And while an $800 cake might seem pricey, it can also feed a lot of mouths, she notes.
"This particular cake could feed anywhere between 50-60 people, if cut correctly," she says.
Wooten also bakes plenty of wedding cakes, though she's quick to point out that those are often much more simple than a child's birthday cake, which often requires a theme and greater detail.
"Most people think wedding cakes are the most expensive cakes but actually it's anything involving intricate decorations, especially the ones made out of fondant (which most birthday cakes are made out of)," she says. "A naked wedding cake of the same size [as the superhero cake] would've cost $495 and would've taken about half the time to complete."
While some TikTok users argued that $1,000 was "too much" to spend on any cake, others understood the pricing structure.
"People saying that this cake should cost $300-$400 have absolutely no idea the cost of ingredients or the time it takes to make a cake like this," wrote one commenter under Wooten's video.
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