Finally the holidays are over and I'm also over some of the house chores I had to do last holiday as well.🎄
Every Christmas season, I always try to make new jelly cake designs for customers to choose from. And last Christmas, I was able to offer four Christmas jelly cake designs.
If you only have heard of jelly cake today, this cake is basically just agar and gelatin shaped into a cake. What makes this cake fancy and quite expensive is the quality of the ingredients used and the floral designs made into the agar. We don't use the cheap agar typically sold in the groceries. I actually tried a cheaper one before and it wasn't as good as the one I use.
For Christmas 2023, I made a wreath design and another with stylized poinsettias.
Here's a closer look on the cakes.
(Red color is such a tricky color to work on with jelly cakes as the colors are very prone to bleeding due to water being one of the main ingredient in making jelly cakes. It's been a long struggle for us jelly cake artists to find colors that would less bleed.)
Christmas wreath. (Size: 8 inches)
Stylized poinsettias. (Size: 7 inches)
Two friends bought my cakes on 2023 and my sister also bought one and gifted it to her high school best friend.
2024 Christmas Jelly Cakes
This year, I tried to make another two different designs but still with poinsettias because poinsettia is a flower which symbolizes Christmas, right?
The first design I made was a cluster of three poinsettia flowers with a pine cone. I also added a Merry Christmas lettering on top.
Size of this cake is eight inches.
And for the second design, I made a Santa Claus Drawing in the middle of a wreath which I made more look festive by adding some streaks of red and yellow around the wreath.
The jelly drawing has been in demand lately, so I tried to offer one for Christmas. I love how this one turned out even though I used the wrong petal design for the little poinsettia on the middle. Yikes!
This jelly drawing is on a smaller mold, 6 inches, so the price wouldn't be that much expensive. It's also more meticulous to create compared to the first design.
If you have also noticed, I made the base or background of the new designs into red so the bleeding of the red flowers wouldn't be too obvious.
However, despite the designs I made and constant marketing on social media, it was still tough to reach potential buyers. Or maybe competition is really tough during the holidays as lots of businesses offer and advertise their products, thus, more options for people.
Another thing to consider is the price. Unfortunately, I can no longer lower the prices of my cakes. I haven't even made a price increase yet since I started this business. And I have actually cut down the price of some cakes to make it more affordable.
A bit saddening but that's how businesses go. I'll try better next time. Anyways, I had other jelly cake orders and the customer really liked it. Hearing the good feed back was enough to compensate the failed Christmas cakes ads.
I still want to see how this cake business will fair in the future and I believe I'm still far from being a jelly cake expert, so why do I have to give up now?
I want to be the very best
Like no one ever was
Thanks for reading! 💚