How Many People Does a 1kg Cake Serve? A Cake Size Guide

It's the first question on almost every cake order, and people get it wrong in both directions. Order too little and someone ends up cutting slivers while the birthday person watches. Order too much and half a cake lives in your fridge for a week. Nobody really complains about the second one, but you did pay for it.

Here's how we think about size, after baking for Bengaluru birthdays, anniversaries and office parties since 2013.

The short answer

As a rule of thumb, plan on roughly 8 to 10 decent slices per kilo. Cut thinner, after a big meal, and you can stretch a kilo to about 12.

• 500g: 4 to 6 people, or up to 8 if the slices are small.
• 1kg: 8 to 10 people, about 12 with thin party slices.
• 2kg: 16 to 20 people, closer to 25 cut thin.
• 3kg: 25 to 30 people.
• 4kg: 35 to 40 people.

These are estimates, not promises. A few things push the number up or down.

What changes the maths

What else is on the table. Cake after a full lunch or a buffet dinner goes a lot further than cake as the main event at a 4 o'clock party. If there's also a dessert counter, mithai or ice cream, people take less.

Who's eating. Adults at a sit-down dinner take a polite slice. Kids' parties are harder to call: small slices, a lot of seconds, and a surprising amount left on plates.

The cake itself. Rich cakes get cut thinner. A chocolate truffle or a brownie cake is dense, and most people stop after a modest slice. A light sponge with whipped cream and fruit disappears faster.

Whether you want leftovers. Some families like a slice for breakfast the next day. If that's you, add half a kilo and stop worrying.

Sizes on our menu

Many of the cakes on our classic cakes menu are 500g, including the Belgian Chocolate Truffle, the Chocolate Walnut, and the strawberry and blueberry cakes. A few also come in 1kg: the Blackforest, the Mocha and the fresh fruit cake.

For a particular weight, or anything bigger than a kilo, the custom cake form is the way in. Tell us the headcount and the kind of party, and we'll suggest a size rather than guess.

One trick that works well for mixed groups: two 500g cakes in different flavours instead of one 1kg cake. It's the same amount of cake, but you've covered the chocolate people and the not-chocolate people. It also makes it easy to bake one of them gluten-free or with atta without changing the whole order.

When tiers make sense

Tiers are about looks and occasion, not about feeding more people per rupee. With us, a two-tier cake needs at least 3kg and three tiers need at least 4kg. Much smaller than that and the individual tiers get too small to stack and carry well.

So a tiered cake is worth considering when:

• you're feeding 25 or more people anyway,
• the cake is the centrepiece: an engagement, a wedding reception, a big milestone birthday,
• the photos matter as much as the eating.

If you're hosting 15 people and have your heart set on tiers, you'll be buying roughly twice the cake you need. A single-tier cake with a more detailed design usually gives you the moment without the leftovers.

Tiered cakes also need a few days' notice, a flat surface at the venue, and a cab rather than a bike for delivery. Plan for all three.

When cupcakes are the smarter call

Cupcakes are underrated for groups. They make sense for:

• Offices, where people drift in and out and nobody wants to be the one holding the knife.
• Kids' parties, where one each settles every argument about who got the bigger piece.
• Mixed diets, since you can mix boxes rather than make one cake suit everyone.
• Take-home treats, because a cupcake survives a car ride better than a slice on a paper plate.

Our cupcakes come in boxes of four, from ₹180 to ₹300 a box depending on the flavour. For 30 people, eight boxes gives you 32, with two spare for whoever turns up late.

Plenty of hosts do both: a small 500g cake for the candles and the photos, and cupcakes to actually feed the room.

A worked example

Say it's a birthday dinner at home: 18 adults and 6 children, cake after the meal.

The adults will take about one slice each. Count the children as roughly half to two-thirds of a slice each, because some will eat two and some will eat none. That puts you around 22 slices, so 2kg is comfortable and 1.5kg is fine if you cut with some discipline.

From our menu, a 1kg Blackforest plus a 500g Chocolate Truffle gets you 1.5kg and two flavours. If you'd rather have one big cake with a design on it, ask for 2kg through the custom cake form.

Before you order

Have three numbers ready: how many people, whether cake comes after a meal or is the meal, and how many of them can't eat gluten or egg. With those, any baker can size a cake properly, and we're happy to do the sums with you.