Basant Paradis, the owner of Cake Concoctions, takes cookies from the oven during a summer camp for kids, which teaches them the science of baking, on Monday at the shop in Bangor. Gabor Degre | BDN

The owner of Cake Concoctions, the downtown Bangor bakery and custom cake making business located at 6 Water Street, announced this week that after some question as to whether or not she would reopen his business, she has officially decided to close. Basant Paradis said on Friday morning that her downtown storefront would remain permanently closed after its then temporary closure on Oct. 2, and that she would be getting out of the baking business entirely.

“Bangor can’t handle the prices that I need to be charging for my products,” said Paradis. “A lot of people want custom cakes, but they just don’t want to pay for the labor.”

Paradis said baking her made-from-scratch cakes and the elaborate, hand-sketched drawings she can apply them can take four to five hours to create, upping the price to the $400 range, which is out of the reach of some consumer’s budgets.

“Some people won’t bat an eye at paying $150 for a specialty cake… others want some beautiful hand-sketched cake, but are not willing to pay for the labor associated with it,” she said.