A Tale of Two Cakes

Actually, it's more than 2 cakes, but that's the classic line isn't it.

I was thinking about this the other day as I made Tigger's birthday cake.

I made it from scratch out of organic and fair things. It was a chocolate cake, with granche icing, and pink frosting rosettes. .

Each stage wasn't that bad, but the whole thing took me all day, on and off and several bowels to wash. 15-20 to mix, 15 minutes to construct the pan -- they don't make funky shaped pans in exactly the shape I wanted --, 45 to cook, 2 hours to cool, 10 minutes for granche, 10 to cover, 1 hour to cool, 5 minutes to make frosting, 15 minutes to pipe out rosettes.

The cost for this really delicious cake made of grass-fed butter, fair trade cocoa and sugar, and organic flour was not that high: butter is $4 a lb, flour, sugar, and oil, etc. about $2, cream $1, chocolate $5.50 a bag. So about $13-15 at most, inc electricity.

(That fair trade choc is a killer price wise, but child slave labor is such a downer.)

However if I'd gone all box mix, what would I have saved? For Generic choch full-o-polysyllabic thingys and non-organic, non fair-trade stuff? I'd have saved $5, and some time. $5 is a lot if you do it everyday, but right now I make under 10 cakes a year, between parties, birthdays, special events, etc. That's half a dozen fun Starbucks' Coffee Creations. If I went a bit more upmarket to Cherrybrook farms, it would cost me about the same amount of time as a box mix and costs abut the same as my home made cake, except non-fair trade.

Box mix, (add $2 for home ingredients.) frosting out a can, packaged decorations:

Betty Crocker, $2+2, $2 and $3 = $9

Cherrybrook farms or Pamela's $5+2, $3, $3 = $13

For both the time is 10 minutes to mix, 45 to bake, 2 hours to cool, 10 minutes to frost and five minutes to smack on pre-bought decorations out of the packet. That works out to about 3 hours and 15 minutes. I mean the BettyCrocker kind, not the beauteous sugar gum paste things from Cake Art, which cost $10-15.

Or I could save my time and energy and *buy* a cake.

You can get a Publix Cake for $25-35. (Generic grocery cake with industrial ingredients)

Or a really delicious cake from Fancy Top Notch French Bakery, all real good ingredients(butter and flour and cocoa, etc), but not organic or fair trade. $42 An extra $10 there. Or about a dollar a slice. Still,if you are going to eat cake shouldn't it *taste* like cake?

Time for Publix, that would be 15-20 minutes inc driving

For Fancy Top Notch French Bakery 30-40 minutes driving.

So for buying I trade lots of money for a time savings of around a 2 and half hours. But is that two and a half hours worth it? I value my time at $25/hour. So yeah. Buying it "saves" me 64 bucks of my time over the cake box. And I don't want to figure out how much over the special cake.

So clearly the best bargin for delux birthday type cakes is actually the fancy French bakery cake. But the fair trade thing niggles at my conscience. Plus they don't make cakes in special shapes: just round or square. (Of course, for basic cakes, I can manage to make the mix in 10 minutes, bake for 45, and ice in under 15. I just rarely make basic cakes. And my ingredient costs are well under $10.)