Pastries and Caked absolutely everywhere

[istheheatingonyet]

Being an oldie I can remember a slice of birthday cake was a great treat.
Now they are everywhere. Since lockdown there are coffee vans every 5 minutes, sausage rolls. At our " farmers market" there is stall after stall selling cake. A recently opened cafe selling cup cakes is absolutely booming.

Big change.

I'm older than you and I remember cakes always being around. We had them in the canteen at work and on the tea trolley. But I remember them being a lot smaller than they are now.

Yes! Ski yoghurts in the tubs shaped a bit like a milk churn, narrower at the top. Cherry was my favourite.
We always had a cake in the tin when I was a kid, fruit cake or ginger with sultanas in. I do it now 4 eggs, 8oz each flour butter brown/golden sugar and 8oz of whatever dried fruit , walnuts etc lemon zest depending what in with a splash of milk and a couple of teaspoons of cinnamon/mixed spice/ginger then split between two loaf tins and in the oven at 180 until you can smell it, 25 mins or so longer if one big tin then check it’s completely done with a skewer. Good kid filler.

This is such a curmudgeonly thread 😂

Loving the appearance of the oz.

"Huge slabs of cake" fits with an attitude towards food that PP refer to as being quite common on MN. It tends to be quite disapproving and judgemental of what others eat. A lot of what you say is true though. The very concept of a treat has changed so much to seemingly include things that people might eat/drink every day or even several times a day. It doesn't seem to mean something occasional or unusual anymore.

The slab is the new slice.

My granny made the best fruit cake ever in the autumn to spring. Summer was Victoria sponge cake filled with homemade jam, her own strawberries and cream from her herd of Jersey cows.
My mum made goose egg cake (she kept geese).
I once made a cake with an ostrich egg...now that was fun!

Up there with "life coaches".

I was born in the 80s and growing up there was a load of cake. Where I came from (Hull) we had loads of bakeries, Skeltons, Cooplands, Fletchers that had loads of cakes. I'd get an egg and salad cream sandwich, a cheese egg and a cake every Wednesday for lunch.

No nice independent bakeries near me, there’s one about a half an hour drive away that make incredible bread, pastries and cakes so sometimes I’ll head over there at the weekend for a cheese toastie and stock up on bread and treats for the dc.
Probably a good thing it’s not closer tbh 😂

I'm an excellent baker so resent buying cake when I can make it for pennies. I often cook 2 cakes at a weekend - one for home (which will go in lunchboxes or for dessert, or for sharing with visitors) and one for work. I've started a bit of a resurgence of baking at work and shared a lot of recipes which others now use - before anyone complains we might have 3-4 cakes at work across 150 people. Most of my recipes are quite traditional and simple - I'm not a fan of overly sweet and sickly cakes, or anything that takes too long to make.

We like Christmas cake, too, but it has to be home-made because shop ones are too sugary nowadays. They last (quite!) a long time if we show self-restraint, so we make two and have one at Easter. Just us, though. Not visitors.

I do!

How can an ostrich egg be a life coach please?

Mind you after the news from over the pond, anything goes.

Artisan bakers and the £4.50 loaf all around me in Mcr. £3 or more croissants. Gail's is opening as well. Was in Altrincham recently and there were 3 bakers near each other. Lovingly Artisan, Most, Gail's. Plus others like Greggs or inside Sainsbury's

Those heavily ladened brownies and ridiculous chocolate caramel type cheesecakes with can just do one.

We've had about 3 shops open in my small market town in the last month!

Like big elaborate highly decorated type cake I'm thinking it's the latest money laundering scam!

Did you miss the cupcake obsession 15+ years ago? They were bloody everywhere.

Things go in cycles . Cakes are not new.

In times of financial hardship it’s well documented that small treats like chocolate and cakes have a popularity spike when more expensive items drop because of affordability.

I've just made a ginger cake with sultanas in! It's also got chopped stem ginger, chopped nuts and mixed peel in, and it's topped with chopped pecans and flaked almonds, then brushed with lemon syrup when it comes out of the oven to glaze the nuts and make them stick. I have two people in the house who need to gain weight, so I do bake cakes to last throughout the week.

Cake is like any other food - it has its place and is more appropriate for some diets/people than others. It's not evil food, it doesn't reach out of the tin and infect you with fatness and there's really no need for all the conniption fits about its continued presence in society.

Absolutely this
All my Auntie's and let's face it I had many as they were real Auntie's or Mums friends, had a cake tin and there was always one or two types of cake on offer.
Granny had cake, tray bake and tiffin

That was/a normal day.
A celebration they went wild 😜

There is a lovely cafe near me and I had lemon and lavender polenta cake yesterday.
Was lovely

Maybe things that were a treat are now mainstream? Maybe that's what I was thinking.
Cake is a relatively cheap treat for sure. There is always loads at Food share and Food bank.

I think it's more that most baking was at home
Now it's the reverse
There was always cake!
The difference is people were more active and burnt it off

Because it answers the ultimate question of which came first, the egg or the life coach. Then one sits and cogitates the question whilst meditating upon the egg...I mean have you seen the size of those beggars? Makes me wince thinking to have to push that out!

Pushing out the egg not the life coach.

OP I think you just weren’t paying cakes enough attention as a child.

no, there weren’t hundreds of coffee shops, but what you appear to have forgotten about Teashops. Tea was always served with something sweet, usually scones but cakes were also available.

(I’m now debating making scones, it’s too late to be making scones at 9pm isn’t it? Mainly because then I’d have to eat them all.)