Just curious me across this thread.
I grew up in 70s and 80s. My Dad had a sweeth tooth and loved cake but my mum rationed him. On a Friday, before the weekend my mum baked so in the cake tin there were a choice of 3 - usually fairy cakes or a sponge, jam tarts and something else. Tea time at the weekend involved ‘sitting round’ and having bread and jam and once you’d eaten that, being allowed to ‘go up to the table’ to select one cake. All the cakes or slices were small. You were only allowed one. Left overs were put in our lunch boxes in the following week - one per day.
My mum baked as Mr Kipling was expensive apparently. We longed for shop cakes and didn’t realise how nice the home made ones were.
We would have cake out except maybe a couple of times a year as it was expensive. We didn’t go to cafes. We weren’t badly off either.
Skip forward 30 years and my kids spent their toddler years with me in coffee shops meeting friends. I tended to drink just coffee and not have cake in places like Costa. But in a nice garden centre with tasty sponges and lots of icing, I would treat myself and that would be four times the size of one of my mum’s cake portions. My little kids tended to get given fruit but lots were eating big cakes daily.
Rather dull but large pre-packaged muffins etc are available by the till in corner shops, petrol stations and in kids schools. People ‘grab’ their lunch in Greggs or Subway along with a giant cookie. I do think that daily treats and bigger ones are simply the norm that we aren’t really aware of.
Me, I absolutely love cake with loads of butter cream. Could eat those 6 layer cakes everyday. I try to limit myself to a couple of times a month. My mum would have thought me very indulgent, spendy and greedy!