To wonder if my toddler's birthday cake really needs 46 ingredients?

[PuffPants]

I am ordering a cake for DS's birthday party from Waitrose. It's just a simple buttercream and jam sponge in the shape of a number 2. I have just looked at the ingredients listed for it and there are 46 of them. Some sound most unappealing. I'm no baker but does it really require 46 ingredients to whip up a sponge cake?

But the colours account for a huge swathe of those ingredients, having loads of ingredients per colour. DSo it's not QUITE a 'simple sponge'.

JudgeJudy - Margarine usually has a long list of ingredients - or is hydrogenated.
Hydrogenated fat is far worse than microscopic quantities of things in coloured icing, IMO.

Use butter!

Order the cake, stop worrying about it, serve it up and enjoy it. Then get some baking tins, a mixing bowl and an electric mixer and spend the next year conducting baking experiments with your toddler. Toddler will love it, and by the time he turns 3 you'll be able to make your own. Problem solved. :o

OP I think if you have a DC, it is now time to buy a cake tin.

Baking cakes is like most things, it takes a bit of practice, but well worth the effort and my children love the fact that I make rather than buy their cakes.

DH is also a bit of a cake baker and often quotes that advert which states that you don't measure taste with a spirit level. Or something. It's true.

Give it a go. Just think how proud you'll be when your DS is enjoying the cake you made.

PuffPants It does take practice (and finding the right recipes), but baking can be enormously satisfying and loads of fun to do with toddlers. Give it a go sometime :)

I thought that baking your child's birthday cake was obligatory in some sort of masochistic way. Admittedly we assembled DD's cake from tesco cakes and ready made icing this year as we were on holiday. It looked great but tasted a bit grim.

£22!!!! for that?

OMG - I am missing a trick, I often bake a cakes for friends DC's birthdays and various functions, I think the most I've ever charged was £25 for 5 different cakes, and I felt bad about that.

I really need to think seriously about doing this to make money.

Baking is easy. All you need is an ability to follow instructions and a willingness to apply elbow grease (cakes tend to be heavy because not enough effort is put into the beating part).

at obligatory cake baking...

I can bake. I love it. There is, however, no way that I would serve up home made cake for any of DD's parties. Shop bought all the way. Reliably tasty with whatever ghastly character she's into that month. Approx £12 well spent IMO. My hourly rate would push the total cost of home made to approx £60!

Firstly, there are only 39 ingredients on the linked cake, of which 6 are in the jam (which everyones alternative recipe includes as one thing) 5 are simply colouring, others are both flavourings and colourings - there are so many as the decorations are flavoured/coloured fondant icing rather than simply butter cream.

The cake itself appears to be, sugar,flour,butter,egg,skimmed milk powder, oil, baking soda, and some emulsifiers to help it mix easily in larger than kitchen sizes. Yes a little more than you'd put in a home made cake, but it's not exactly an outrageous recipe.

You should make your own cake though.

Oh and yes to the beating - do it for loads longer than you think it needs it with electric mixer (handheld IMO).

Have seriously missed a trick here.

I supply cakes for all my DNs birthdays/sleepovers etc etc

All free, also regularly get the urge to bake for no other reason other than I enjoy it and bring the results to work.

Wonder if work will let me sell my cakes for charity??

Baking is easy

I made my pfb's first birthday cake and the one we ate on the day was the 4th effort after overcooked, undercooked and leaked out the cake tin.
I was up till gone 10pm icing dc3's cake last week and was v.proud of myself. I gloated to DH that I'd saved £10 for a shop bought one and he pointed out I'd spent 3hrs baking and icing it, and he'd rather have spent the evening with me for £10 .

I have ordered birthday cakes from Waitrose on a number of occasions and they actually taste nice and I normally don't like birthday cake.

A homemade one would be best but if you haven't got the time or inclination to make one it will be fine, it's only once a year after all.

Ooo can i use this thread for a stealth boast? I made my "Glee" mad dd a cake for her b/day yesterday. Just basic victoria sponge recipe, no where near 46 ingredients.

i133.photobucket.com/albums/q53/pinkfairygirl25/SAM_1365.jpg

Blimey zelda that's bright!!

Very keen baker. Make lots and lots of cakes at home. Children are avid watchers of Great British Bake Off . . . but I do like the occasional shop-bought birthday cake. It tastes like nothing you can produce in your own kitchen (hence the 46 ingredients).

Do learn to bake though. It's really quite easy:

5oz sr flour
3oz drinking chocolate
6oz sugar
6oz marg
3 eggs
3tbsp boiling water.

Beat together and put into an 8" lined tin and bake at Gas mark 3 for 1hr -1hr 10 mins. Apologies to metric people with electric ovens.

the flash made it look shiny, I copied from one i found on t'internet. Tasted nice though

Get a life!

The decorations on the top clearly take up most of the extra ingredients and probably the cost.
Who will eat the animals? They just need to know the colour ants used. If they are eating the cake, it's just a standard iced sponge, and will be yummy.
Only now that kids are at school do I have time to bake their birthday cakes. Before I bought them just to keep myself sane
Each to their own with no beating yourself up about not being a proper mum

My friend uses that 'I don't have any cake tins' excuse and it's pants. The only reason I have the cake tins is because on occasion I have decided I want to bake a cake, and gone to the shops to buy the tin I need. That's how everyone accumulates them isn't it?

Although I have to admit, the number tins are expensive, and you won't be able to reuse it for another 10 years, and even then you'll have to go and buy the 1 because you didn't get one last year...

Blu - only just got back to this thread. Don't like the taste of butter in my cakes. Don't mind it in butter icing, but don't even really like that, either. I see that Scholes uses marg in her recipe, too. I think most cake recipes use marg and not butter.

Anyway, main thing is, both mine and Scholes' recipes are foolproof and easy!

Oh, I know many recipes use marge - this is the reason I avoid all Cake Sale stuff ay school.They are interchanageable for recipe purposes, except for taste, and admittedly, cost.

I think I'd be more worried about the fact that it's a 9 not a 2

In all seriousness, baking really is easy if you have the right equipment. I've always been a keen cook but couldn't get cakes right at all. Until I got a Kenwood mixer last year. Now I'm so hooked I'm even considering going on a sugarcraft course.

This new hobby is costing me a fortune in butter. I'm supposed to be dieting

Although I have to admit, the number tins are expensive
Most cake/baking shops I know will hire them out for a small fee.

It's also possible to cut them out or assemble numbers from a square cake - plenty or templates online too.

Cake ordered folks! Thank you helping me to see that most of those ingredients (I still get 46 by the way FredGeorge - think we're adding them up differently, but good of you to double check ) are in the iced animals - I doubt anyone will actually eat those as they'll be so sugary. The cake we had last year had a gorgeous little iced train on it which I saved for a while then chucked out when the cake was finished.

One day I will definitely get into this baking lark, probably once DS is old enough to know the difference. Till then I'll wing it with good ol' Waitrose who, by the way, do make exceedingly tasty cakes