We had cake sales at both schools today. I did my usual and baked a massive batch of basic sponge cakes and then put some garish halloween themed icing on top, nothing massively complicated but just fun pumpkin shapes, strips of white icing to make mummies etc. It took me a little while doing the icing but I quite enjoy it and the kids LOVED them.
At said cake sale I find the usual selection of similar to mine, a fair few chocolate crispie cakes with halloween sweeties on etc but also some (to my mind) weirdly complicated cakes eg medjool date brownies. One of the mums told me she'd tried out a new recipe which involved cream cheese icing and realised it couldn't be left out so had had to bring them down at the last minute. Another one had made salted caramel brownies. They are bloody lovely but they cost an absolute fortune to make (I know because she gave me the recipe a while back) and are very labour intensive as you have to make the salted caramel separately first. When I said to her, "They're lovely but they're way too good for a cake sale, I'd only make them as a treat", she replied "They're the only thing I know how to cook".
How can this possibly be true? And why do people do such expensive/complicated recipes for cakes which are going to be eaten by kids? I have tried many cake recipes in my time and the vast majority (salted caramel brownies are an exception) are a lot of effort for a cake which is pretty blah. I tend to just use a basic sponge recipe and tweak it. I made cakes for DH's work, and just to make it a bit more interesting and less kiddy, I added cinnamon and mixed spice to my basic sponge. He had people asking for the recipe.... I was like, it's just a normal sponge cake with some spices thrown in. I bet if I googled cinnamon cake I'd find some super complicated recipe involving expensive ingredients which probably wouldn't taste any better than mine.
Seriously, I really don't get why people bother with cake recipes most of the time. Just use eggs, flour, butter, sugar and whisk it all up. It takes about 10 minutes and makes delicious cakes. And primary school children only care about the icing anyway.