Love them or hate them, a Birthday is what kids love and us oldies start to want to hide from, but whatever the age, a birthday can mean forking out a mammoth amount. I cannot advise you how to save on a birthday list but I can help you save a whole wad of cash on Birthday cakes!
Apparently, I am the world’s most embarrassing mum, and If I tried to bake and decorate a birthday cake this would mean me seriously stepping into the red zone of the Embarrassment Act 1975 and I fear my kids would actually disown me (which isn’t such a bad thing, if it meant I was promised an hour’s peace and quiet!)
£12.00 M&S Cake for £1.20
Anyway, I always play it safe and buy the ready made birthday cake from the Supermarkets, but for around a tenner a pop for a cake, this certainly isn’t cheap, especially if you have to cater for several birthdays. We have three children and two adults in our house, plus we cater for the 4 grandparents, so we can go through 9 Birthday Cakes a year, which wouldn’t give us much change out of £100. Now I find this an awful lot, for a cake that often only gets half used up and you then have to try to palm it of when anyone wants a cuppa or you even slot it into the Lunch boxes!
My top tip for you is to pick up a knocked down in price Birthday cake and put it in the freezer!
Find out the Bakery reduction times in your Supermarket and you can often pick a perfectly good, non-squashed cake for around £2!
Last year I saved over £80 on the 9 birthday cakes by shopping in this manner, and even though £80 may not sound a lot, For me this is 2 weeks shopping money or 2 trips to my petrol station to fill up the car!
It doesn’t matter when the Birthday is, If I see a decent cake for a fab price then I will put it straight into my freezer and leave it. The day before I need it, I just take it out of the freezer and let it defrost in the fridge, I can honestly say, we have never, ever had a problem doing this, nobody has ever noticed any difference and it tastes exactly the same.
The only difference to you is that you still have a nice bit of cash in your wallet!
£10 Frozen Birthday Cake for £2.49
This article was written by Kelly Eroglu who writes on her Reduced Grub blog!
