When I was growing up we didn’t have a lot of the same opportunities that my family has. Still that doesn’t mean that things weren’t special.

One thing that made the birthdays a real blast was the cake. Real homemade cake. It wasn’t from a box and it wasn’t purchased at the local DQ. It was a real delicious cake.

The funny thing is, cakes are about the easiest thing to bake. The batter is easy to make and it doesn’t take time to rise like bread. So why pick up a box of Betty Crocker? Because all of the ingredients are there?

Out of curiosity I once went and priced all of the ingredients. And it is true that if you only buy the amount that you need you will spend more on the mix. But Betty doesn’t buy what she needs for one cake and neither do we.

When you look at what goes into the cake mix you will see that you have about eighty percent of the ingredients already in your kitchen, these are items that you already use in your recipes already.

That means that all you need to do is pick up the other items that will be used to finish the cake off.

Give it a try. Surprise your family with a homemade cake this week for desert. Here are a couple of cake recipes to get you started.