well my kids usually want me to make it so i use cake mixes and do the wilton cake pans of their favorite character.. when i was on bedrest with dd i had to buy a cake for my middle son since i was not allowed to sit up and deocorate
it he was fine with it..

i have made them from scratch as well but i do like mixes so its just as easy to whip one of those up.

If we have cake it is usually from a box or store bought.. My DD-8 doesn't like cake that much so for her birthday I usually make a fruit pie or a cookie cake. DH prefers cheesecake.

Cake decorating is my hobby so I make the cake and icing from scratch. Sometimes if I am in a really big hurry I will make it from a mix but I don't like to do it that way and if I do I add a "magic" ingredient to make them most.

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I used to buy the cake but with cutting costs I now use a mix. I think I may venture into making it from scratch someday

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I make it from a mix. I do add my own special ingredient (mayo) to make it really moist (and you can't taste it, I swear!)
I only buy a store bought cake for ice cream cake. I have made all of the kids birthday cakes...from justa picture, to Princess castles, to a snake.

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I confess, we purchase cakes. Yes, that is cake, with an 's' at the end.

In my defense, I grew up on store-bought birthday cakes because way back when a homemade cake was common. Moms would bake all the time so it wasn't special to have a homemade, scratch cake at home. What was really special was to have your parents spend extra money on a store-bought cake. Now it is reversed. Hardly anyone bakes from scratch and store-bought is common.

But DD's birthdays are usually complicated so we tend to buy a cake. Some years we've been travelling so I didn't have a place to bake a cake. Sometimes we end up celebrating over the course of several days with different groups of family and friends so we buy more than one small cake and cut into a new cake at every event.

I look forward to the day I can make one special cake from scratch.

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I always do my dd and my nieces cakes, they don't always look perfect but that never stops anyone from eating them It saves so much over buying them!!

I always make hubby a from scratch German Chocolate cake (my dear MIL started that one at a very young age and he still hasn't outgrown it) and my mom always makes me a angel food cake (from a box but that's the way I like it) with strawberrys every year. My kids bdays are 4 days apart so I do 1 chocolate, 1 white cake and decorate them every year. Several years ago I took a little cake deco class at the local vo-tech and I love doing them. Sometimes they are more work than they are appreciated, but I really get a kick out of doing them.