The Ten Pound Lemon Cake

Through the years there always seem to have been price thresholds which people remember. The £1 gallon of petrol or the first £1,000 a week footballer spring to mind. Newspapers would be full of how scandalous it was and every conversation would get round to the fact that things aren’t what they used to be. With so many consumer products at such a variety of prices and so many sports stars earning wages it would take the average worker hundreds of years to achieve we seem to have trouble putting things into perspective these days.

A couple of weeks ago I was waiting to be served in a local coffee shop when I happened to glance at the cakes on sale. I must admit it was a mouth-watering variety, that was until I looked at the price. Lemon drizzle cake has always been a personal favourite but at £1:25 a slice surely it was some kind of joke. A little research revealed from those in the know that if you want a reasonable slice your average lemon cake would serve eight people. Elementary maths then told me at £1:25 a slice I was looking at the £10 lemon cake. Now I know I’m approaching the age where I could say "in my day £10 was a lot of money" but even so such a costly piece of baking did seem a little ridiculous. It certainly got me thinking as another cappuccino was dispensed, I wonder how much it cost to make such a valuable commodity?

Getting the recipe was fairly easy as I figured the BBC’s Good Housekeeping Guide would be as accurate as any.

All you need is:
2 large eggs, 175g (6oz) sugar, 150g (5oz) soft butter or margarine, grated zest of 1 lemon, 175g (6oz) super-sifted self-raising flour, 125ml (4floz) milk,
pinch of sea salt. For the lemon syrup: 150g (5oz) icing sugar, 50ml (2floz) fresh lemon juice (about 1½ large lemons).

Seems simple enough. Next a price check on what the average supermarket would charge for the same ingredients. Here I chose Sainsburys not the cheapest and not the most expensive so a reasonable guide. Their website revealed the following:

10 large eggs £1:25, Sugar 1Kg 72p, 4 Lemons 48p, Super Self Raising Flour 1.5kg 46p, Milk 2L £1:25, Icing Sugar 1Kg 95p.

A grand total of £5:11p. That of course doesn’t begin to tell the story as I now had to use that Maths ‘O’ Level again to work out the cost of the quantities required by the recipe. Do that and you come up with a price of just £0.98p. Bad enough but not the final answer as you have to take into account the cost of the energy used in cooking our cake. With gas at approximately £1 a therm that would add another £0.11p or if we wanted to be a little more extravagant and use electricity at £0.10p per Kilowatt-Hour you can add a whole £0.20p to the bill.

So putting it all together I worked out that the lemon drizzle cake currently on sale for £1.25p a slice had in fact cost £1.08p to make. I assume if you buy your ingredients in bulk you can shave even further off that price.

What was the point of all that? As well as using up some hours on a rainy Saturday it does prove quite how we continue to be ripped off and appear happy to let it happen. Ironically the shop that started all this also offers a loyalty scheme where you can get points towards a free cup of coffee. At least they have had the good sense not to stretch that to their cakes for those a mortgage from the Building Society across the Square would seem more appropriate.