People often ask why birthday cakes are so expensive. The question appears regularly in comments, emails and the occasional slightly suspicious glance at a bakery display.

But the question itself is wrong.

Because birthday cakes do not have to be expensive at all.

Why Some Birthday Cakes Cost More

Birthday cakes vary in price because of three main factors: scale, skill and freshness.

• Scale: Supermarket cakes are produced in enormous batches, which dramatically reduces cost.
• Skill: Bakery cakes are decorated by hand and often designed specifically for a celebration.
• Freshness: Artisan cakes are baked to order without preservatives, while mass-produced cakes are designed to sit on shelves.

None of these approaches are inherently better or worse. They simply serve different purposes. One feeds a classroom of children for a modest price. The other becomes the centrepiece of a once-in-a-lifetime celebration.

I was reminded of this recently after passing my driving test. To celebrate this triumph of perseverance over parallel parking, I rewarded myself not with a membership to Soho House, but to another famously exclusive club.

Costco.

If you have never been, Costco is less a supermarket and more a monument to bulk buying. The aisles are vast, the olive oil arrives by the gallon, and the trolleys are roughly the size of small fishing vessels.

I told myself the membership was purely professional. Our bakery uses heroic quantities of pistachio creme in our pistachio truffle cake, and Costco stocks it in reassuringly large tubs.

In truth I simply wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

My first visit lasted three hours. I arrived at opening time and left slightly dazed, clutching quantities of Biscoff, Maltesers and Bueno large enough to sustain a small kingdom.

And then I discovered the cakes.

The Curious Excellence of Costco Cakes

Costco cakes are enormous. Properly enormous. Vast sheet cakes and cheerful round layer cakes decorated with thick swirls of buttercream.

And here is the part that tends to surprise people when it comes from a pastry chef.

They are good.

After years of attending children’s birthday parties, I have developed fairly strong views on the subject of cake. In my experience the best birthday cakes fall into three categories.

Home made cakes. Bakery cakes such as our celebration cakes. And Costco cakes.

I have very little patience for cakes that look magnificent but taste like sweetened plasterboard. Those fondant-covered monuments to disappointment that prioritise spectacle over flavour.

Good cake, thankfully, can come from many places.

The round Costco cakes cost roughly £11.45. The giant sheet cakes hover somewhere around £16. I even watched the decorators at work and was impressed enough to share my admiration on Instagram.

Which is when a rather baffling message appeared in my inbox.

The Curious Case of Cake Snobbery

The sender seemed genuinely offended that I had praised a Costco cake. As though acknowledging the existence of a perfectly decent £11 sheet cake somehow threatened the entire profession of pastry.

It struck me as a rather odd position.

Costco cakes exist to feed large groups of people cheaply and cheerfully. That seems a perfectly respectable role for a cake.

Food snobbery is rarely attractive, but cake snobbery feels especially misplaced. We are, after all, talking about flour, sugar and the small ritual of gathering around candles.

Why Bakery Cakes Cost More

Of course, a bakery cake lives in a very different world.

A Costco red velvet cake costs around £11.45. An Anges de Sucre red velvet cake costs £85.

The difference lies in how the cake is made.

A bakery cake begins early in the morning in a kitchen filled with mixing bowls and flour dust. The sponge is baked fresh for a specific order. Decorations are made by hand. Messages are piped individually.

Some cakes become elaborate cakescapes. Others evolve into intricate sugar sculptures or fully bespoke cakes designed for one particular celebration.

It is the difference between industrial production and individual craft.

The Real Difference Between Cheap and Expensive Cakes

Cheap cakes prioritise scale and affordability.

Bakery cakes prioritise freshness, craftsmanship and personalisation.

Neither approach is wrong. They simply serve different celebrations.

If one ever feels the need to justify the provenance of one’s eggs in order to enjoy a slice of birthday cake, then something has gone wrong with the party.

A cake should be an invitation to indulgence, not a lecture in organic farming.

So yes, some birthday cakes are expensive. Many are not.

The real difference lies in how they are made. And when a cake is created specifically for a celebration, particularly as a bespoke cake, the value comes from the care, creativity and skill behind it.

Because the truth is simple.

Birthday cakes are not expensive.

Some of them are simply extraordinary.