After years of parental conditioning, that cake is only for special occasions, when was the first time you realised that you could buy a whole cake anytime you wanted?

The minute I stepped out of a controlled-by-someone-else environment.

When I had my own disposable income. Meaning that I had a paper route when I was a kid, and I kept my earnings, and i could spend them on baseball cards, soda, cookies, etc.

I don’t like ice cream and I never have been big into alcohol, so that was never much of a target.

What blew my mind after I went to college is I could go whereever I wanted for as long as I wanted. So I did.

A friend told my brother that adulthood is when you open the refrigerator and everything in it is something you bought and like!

I still have issues splurging with stuff.

@Caravanfan My need to control my weight is a big factor in controlling my splurges. And I’m not a big spender on material things generally.

I moved out at 17 years old, so I realized pretty early in life I could buy what I wanted. Of course at that age, I was more interested in Taco Bell’s value menu and liquor, than cake.

I don’t recall, but maybe it was when I saw restaurants had cakes in the dessert menu.

When I lived on my own for the first time.
My money, my fridge.
My taste.

I wasn’t particularly conditioned that way by my parents… AND I had a friend when I was a kid who DID have parents that had a rule like “no candy except on Candy Day” and I saw and understood from a young age how screwed up that made this kid about candy. He’d steal and hoard sweets in secret places. So I got that both that it was possible to do this, and that it was not actually that exciting, when I was quite young.

Cake? I just realized it, ate age 66. It would never occur to me to buy a whole cake for myself, I don’t like it that much.

Booze, on the other hand.when I was 17 and realized the Adeline Market would sell booze to anyone that could get the change on the counter. Oh happy day for a 17 yr old who was working and always had ash.

Yeah. I don’t think I’ve ever bought a cake outside of birthday parties.

The only cake that felt that way to me was sheet or simple layered round cake for birthdays that had writing on them and roses made from icing which are usually sold in supermarkets. Oddly, my mom did not buy those cakes for my birthday, and I would rarely think to buy one just to have in the house even though I like a simple cake. I do buy slices of those cakes sometimes from the supermarket.

Not buying a whole cake had more to do with health than some sort of rule about when you can eat it. My husband and I buy my favorite cake sometimes and freeze half for later. It has chocolate cake, sweet white coconut between the layers, and chocolate icing. Buying the whole cake is much cheaper than buying a slice at a time. The biggest obstacle is it is just my husband and I in the house and having all that cake is too tempting. If I had kids or other adults living with us I would buy a cake more often.

Cake is one of my favorite desserts. I know people who eat ice cream every night, why not cake? Why would it be any different if that is your preferred sweet?

I think the cake was a metaphor.

I never thought about cake, exactly. Cake donuts were another story entirely!!

I have 2 older sisters who loved baking. There was never a drought for sweets.
Of course, now my brother and I have diabetes.

When I had my own disposable income. I would save my money If I wanted “cake”. Cake was something different when I was 7 than 17, 27, 37
I also was lucky enough to have been raised in a house that wasn’t controlling. Certainly we were being conditioning for life, but nothing more.

I guess I was too literal in my answer above.

Generally speaking I was not raised like that. In fact, I see friends of mine obsessed with eating or doing something special on birthdays or holidays and the pressure is annoying or stressful to me. It’s so much easier to do what you want when you want and not when businesses are gouging people or there are lots of crowds.

Like the truth about Santa, I figured it out long ago but I still choose to only eat my favorite frosted cake on a special occasion and I still choose to “believe” in the concept of Santa.

Why must logic destroy all the magic.

Oh, and my birthday cake of choice is my grandmother’s chocolate cake with an espresso mocha frosting.

In honour of this question, I made a lemon cake. It’s a small cake, but it will be eaten in its entirety. And the icing will be licked.

I first realised I can buy whatever (my) money can buy when I got my own puppy as a young adult. That’s the ultimate freedom to my childhood self, to want a puppy and just go get it. It’s a good thing I didn’t have that freedom as a kid, however, because I was planning to have not just a dog, but two individuals of absolutely every species on Earth. I was going to keep them all in a fully-automated zoo, with kibble delivery for the lions via chutes (for safety).

Unlike @Dutchess_III, I have yet to understand that I can go wherever I want.

In honor of this question, I went skinny dipping in my pool this morning. Oh wait, I do that every morning.
It’s good to be king of my castle

^^ Pics or it never happened! :-)

@janbb xxxxxx

@Forever_Free you just won the internet today. :-D

@Forever_Free Now you know our dirty secret! Starting the day with a laugh is a good thing.