A lot of people like the idea of baking a cake for their loved one on their birthday. However, in most cases, it is far better to get a baker at a local bakery to create this type of cake, rather than undertaking the baking and decorating work yourself. Continue reading to find out why.

It could be the more economical of the two options  

If you make a small, plain cake at home, which features very few decorative touches and which is comprised of the cheapest available butter, sugar, flour and eggs, then it might be less costly than purchasing the equivalent from a bakery. However, it is highly unlikely that you will be happy to give your loved one this type of plain, simple and poorly flavoured cake on their birthday. The reality is that if you're going to go to the trouble of giving them a birthday cake, you probably want it to look spectacular and taste extremely good.

If this is the case for you, then ordering it from a local bakery might turn out to be a more economical alternative to making it yourself. The reasons for this are as follows. Buying high-quality ingredients for the cake itself, along with the plethora of decorating tools (such as a palette knife, piping bags, a fondant smoother and shape cutters) and edible decorations for the exterior of the cake will be extremely expensive. You will also need to invest your own valuable time into making it (which could take an entire day or more, if you're inexperienced and the cake decor is highly intricate).

Because bakeries buy their high-quality cake ingredients from wholesalers at very low prices and already have a wide range of cake decorating tools at their disposal, they can afford to produce a fabulous-looking, delicious creation for you, without having to charge you a small fortune for it (which is what your own attempt to make a cake like this would probably cost you).

You can add highly impressive and creative personal touches to the cake

Many home bakers who try to make birthday cakes for their loved ones do so with the aim of creating a very impressive, personalised birthday cake, that they hope will impress the recipient and let them know how much they are loved. Most of the time, however, the end results barely resemble the image they had in their mind when making it.

Unless you are adept at cake baking and decorating, the reality is that a baker, who has probably made thousands of cakes during their career, is going to do a far better job of creating a beautiful birthday cake than you could. Assigning them this task will give you the opportunity to add personal embellishments to the cake that you lack the skill to add yourself (such as, for example, an accurate replica of the recipient, made entirely from fondant) and, in doing so, will ensure that the final item is a remarkable-looking, tasty piece of food that the recipient will be blown away by when they see it.