Thursday, October 30, 2008

A Very Pricey Chocolate Cake


Image by JessicaFM

Every Tuesday, my husband and I have date night. This Tuesday, we decided to do something a little different and bake something together. We flipped through my cookbook and settled on a really delicious and unhealthy Chocolate Cake. It was complex, and would take about two hours to make. We didn't have most of the ingredients, so we toddled off to the store and bought:

Organic Dark Chocolate (Used 10.5 of 12oz) - $3.99
Organic Milk Chocolate (Used 1.5 of 12oz) - $3.99
Organic Eggs (Used 8 of 12) - $3.99
Organic Vanilla Extract (Used 1 Tbsp of 15Tbsp) - $8.99
Organic Dark Brown Sugar (Used 4oz of 32oz) - $3.99
Organic Granulated Sugar (Used 4oz of 32oz) - $5.99
Unsalted Butter (Used 1.5 Sticks of 4 Sticks) - $2.69

Plus 8% Tax

Total Spent - $36.36

We picked up a few other things that we "needed", which brought our total to a whopping $69.31.

To me, thats a very expensive chocolate cake. I worked out that we ended up using $10.23 worth of ingredients, the rest will be used in other things. Thats not a bad price per serving for a high end cake, but it's the other items we bought while at the store that caused problems.

Where we went wrong

Impulse buying is what did it. I picked up some Vital Wheat Gluten which will get used at some point, I'm sure but certain wasn't necessary that day. We also bought a smoothie for my husband and two energy bars for me which we didn't need. Those came to more than $5. We also bought food for a small dinner we had last night, one of the items being a $6.50 block of cheese. If we had been at Publix instead of Whole Foods, we probably would have paid about $3 for the cheese.

Stick to your list

I went in with a list and we didn't stick to it, which usually happens when my husband and I go to a grocery store together. We are both easily distracted and tend to put a lot more than we should in the cart. Next week begins the start of a new budget for us, and hopefully having a strict budget will enable us to lower our impulse buying. I'm a bit concerned, though. I think we'll have to lay off the chocolate cake for a while.

By the way, it was quite delicious.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think I learn that lesson every time I go to the grocery store! Your list of ingredients looks fantastic. I bet that was a good cake. You should post the recipe!