19 Days Till Christmas: Pat a Cake, Pat a Cake, Baker's Man, Bake me a cake as cheap as you can. Baker: "You can just buy them cheaply at the supermarket you know?"

Which is a shame as I really enjoy baking.

On Sunday my group of friends and I are meeting at one of our houses to see each other for Christmas and give the kiddies their pressies and I said I'd bring a cake.

I was going to make an apple and almond cake. It's so easy. Just make a purée of the apples, let that cool. Mix all the other ingredients together, add the purée and put in a tin, scatter flaked almonds on top and bake. So easy and really tasty. (If you'd like to make its called 'Gluten-Free Apple and Almond Cake' on the BBC Food website.)

I was in Tesco with my calculator (Aldi not selling all baking ingredients) added one bag of ground almonds - 1.99 on the calculator, another bag of ground almonds - another 1.99, and a bag of flaked almonds - 99p. Then it hit me - WOW I've just spent almost a fiver and I haven't even brought the eggs yet (and it requires 8 so that's £2 more for eggs) so 7 pounds on a cake!!! I must be able to get cheaper cake so walked around to the cake aisle and saw Christmas Chocolate Yule logs and £1.20 each.

So I brought two, naturally. My budget was a tenner and I spent £8 on the extras I needed and even got to buy bananas and nice Blackberry jam with the money saved buy not making a cake.

What I can't get over is that you'd think it would be cheaper to make a cake! What a tipsy turvy world we live in.

Love, Mrs Thrift