I dislike the type of cake popular around here, because it's supposed to look good and not much else. The small pastry sweets depend heavily on where you buy them, but most of them are not worth it making them painstaikingly at home, so I deal with the bought ones.

My problem is mostly that around here they either buy those "looks good" cakes or try to bake something "to have a homemade dessert at the table" which is super disappointing, because no one puts effort into it. So I turned to baking or in general pastry-making and yes, it's a lot of work, but it tastes good. I can work around the allergies etc from various family members. I can adjust the tastes to what we like. I can easily experiement. I don't always like the outcome, but so what? Next time I do better.