I'm sure not everyone only had cake a few times a year. In my father's family, there were 7 children, so 7 children's birthdays, and 2 adult birthdays. That number could certainly be increased if you visited cousins or aunts and uncles on their birthdays. So we could easily be talking about 2 dozen or more cakes yearly if your extended family lived nearby enough to visit for birthdays.

But having said that, turns out that particular grandmother (Dad's mom) made one cake each week. However, with a family of 9, the cake only lasted about 2 days (at most), so it still wasn't a daily treat.

My mother on the other hand complained that dad's mom only made one cake a week, and when it was gone, it was gone until the next week. She thought that was just awful, because the "greedy" older kids in the family always got more cake than the younger ones.

So my mom had a cake in the house all the time. I don't know when she started making cakes from boxed mixes (or if she'd always used boxed mixes), but it was quick and easy enough for her that as soon as one was gone, she made another one the next day.

The only thing was that she hated "grease" and the frosting was about half butter or shortening, so she'd make a 9X13 sheet pan cake, and spread the thinnest possible layer of frosting over it. That cake was cut into 12 pieces (or sometimes 15 pieces). So it could have been worse - I've seen a lot of people cut a 2-4 layer cake with frosting between the layers and a thick layer of frosting on the outside into 8 pieces.