Home baking seems expensive

[Rebelwithallthecause]

DH birthday soon and thought I’d make a cheesecake as we aren’t going out at the moment much with a new baby at home

I found a nigella recipe and added the ingredients to my shopping basket and it’s £8 worth

Ok so it’s not crazy money but I certainly can buy a decent cheesecake for less

Are cheesecake as just one of the worse offenders for this or is home baking usually expensive?

Nb - I don’t bake often at all

[Stayfreshcheesebags]

Yes it's expensive! I bake cakes as a business and when you quote people for a cake , they often don't realise the price of ingredients, butter and vanilla pods in particular at the moment !

[Elouera]

Without knowing the ingredients, I have no idea??? It does seem expensive though! You can buy cream cheese for 69P a packet!!! What else is it other than gold leaf???

[Rebelwithallthecause]

Digestives £1
Butter £1.60
Cream cheese x2 £2
Chocolate £2
Hazelnuts £2.25

Maybe I should try a different recipe

Sounds tasty though

It’s a shame I’m dairy free right now and won’t be able to eat it!

[Hihellohi]

I agree sometimes home baking can be so much more expensive than buying a cake off the shelf - also sometimes you just want a small slice and not a whole cake that you then don't want to waste. In addition, your recipe may not go as planned (which i Hope is not the case with you), atleast with a shop bought cake - for many places, consistency that you know it will be good helps.

With a cheesecake - you can lower the cost by maybe finding out where Philadelphia is on offer (it’s always £1 a tub in one of the supermarkets) /buying own brand digestives.
If you are new to baking, the initial outlay of things like vanilla extract will also add up and seem pricier.

[Finfintytint]

Yes, a basic Victoria sandwich is cheap enough but any other extras is pretty expensive.

[SenorPeabodyEsq]

I don't think you could buy a decent cheesecake that includes proper chocolate and hazelnuts for less than 8 pounds.

[PurpleDaisies]

I’d probably pay half for most of that (not nuts).
Home baking is often more expensive than buying a supermarket version. The taste is so much better.

[lilylion]

I think the idea is you don’t just use the ingredients for one thing but have flour in etc for different recipes

I hear you though, I always worry about it going wrong and going to waste.

[peterpan765]

Our favourite birthday cake recipe is very expensive due to needing 4x100g good dark chocolate and ingredients including double cream etc but it is absolutely worth every penny

[ViveLEntenteCordiale]

Yes it is expensive! DH makes a fab baked cheesecake but the ingredients add up to nearly €20 (we're in France, so it's true some are less common here and fresh cream is expensive compared to uht, which is ). We bake a lot as I'm gluten free so can't always buy nice things in the shops. Homemade baked stuff is so good compared to shop bought that I don't really mind though.

[FusionChefGeoff]

Shop cheesecakes are tiny and shit.

£8 well spent if you ask me.

[RyvitaBrevis]

You can't compete with economies of scale and industrial processes on something like this, even factoring in your labour.

Having said that, nuts and chocolate are expensive and you could do a cheaper home cheesecake if you stick to vanilla. But then I always want to add fresh fruit on top to a plain cheesecake and that's a few quid right there!

[YorkshireIndie]

Make sure you buy full fat cream cheese

I am sure he is going to love it

[BarbaraofSeville]

I always use the very cheap value 30 p dark chocolate and own brand cream cheese for baking and it's still very nice and far nicer than anything shop bought.

Lidl is probably the cheapest supermarket for nuts. Do you need all of the bag in the recipe?

90% of shop bought cake etc is inedible of you're used to home made, as only the top end stuff is comparable. A good shop cheesecake will cost at least £4 and be much smaller than the one your recipe makes.

[BertieBassettsBits]

I agree.. Some recipes take hours to make but you can certainly tell the difference to shop bought

[Waxonwaxoff0]

It is more expensive but when you buy in a good pantry stock then you're sorted. I've been baking weekly since lockdown and I've built up a good store of ingredients. I'm making cookies this weekend and the only thing I need to buy are the chocolate chips, I've got everything else.

Cheesecake is a pricey one though because of the cream cheese.

[SmileTolerantly]

The key is to use bargain (but still decent quality ingredients). For chocolate you could definitely half that cost using Lidl’s Fin Carre brand which is delicious. Likewise cream cheese and digestive biscuits. As a regular baker I always stock up on chocolate and jam at Lidl.
Butter and nuts however are intrinsically expensive no matter where you go - you can shave a bit off the cost but not much.

[MairzyDoats]

I'd source the chocolate and cream cheese from Aldi and Lidl nuts are good value. You will be able to make it for less than £8 plus it will taste so much better.

[NormaLouiseBates]

Baking is an expensive pastime, that's for sure. I've got into it in a big way since lockdown and it's not a cheap hobby but it's worth every penny in my eyes. That cheesecake doesn't actually sound too expensive to me (maybe I'm getting immune to the prices now!)…. I made one last week that cost me £13.00 in things I needed to buy and that wasn't taking into account some things I already had in like sugar, icing sugar, butter and cornflour!

[WendyHoused]

Anything that uses lots of butter, eggs, cream, chocolate etc is going to be pricey, but the results are worth it.

Baking can also be very cheap - if you’re making scones, for example.

[LockdownDowner]

You are not going to use all of that for one cake thought, you will have butter, biscuits and nuts left over. You are overpaying for ingredients too, a pack of digestives in Morrisons is 40p, Cream cheese - Morrisons is 62p, butter £1.45 That's £2.18 cheaper already!!!!

[Flynn999]

Op if your dairy free use stork marg (the one in the gold wrapper) and you can get dairy free cream cheese and chocolate from most supermarkets. It will probably be soya based.

[ProperVexed]

Whilst bought cheesecakes are normally yucky I can strongly recommend the Co-op vanilla cheesecake. I put fresh fruit on top and it is delightful.

[Xiaoxiong]

Nuts, especially hazelnuts, are really expensive - that's why they seem luxurious in a cake! I only buy nuts from Lidl now as they're so much cheaper than anywhere else (300g for 99p cheap). From the £2.25 I think you're shopping at Waitrose, in which case look at the LoveLife range which is a little cheaper per kg for nuts. Or choose a different recipe.

I know you probably feel like you could buy the same cheesecake for cheaper than £8, but I bet if you looked, that shop cheesecake for £4.50 is probably half the size of the one you'll make at home (with ingredients left over), and is plain vanilla or lemon - not chocolate hazelnut, and includes things that make it cheaper to produce on an industrial scale like palm oil and dextrose.

[Hardbackwriter]

Baking is pretty constantly more expensive than shop-bought unless you're buying very expensive shop stuff. But it is so much nicer, and also fun and satisfying. I think you have to think of it as a hobby that you get a lovely cake from, and then it doesn't seem so bad - that cheesecake is cheaper than my yoga class and you don't get a cheesecake out of that! Or the other way to make it seem cost-effective is to compare it not to the cost of a supermarket cheesecake but to one you'd have in a restaurant - they'd charge you most of that for a slice, so then your cheesecake looks like a bargain!