Do people realise how expensive baking is?

[nikkylou]

I went shopping today, I'm making cakes for work tomorrow for my last day
It got me thinking, as it always does every time I bake on request. That people who don't bake don't realise how expensive it is.
Once I make the terrible mistake of baking for my workplace, I open the floodgates...
Every charity cake sale, half of the birthdays...I bake. Don't get me wrong I don't bake for every request and I wouldn't do it if I didn't enjoy it.
But even a victoria sponge can set you back £5-6 quid for real butter, cream, eggs and nice jam.

Is there any fellow bakers that regret revealing their talent and are paying the price (literally).

Is there any bakers that have negotiated this hurdle?

Or is it just me that spends £10 on various ingredients and then forks out another £1 on the day for a slice of their own cake...

I agree.

I went through a stage of baking for the lady next door to me and her elderly mother. They didn't ask me to do it, but I tried it out and quite enjoyed it and gave it away to them - I can take or leave cake. It was my own fault really; it was nothing really fancy, but using exactly what you described above. I followed a Lurpak Lemon Drizzle recipe when Lurpak was not £2.00 a pop, but it still ended up expensive.

Then her partner died and her mother died and I somehow ended up making dinner every Sunday for about three years.

I bought things she would like to eat in my weekly shop - the mad thing is she had plenty of money and didn't need charity.

I couldn't take money in case it was though we were trying to take advantage of her; which would never have happened , but she rarely offered anyway.

Sorry I digress

Baking is expensive!!!

Yes, it is expensive.. no comparison on taste though.. far superior.

*thought

I agree.

I made my ds a birthday cake last week. Spent over £20 on ingredients.

Would have been much cheaper to buy one.

It's not a cheap hobby.

You're definitely not alone!

Only once have I agreed to bake a birthday cake for someone else's DS because I wanted to try out a technique I'd seen (one where a design runs through the cake). The rest of the time I say no but might occasionally bake something on a whim, to take and share at work.

Everyone at work knows I bake, but as and when I want to, or when there's a school event I will contribute (and then buy back my own!).

Having said that, I have baked in school a fair few times with some of the children so now get quite a lot of requests to bake with others, and then a face when I request specific ingredients. So no, I don't think folks realise at all when they see the end results of yummy cake to share after lunch time!

I bake regularly for a couple of cafes. I make a decent profit now, but only because i have learned from experience............

Yes it adds up and some people seem to think you can knock a Victoria sponge up for about 50p. Buttercream I find especially expensive. Also if you are doing someone a birthday cake all the fondant is quite expensive too.
Like anything, supermarkets sell stuff so cheaply people don’t value the cost of raw materials for homemade. Exactly the same can be said of buying fabric and sewing.
Next time a family member asks for a cake I’m giving them a list of ingredients and any special equipment (gel colours etc) and they can provide them and I’ll do the baking.

If you don’t want to spend the time and money, don’t bake.

Rude of people to ask you to bake!

It's butter that's the killer these days. I've stopped using it and have actually found that my baking is slightly better . I only now use butter where it genuinely makes the difference.

I've started getting most of my baking ingredients from home bargains and Aldi. They are so much cheaper for sugar and flour in particular. I think 1kg of (branded) caster in Home Bargains is about 55p compared with £1.10-1.60 in Tesco/Sainsbury's.

The price of butter has just sky-rocketed in recent years though.

For baking I especially buy Aldi or Lidl’s ‘perfect for cakes’ as a butter substitute, and their free range not organic eggs. But yes it is expensive.

I think the key is to get a repertoire of cakes you can bake using very basic ingredients and stock up on them cheaply at Lidl/Aldi. Lidl do very good, very cheap chocolate and nice cheap jam which makes Nigella’s chocolate orange cake for example a cheapish bake, and very cheap oats, which make good flapjacks, and cheap (but good) yoghurt for yoghurt based cakes. If you have a lot of cheap chocolate in the three colours then there’s a lot you can do with them for decoration.

By contrast, if you start by just picking a recipe you like the look of then it can all rack up very quickly and once you start to dabble in gel colours for decoration then the sky’s the limit.

Also their flour, sugar, cooking chocolate etc are really good value.

(Sorry that was a continuation of my last post about Aldi and Lidl ingredients!)

the worst is when you see your cake stupidly underpriced-
made the mistake of doing mini chocolate muffins for red nose day, all organic ingredients, FR eggs, butter etc - and because they were mini I think they sold them for 5p each or something!
it felt like they were paying people to eat them
So, after that, school cakes were always made with marg.
For colleagues or fundraising where I know a reasonable price will be charged I use decent ingredients, and it has to be said that selling tea and cake usually makes quite a bit.

But yeah, butter just does cost a lot these days so you either have to use marge or suck it up.

Yy a mixture of something like willow and butter can reduce the cost, whilst still tasting reasonably buttery.

Agree. I only bake a cake perhaps 3 times a year. Christmas cake is especially spendy.

Bloody Willow's got palm oil in it though, dammit.

There’s good money in wedding cakes, though. People go a bit bonkers......

We had a bake sale at work and I made a sponge with buttercream and jam filling. It went down a storm. Little did they know it was a cheap sponge mix with a couple of eggs, oil, and the butter and icing sugar and jam.

Personally I think any skill that historically was performed by women isn't given the respect and value its due - baking, dressmaking, embroidery, knitting, crochet etc. I see this frequently but recently saw someone online asking for a fabric item to be made, they offered to pay for their time or donate to a charity instead. Do solicitors, mechanics or plumbers get asked for their services in exchange for a donation to a charity of their chosing? I doubt it.

Definetly aldi for basics like flour, sugar and marge. I have chickens so an endless supply of eggs and I think the nice eggs compensate for a stork/butter mix. Aldi's butter is also cheaper.

It's the decorating that is expensive. People want buttercream (which you do need butter for rather than marge) on everything these days. Cream cheese works out cheaper if you get aldi soft cheese. So I use that for a filling sometimes, and then zigzag a drizzley lemon icing.

We don't particularly like buttercream anyway. A little bit is nice occasionally but not on everything.

Aldi and use marg. Tub of mascarpone for filling is 69p. Cheaper than buttercream!