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...

Sorry I’m no good at tagging but in response to pp who are saying they can bake cheaply for their family, I agree with this. I can bake a simple Victoria sponge or chocolate cake relatively cheaply.
The expense comes when family members or friends ask for a christening cake for eg and specify 2 tiers. That’s a lot of fondant to buy just to cover the cakes never mind the decorations. Or people request 12 cupcakes - it’s all the buttercream just to do a swirl and no one actually eats the buttercream anyway!
So yes,bog standard sponges not too bad. It’s the birthday/ baby shower/ christening cakes that people seem to think you want to give up all your time for just to do them a favour.
However as I said, no more. They are getting presented with a list of shopping and possibly we will work on the cake together. That way they will get some idea of the hours and hours that can go into a celebration cake.

I almost never bake. As I don't eat eggs at all, I get pissed off buying 6 eggs and throwing or giving away 5 of them.

But butter, eggs and jam are staples, so you don't have to count the whole cost of pack of butter, jar of jam, box of eggs, as just about everyone uses all those ingredients as a matter of course. Nice jam in Aldi is under a pound, and you will use a quarter of a jar if that.

Flour and sugar are very cheap and last until you can see weevils in the flour for ever. Value everything and/or Aldi or Lidl are absolutely fine.

Yes, home baking, even using cheap ingredients is more expensive than standard shop bought cake, but if you are used to home baking, standard shop bought cake is pretty much inedible, and there is very little sold in UK supermarkets that is a patch on a home made cake, you'd have to look at the most expensive cakes sold in M&S or Waitrose to get anything vaguely comparable and then home baking will be far cheaper.

no one except a master chocolatier can tell whether you are using Tesco Value cooking chocolate or Waitrose Super-Special Belgian chocolate

Ha. Agree with this. We have cake a lot at work and I made rocky road and I'd used up all the bits and pieces of dried fruit, nuts etc left over from making christmas cakes and mixed it up with Aldi cheap 30 p a bar chocolate and a pack of value digestives. A particularly snobby colleague commented on how nice it was and how you could tell it was good chocolate. I took great pleasure in telling her how much the chocolate was and where I bought it.

“Yes, home baking, even using cheap ingredients is more expensive than standard shop bought cake”

I honestly don’t think it is. Hang on -I’ll go and do some sums!

Shatners If I didn't know you were a man, I'd think you were probably my DSis.

She once phoned me to ask me if I wanted 5 eggs because she'd had to buy a box so she could send one to school with her DD so they could do egg painting fuck knows why they didn't ask all the DC to take in 20 pence instead and she wouldn't use the other 5.

But I maintain that eggs, and butter and jam are staples that nearly everyone has in all the time. We use at least 2 dozen eggs a week and there's only two of us. 5 eggs would be gone in a day in our house.

as just about everyone uses all those ingredients as a matter of course

Really? I know I am not alone in loathing eggs but I'll accept that one.

But when the hell did jam become a "staple"??

I was thinking, overall Bertrand. For less than the cost of ingredients of a basic victoria sponge, you could buy cake of some description from a supermarket, but it will be horrible.

We use probably about one jar of jam a year, but we've always got it in, so would never have to go out and buy a new jar for baking.

It goes in cake, on scones and the occasional slice of toast. But most people use it a lot more often than we do.

I resent the expectation that baking will be done for 101 different occasions, including frigging team meetings twice a month at work, and communal breakfasts at the start and end of every blimin term at my infuriating but necessary college, and 101 kids' things. I'm not even some special talented baker, it's expected of everyone and the mmm and ooohhh and receptive swapping appears to be compulsory. I resent the collosal time requirement more than the cost, but you're right it mounts up cost wise. As everyone bakes there's too much left over too.

I've opted out now and buy and contribute a huge pile of grapes. They always get eaten blessed relief from endless baked goods and I can live happily without receiving the eating noise making compliments.

But when the hell did jam become a staple

Have you not noticed how much jam there is in supermarkets. Always loads on hotel breakfast buffets and mentioned on 'what do you have for breakfast/snacks threads'. Most households probably buy jam, hence it's a staple.

And it appears (twice!) in the ONS list of representative goods and services used to calculate inflation, so seems to be a staple to me, even though we probably use less of it than average.

backup.ons.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2019/03/Consumer-price-inflation-basket-of-goods-and-services-2019.pdf

@Barbara I'm not a man any more. I self identify as a mammoth.

One thing I have noticed, actually, is that in the supermarkets I use, there is a lot less jam stocked than there used to be. Significantly so.

My dbro who is a very talented Baker pulled out of final round of audition for gbbo as he just couldn't afford ingredients to practise every bake.
I applied this year and didn't get past phone interview but same thought crossed my mind

I don’t ever buy cake-there are always leftovers of some sort in my house. But I could make a basic sponge with butter cream and jam for about 2 quid. Obviously that’s not costing in my time or fuel. Is that wildly more expensive than store bought?

Christmas cakes - Lidl does a bag of brandied mixed dried fruit every year in the run up to Christmas.

Bargain - it's so big that I used one bag for 2 years in a row.

Yes it is very expensive. We both bake for the school Fayre for example and can easily spend £30 in ingredients and work bake sales can be similar. I kind of see it as my donation to whatever charitable cause it’s for.

Even just simply home baking for us to eat I made a chocolate cake for us last week and when I totted up how much the ingredients were it was so much more expensive than a shop bought one. But much nicer though.

Incidentally, I bake for a pretty posh cafe, and I use soft marge for most cakes. Tastes great, reliable, easier to use and significantly cheaper

Yep, I stopped using butter a while back,actually before the price hike and my sponges improved.

Baking for work isn’t a kindness IMO when so many people are overweight and/or have food or dental problems.

A lady in work bakes and all profits go to whatever charity she is supporting. She bakes all the cakes for sale though and it is a lot. Might be more awkward if contributing a Victoria sponge to bake sale.

“We both bake for the school Fayre for example and can easily spend £30 in ingredients ”

What do you bake for that?

Yup I know how expensive and time consuming it is.

That is why I purchase a cake from waitrose for the charity cake sales!

no one except a master chocolatier can tell whether you are using Tesco Value cooking chocolate or Waitrose Super-Special Belgian chocolate

I'm no master chocolatier but cooking chocolate is nasty and can tell it a mile off. I probably couldn't tell the difference between branded and own brand chocolate though.

I definitely don’t bake as a hobby, any more than I cook dinner for the family as a hobby.

I do bake regularly: various types of flour, sugar, butter, eggs, vanilla, yeast, icing sugar, gel colours, lemons, cocoa, jam and frozen berries. are all store cupboard items in our house and replenished as and when. I’d buy Aldi value chocolate and cream cheese if I needed them and cream is a cheap product anyway.

Christmas cake is probably the most expensive thing I bake. But again brandy, treacle and spices are store cupboard and various fruits and nuts and marzipan get used up one way or another, in rocky road or granola.

I really can’t see how it costs £30 to bake for a sale unless you are supplying a huge quantity of cake.

What do you bake for that?

I often do a couple of batches of Nigella’s Christmas rocky road (not really baking I know) and the stuff for that is expensive if you use amaretti biscuits, nuts, glacé cherries. Husband (who cooks professionally so whips up large batches in the time it takes me to fart around making one cake 🤣) makes tablet, cupcakes and shortbread biscuits in the shape of Christmas trees. We make a lot as it always sells well, especially the husband’s stuff!

Ah, right, I understand! I wouldn’t do anything expensive like that Rocky Road for a bake sale. I go for profit! What % do you make on your 30 quid?

If you get good at something outside of ordinary employment it's my experience that sooner or later someone outside of family or friends will pressurise you to monetise your passion. They want to pay peanuts for your skill and from my point of view its bloody disrespectful. From theirs its just a commercial transaction, hopefully cheap as chips.

Nowadays I resist all coercion and accusations of selfishness, meanness, not being a team player, mates rates, blah blah blah. They're all water off a duck's back.