What have you tried making yourself when the store bought would've been just as good if not better?

[buddhasbelly]

For me baking. Every time I think "oh yes I shall make a beautiful lemon drizzle cake, some ginger snaps" I remember all the 'incidents' .

The incidents of burned cake on top that's not set in the middle; the £ in ingredients, the time spent. And then go and buy something ready made.

Buying the butter alone for any baking makes me think christ this isnt some great money saving hack.

Yes I know it's supposed to taste better homemade. I know a lot of folk find baking a great hobby/stress relief. For me it just works out an expensive, time consuming thing.

What other things have you made yourself where you've realised you'd have been better off just getting it from the shops?

(I know my baking could rectified by going on some cookery course or other... I'm beyond help, I've made my peace with it).

Completely agree about baking! It’s always expensive, and doesn’t come out right.

Even if it does go well, I’m left with an entire cake which is far too much for just me and DH!

See also:
Pastry
Hash browns

Baking... no problem. Can bake a cake in my sleep almost.
Can't decorate them though! Or anything arty like that. DDs insist on me doing their birthday cakes though as I do exactly what they want (and I refuse to pay £££ for a talented person to decorate... that would be the whole party budget!)

I haven't stumbled into hash brown territory.

Pastry. Yes that one time I thought "this pie will taste so much better." the pie tasted the exact same. I just had more stuff to clean.

Even the most amateurish cake baking tastes better than just about anything you can buy in a supermarket.

Or equivalent quality costs £££s, eg £20 for a delivered slab of brownies that you could make with no skill or effort/time at home for around a fiver, even with butter/good chocolate etc.

Cake freezes if you don't want to eat it all in one go.

But I don't think home made pizza is worth the effort. Even with a breadmaker it takes ages and I don't like it as much as the nicer frozen ones, eg Crosta Mollica.

Oh, no, hm pizza tastes miles better than shop bought, even expensive ones. I love the fact that you don't have to have a 2 inch perimeter of dough round your HM pizza.

HM cake tastes better too, and you can have a good plain cake without a hundredweight of sickly sweet icing or half a box of chocolates on it - the decorations on shop bought cake are usually so over the top, style over substance.

@BarbaraofSeville be grateful that I will never inflict my cakes upon you.

Lasagne. There are people out there who make amazing lasagne, but I am not one of them. It's not worth the effort when shop-bought tastes as good as my attempts.

Baking soda and vinegar is no substitute for oven cleaner on the glass or the pyrolytic function. In fact, homemade cleaning products don’t cut it for me.

Homemade tomato purée, took ages, used so many home grown tomatoes reduced to nothing and was a waste of time, produce and gas, especially as we can buy it for $1.

Crumpets. Don't bother.

I like my home made cakes 🎂 I'm rubbish at decorating but a good baker. My lasagne and pies are 100x better than shop bought.

Tried to make baklava once - using shop bought filo. Just ended up a sticky mess, with burnt bits on the sides!

Pesto - homemade is much nicer than cheap pesto, but I’ve never managed to better the creamy fresh pesto you get in Italian supermarkets.

Thai curry paste - homemade came out really well in so much as it tasted indistinguishable from the readymade paste I usually buy from a Thai shop.

Pizza - my pizza was way better than any takeaway or supermarket pizza until the posh pizzerias came to town. I still think it’s far superior to the likes of dominos, but I can’t compete with proper Neapolitan, New York, Detroit pizzas, all now available on deliveroo!

Pizza hm is definitely better. It’s super easy as well. I make dough by hand and just kneed 5-10 mins. No machine. Use same for pizza day 1, and turn into naan bread day 2 with curry.

Cakes. Make loaf cakes instead. Can then slice into slices or half and freeze what’s too much.

Homemade yogurt? Wtf, I haven’t time for that. Proper 10% Greek yogurt from supermarket is perfect.

Homemade lemonade… nope

You need a pizza stone at home ( in regular oven) to get a proper crust

Houmous
Mine is never as good as shop bought.

There’s no way I’d buy an ordinary Victoria sponge - so quick and easy to make - mind you my trusty old Kenwood Chef does most of the work. I don’t often make cakes anyway, dh and I would just 🐷 them - only when expecting guests.

Ditto shortcrust pastry. I’d never bother trying to make puff pastry though - even a cook book from the early 70s said it wasn’t worth the effort when you can buy such good pp ready made.

Having said that, if there’s a really good Indian or Thai takeaway anywhere near, and making whatever it is properly would involve a lot of ingredients I don’t have, I’m happy to order in.

Completely agree about cake decoration. I'm no good at it but then I eat cake for the cake, not the icing, on the whole. I do like cream cheese frosting on carrot and similar cakes, but that's very simple to make and put on. I also like chocolate fudge icing on a chocolate cake, but again not too difficult to make, and a nice simple finish is all I aspire to.

I'm not sure I've ever made puff pastry. I know how it's done and it sounds like a big faff. I buy ready-rolled puff pastry made with butter and it's lovely. (Sadly, can't buy most ready-made puff pastry any more as they mostly contain palm oil.)

I know how to make hummus but frankly I prefer bought. The texture is usually smoother than I've ever managed, and I always seem to end up with an enormous quantity of the stuff when I've had a go at making it. I do feel bad about the plastic, though.

Hummus. Several attempts to make my own produced results which were nowhere near as good as Lidl’s, never mind the posh stuff from Waitrose, so now I buy it.

Bread sauce. Home made is okay but out of a packet is so much better.

Mashed potato, I have never looked back, no lumps, no mess.

@Caspianberg

You need a pizza stone at home ( in regular oven) to get a proper crust

We have a pizza stone and it does help, but I still wouldn’t say my hm pizza is as good as a very good restaurant or takeaway. We had been thinking about getting a pizza oven - so keen was I to crack it! - but we live in a town that is now serviced by five (!) authentic Italian pizza shops. Many more available within a short radius.

So it was time to admit defeat on that front, although I do still make my own from time to time as it’s enjoyable and a bit different from the others.

I feel the same about baking. However my DC love it so I've always done a bit with them, and happily my 9 year old now needs very little help and is far more successful than me.

I've never managed to make a half decent stock or gravy, I gave up on those a long time ago.

I don't think you can beat homemade pizza though. The bread maker does the hard work anyway. We do sometimes have shop bought ones on rushed evenings but even the more expensive ones are no match for homemade.

Not a baker here either. In fact I sometimes post the results of my baking on facebook because it always attracts a laugh and a fair amount of ridicule.

My favourite vegetable side is creamed spinach. I just buy it from M&S. Perfect.

@OdeToSadDisco

I feel the same about baking. However my DC love it so I've always done a bit with them, and happily my 9 year old now needs very little help and is far more successful than me.

I've never managed to make a half decent stock or gravy, I gave up on those a long time ago.

I don't think you can beat homemade pizza though. The bread maker does the hard work anyway. We do sometimes have shop bought ones on rushed evenings but even the more expensive ones are no match for homemade.

Oh my top tip for gravy is as follows;

• use a sieve for the lumpy bits (total game changer for me)

-add some fruit jam and a splash of soy sauce.

Much better than it sounds- but delicious!

Mayonnaise!

Just beyond me. I tried to make it the last two weeks in a row, then bought a jar of Hellman’s et voilà: lovely mayonnnaise.

French fancies. Took HOURS and a huge amount of mess and were no nicer than Mr Kipling. Won't try those again