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).

Right homemade lemon drizzle easy - you need scales, oven, loaf tin, grater, wooden spoon and a bowl. Put oven on 180 or 160 if your oven is quick - put shelf in middle. Rub spread all over a loaf tin 2lb size. Put bowl on scales press zero then put in 250g soft not fridge hard butter (1.50), press zero then 250g caster sugar (75p - you will have half left), then press zero add 250g self raising flour (60p and you will have loads left). Take off scale break in four eggs (1.50 2 left) and grate in zest of 3 lemons (80p). Now mix together no lumps. Put in oven 40 minutes. I personally press gently and it should spring back if cooked or stick in a metal kebab stick in middle and it comes out clean. For drizzle bit take the lemons you grated zest off, roll on work top a couple of times, cut in half and squeeze out juice and mix in 100g icing sugar (£1 loads left). While cake is still warm pour over top. Keep cake in tin and eat over the week or cut in half - freeze half and eat half.

My nemesis is bread - it is just heavy. Plus hummus - I can make it fine but it just doesn’t taste right.

HM pizza is definitely best. BUT only if you use red pesto as the base instead of buggering about making and reducing tomatoes for a sauce.

You get that dense rich tomato salty oily hit for the effort of cracking the lid off and hurling toppings over.

Dough wise I just make a batch, used to use the breadmaker but I got rid of that when we moved, and now I make a big batch and use some and freeze the rest. It just needs to defrost and you are good to go. It's even easier and less mess than the simple yogurt pizza dough if you have a mixer for the dough in the first place.

I think a lot of these are about time and equipment.
Baking - much better with a fancy oven and nice quality ingredients.
Pizza dough - homemade is lovely if you have approximately seventy billion hours to prep it and the right flour. If not, the fancy frozen dough is INFINITELY more reliable.
Buttercream - always better homemade if you use the whipper for ages on a proper big bowl mixer and scrape the sides every couple of minutes
Roast potatoes - always better homemade if you prep just the right potato in just the right way but frankly who is that consistent?

Pasta is my nemesis, based on the above I'm hoping my homemade is only so bad because I try to make it with the wrong stuff and don't have spare hours to prep.

I used to make my own roman blinds. And pastry. And mashed potato. No more.

DD made Sushi; I made gnocchi. Never again.

Paneer stands out. What I made was fine but so much faff and so much milk for such a tiny block of paneer!

Agree with PP on hummus.

@OdeToSadDisco think the easiest stock is made in the slow cooker, bung it in and leave for ages on low heat then strain. It's not worth the extra effort unless it's a special occasion but it does smell delicious. I do mine after a slow cooker roast chicken, just roast it with a load of herbs rubbed in on top of some peeled halves onions to get the crispiness and the bung all the bits you don't eat back in with the onions with some hot water and leftover carrots/celery so the only extra clean up is the sieve.

I would have completely agreed about pesto, humous, pizza and curry pastes until I bought a Thermomix. Now I reckon it all just comes down to having the right equipment.

I still can't make pastry for toffee though, no matter how many expensive gadgets I throw at it! Oh well, Jusroll it is.

Puff pastry

Anything home made food wise is better- or equal but different. Home made pizza is great, far better than a cheap supermarket one. A sourdough fresh pizza from Lidl is amazing, equal but different to my home made ones.

Shortcrust pastry is rarely worth making it when you can buy it ready to roll.
Flaky/puff pasty- buy it. Home made takes literally hours.

Clothes and knitwear- always buy. Only knit if you actually enjoy it! The materials for knitting and sewing are far more expensive, and the product very unreliable if I'm involved,

@MrsPear I'm going to try the lemon drizzle again thank you. Possibly the use of a wooden spoon as opposed to whatever one I grab may make all the difference!

Yes maybe a lot of this is down to equipment or lack of (I have a wooden spoon, possibly two, I'm just shit at baking)

Hummus. It sounds so simple to make yourself but I can never get it right. I keep trying though. I even made the tahini myself a few times but that was pointless.

And stock.

Baked beans - trying to impress the inlaws in the early days making a totally homemade Christmas breakfast. They took hours of soaking and baking and just tasted like they'd been taken out of a tin! 🤷🏻‍♀️ Not sure if that's a positive or negative 🤣

Bread. Spent absolutely ages making it. Tasted almost as nice as Tesco economy bread. Never again!

Virtually everything.

I do make my own Bolognese, chilli etc. Shop jars are far nicer.

Baking, waste of time and money. Especially bread.

I get so depressed at how you can't reproduced shop-bought taste and texture at home.

And hummus what a disaster that was

Hummus, bread, filo pastry.... Even Paul Hollywood said on gbbo its not worth it

Cannelloni. It's such a faff and I'm too cack handed. Less than £2 at Aldi and it dings in a few minutes.

@Lou1siana

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.

Have you tried making mayo using a stick blender? Game changer. I can make it in about 2 mins. Never buy Helmanns any more.

I don't find the temp of the egg makes any difference. I had to make some in a hurry once and just used an egg from the fridge. You can add mustard, garlic, etc, if you want, before you blend. Using a tall skinny container is key, I think. I also have a super whizzy stick blender, so that may make a difference.

I use a handheld electric whisk/mixer for creaming cake mix or whipping egg whites or cream. Very cheap bit of kit, from Argos or similar, and takes up little room. Only the detachable whisks need washing up. Excellent results. My mum and gran used them too, with great results.

Disagree on stock (so easy!), pizza, baking. These are so much better homemade. Just look at the list of ingredients too - often bought ones use non free range eggs and a list of ingredients that sound like a science experiment.

Hummus however I can’t get right.
And my pesto is nowhere near as good as the tubs of fresh pesto supermarkets sell. I still persist with mine but the tubs have more flavour.

I think it’s the salt that a lot of the shop bought versions have that can make them taste good (actually that could be what’s wrong with my pesto!)

@ShinySquirrel

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.

Which lasagne would you recommend?

I've tried them all and could only stomach Charlie Bigham, but I'm even going off that now.

They're all incomparable to most restaurant versions IMO.

Bean burgers. I've tried all sorts of ways but they're either too dry and crumble apart or too soggy and turn to mush.

Baking for me too. I enjoy doing it so it's a shame that the £3 cake from the supermarket tastes better.