AIBU to think it costs money to get into baking

[mailfuckoff]

So over the last year I have started baking more and it takes money to do so. Different sized bowls and spring cake tins/ load tins and tray bake tins, lots of ingredients that you don't use before they go off.
I wanted to make a spiced apple cake. I had to buy a lemon and mixed spice. I used Brown sugar instead of demarera (sp?) And baking powder I already had. It didn't rise and looks a bit pants. Do I need to buy all fresh ingredients every time? How do I stop wasting my time and money? I have a cake tins and neither was the exact size needed!

I only ever use 2 cake tins, they're the same size too so I can do layer cakes. In fairness though despite my attempts I am shit at baking

BBC good food has excellent cakes

It is expensive to get into baking if your making birthday cakes and the like. I've got loads of tins / cutters / tools / molds etc but I've slowly built the collection up from the initial round cutters, 8" round tin, loaf tin and baking tray.

The biggest mistake I made at the beginning was not creaming the butter and sugar together for long enough, it needs mixing until the colour goes very pale not just mixing until the sugar is mixed in like I used to. This also helps give the cake volume.

Make sure its cooked enough . by p enough . BFF enough . BFF so sad enough . BFF

It sounds a minefield of possible problems but you quickly learn how to avoid the main pitfalls.

Ignore the second to last paragraph there, I don't know where that came from

I know what you mean about tins and ingredients, but I think the thing to do is to have a couple of the most commonly used tins and at first, just look for recipes that suit those tins (or could be adapted to them) rather than picking recipes and buying tins to accommodate them. For ages I basically owned one round 8" cake tin, one loaf tin and a pie tin and I only really made things I could fit into them because I couldn't afford to buy more tins. I still managed to make lots and lots of different things though, so it can be done. And things like meringues, cookies, biscuits, rock cakes etc can just be put on any old baking tray if you line it.

Regarding ingredients that go off, most dry ingredients don't really go off and I wouldn't worry about best before dates. Once you've bought them, they're there in your cupboard and you can use them for loads of other things, so in that sense it gets cheaper as you go along if you see what I mean. Dried yeast definitely has a shelf life (as I discovered upon taking a loaf out of my the little breadmaker my MIL bought me and realising it was about half the height it should have been...) but things like spices/flavouring, nuts, dried fruit etc keep for yonks really. Having said that I did recently chuck out some ground nutmeg that said best before Oct 2007 on it...

A little But but Not really. You can pick stuff up cheaply from B+M / poundworld / home bargains.
Most of the time I just used granulated sugar rather than the fancy stuff, and you can get other ingredients in Lidl or from Asda "basics".

I bake quite a lot and don't really stick to the exact sugar if I haven't got it. More often than not caster sugar works fine for most recipes. Stick to baking things like sponges and brownies, cupcakes that are fairly easy to make. You usually only need flour, butter, eggs and sugar. Those things don't really go off (eggs 4 weeks) and just experimented with different flavourings. (Banana bread,lemon drizzle, jam&coconut etc).
You really only need 1 springform tin, one square tin, 1 cupcake tin and 1 loaf tin. Some large plastic Tupperware containers for storage, greaseproof paper or tin liners, mixing bowl, whisk, sieve, spatula. Oh and some kitchen scales.
I picked most of my equipment up from cheap shops.

I think if you make a lot of different random recipes then it will be expensive because of all the different ingredients. Its the same with home cooking. If you try to do Japanese, Indian and Italian in the same week when you've done none of them before your bill will be enormous.

I would work on perfecting a small number of recipes that don't require lots of ingredients and then branch out from there when you're more confident.

The vast majority of recipes in any book can only be used for special occasions due to ridiculous cost of them.

It doesn't have to be expensive at all, but don't try to go with too much variety so you end up with loads of different spices that you don't use much of. It can be expensive if you let it be and go mad in Lakeland or naice cookshops, but if you keep it simple and buy what you can in cheap shops, it can be much cheaper.

A lemon costs what, 20-30 pence? Or you could just use a bottle of lemon juice and not bother with the grated zest if it's not the main flavour of the cake - I find most of it sticks in the grater anyway.

Buy own brand spices or refill packs, much cheaper than Schwartz and will be fine for a couple of years at least. Value flour and granulated sugar is fine and you'll get a big bag of both for less than a pound. Baking ingredients in Aldi and Lidl are cheap.

I get a lot of stuff from the pound shops too. I use premade liners because I'm lazy and CBA cutting baking parchment and only bake in the two tins that fit the liners. You can scale recipes or adjust cooking times if you don't have the right tin.

And if you find you have loads of bits of dried fruit, nuts, syrups etc leftover, get a pack of value digestives and some cheap value dark chocolate and make rocky road.

I also don't worry about use by dates and some of my baking ingredients are years old and still totally fine. But I do have to have a clear out of the spice drawer as some came from our old house and we've lived here 11 years .

If I'm just doing a cake for home, rather than a big one to share at work etc, I just use a loaf tin, my trusty poundland liner (a pound, obviously, for a pack of 8-10) and a 2 egg sponge recipe, with the requisite flavourings if appropriate.

If you have a Sainsbury's nearby, keep an eye out for their sales. Some of my best baking tins are from their posh range, bought at 75% off.

If you have a food processor, you can make ground almonds from normal almonds, and turn granulated sugar, which is the cheapest kind, into caster sugar or icing sugar. So can get away with buying less stuff.

This is a great and very seasonal cake recipe for your ground almonds:

www.puddinglaneblog.co.uk/2014/04/blackberry-yogurt-cake.html

I also make it as a cherry & almond cake - leave out the blackberries and lemon juice, replace with glace cherries and almond extract, and don't ice.

Baking ingredients; go to Aldi. Much cheaper. For instance I needed spelt flower. £4 a bag in Waitrose, £1.50 in Aldi.

I think it's expensive if you don't bake regularly, esp given how cheap cakes and cookies are to buy

But most shop bought stuff is disgusting compared with home made.

I don't refresh baking ingredients that often but if I think the baking powder is a bit old I'll put in extra. I sometimes go out of my way to get exact ingredients (ordering angelica online) but other times just substitute -depends on what it's for I suppose.

When I was a student we tried making a Christmas cake but didn't have an electric mixer so spent ages beating by hand -passing it around us all takingit in turns. Didn't have a cake tin but had a deeper edged oven dish and used that. It turned out well. (Got one of my parents old cheffettes at Christmas -they got 3 as wedding presents!

My friend makes a lovely gluten free lemon drizzle cake with ground almonds and mashed potato, sounds bizarre but tastes great! I think it's on the BBC good food website - so if you have any gluten free friends or family you could use up your almonds and also win brownie points for baking them something they can eat!!

Yes to the Sainsbury's offers, you can get some right bargains. Wilko's has some perfectly fine baking equipment too.

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/5870/glutenfree-lemon-drizzle-cake

I bake most weeks ( bread, cheese & broccoli muffins, flapjacks, cakes etc) so I don't find my ingredients go off and we've got chickens for eggs so all I need to buy is any fresh stuff like butter when I bake.

I have a few circle tins in different sizes, a loaf tin and silicone cupcakes cakes. I just use the tins I have regardless of the size the recipe says is needed.

I think baking is only expensive if it's something you don't do very often once you've brought the ingredients.

If I make cupcakes I use this recipe www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/340648/Basic-cupcake-recipe and I add different flavour extract vanilla/almond etc and then decorate with melted chocolate and fudge pieces or butter cream.

This chocolate and Guinness cake is to die for 😋www.nigella.com/recipes/chocolate-guinness-cake

Use your ground almonds for Bakewell tart? www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/marys_bakewell_tart_12584

If it's the hairy bikers spiced cake you have tried to make? You have to be careful not to over mix it or the result of the bake isn't what it should be

I make cakes as a side business, and get most of my ingredients from Aldi...always get rave reviews. I make my own vanilla extract which saves a fortune too.

I bake occasionally, and recently got a "bake snake" - a kind of silicone mould jigsaw that you can make into different shapes. It stores flat (I keep it in the mixer bowl, so no extra space used up. Got it on Amazon.

It means I don't need loads of different sized tins etc. It's good if you're just baking a regular cake from time to time.

Sugar keeps for ages, I usually have about 8 kinds in the cupboard.

I always have lemons in the fruit bowl too, just for general cooking tbh. Ditto spices tho I agree they don't keep for ever (a fair while tho!).

I agree the main expense is tins, but if you buy good ones they last well; I have had my 20cm sandwich tins for at least 15 years.

A big china bowl (Mason Cash style tho sadly no longer made in UK) is only about £10 and also lasts for ages. Then you just need a few smaller glass bowls for separating eggs etc.

I do have a springform tin, again got it ages ago but I don't find I use it that much. My most used item is a loose bottomed Silverline (? have I got the brand right) traybake tin which is great for brownies etc. Again, buy it once, use it for years.

Sugar doesn't go off. It is a preservative. They've even stopped putting dates on sugars. The right sugar is important though.

how cheap cakes and cookies are to buy
Look at the ingredients. A cake make from sugar, butter, flour and eggs is much better.
Here are the ingredients for Mr Kipling lemon slices : Sugar, Wheat Flour (with added Calcium, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Vegetable Oils (Rapeseed, Palm), Glucose Syrup, Humectant (Vegetable Glycerine), Dextrose, Hydrated Lemon Peel (Lemon Peel, Water, Preservatives (Potassium Metabisulphite (Sulphites), Sodium Metabisulphite (Sulphites))), Dried Egg White, Whey Powder (Milk), Maize Starch, Concentrated Lemon Juice (contains Preservative (Sodium Metabisulphite (Sulphites))), Raising Agents (Disodium Diphosphate, Sodium Bicarbonate), Vegetable Fats (Palm, Shea in varying proportions), Tapioca Starch, Emulsifiers (Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids, Polyglycerol Esters of Fatty Acids, Soya Lecithin, Sorbitan Monostearate, Polysorbate 60), Flavourings (contain Milk), Salt, Stabiliser (Xanthan Gum), Preservative (Potassium Sorbate), Milk Protein, Gelling Agent (Sodium Alginate), Acid (Citric Acid), Colours (Titanium Dioxide, Lutein)

Lemon drizzle cake: butter, eggs, flour, sugar, lemon.

Oh! And make your own flavoured sugar! Pop a vanilla pod in a screw top jar or mason jar and cover with caster sugar (or buy granulated and whizz it a food processor if you have one) and a couple of cinnamon sticks in light brown sugar as well.

Lasts for ages and is lovely on top of cakes as they bake or in recipes!