What is the point of baking?

[waitingforautumn]

OK to cover myself - I'm actually not a bad baker (promise! :)) my issue is that baking - while highly therapeutic, is not necessarily cheap, and it leaves you with a commitment to eating the baked good all week!! (doesn't sound like a bad thing does it...). Cakes in particular are quite hard to scale down.

AIBU to just prefer a supermarket / cafe slice of cake etc to spare myself the faff and expense of baking, and the smaller/individual portion sizes?! I know they are rarely as good as the home baked kind but some of them can be very decent. I get FOMO for not baking when a lot of friends and family do it - they make it look so fun and rewarding! Yet when I bake I totally lose interest in the final product after I've had one portion.

I spent a large chunk of last weekend baking a half size chocolate cake (it could still feed 10 tbh!), and by the end I just wish I'd gone to M&S lol. Especially now, 4 days later, when the fam are all bored of it and the remainder of this cake is just sitting there uneaten, getting drier and drier every day... yet we all feel too guilty to throw it away. It wasn't a very nice recipe actually. Not chocolatey enough and was on the dry side to begin with. But thats just part of the risk of trying a new recipe I suppose.

Or am I just missing the point of baking???? Is it supposed to be something people only do when feeding a crowd? How often do you bake and why do you do it? Does it all get eaten?? If you crave something in particular are you more likely to bake it or go out and buy it?

I bought 6 inch "rainbow Cake" tins. 1 egg with of mix now does each layer and a 2-layer cake lasts 2 days. DS has not yet been allowed to make the desired 5-layer cake.

With my previous 10 inch tins each sandwich cake needed about 6 eggs, lasted forever and went stale.

One egg also makes 6 fairy cakes - again gone long before they go stale.

@MinesAPintOfTea

I bought 6 inch "rainbow Cake" tins. 1 egg with of mix now does each layer and a 2-layer cake lasts 2 days. DS has not yet been allowed to make the desired 5-layer cake.

With my previous 10 inch tins each sandwich cake needed about 6 eggs, lasted forever and went stale.

One egg also makes 6 fairy cakes - again gone long before they go stale.

To be fair, 7 or 8" is more standard than 10". That's party cake size.

I enjoy baking. I find it very therapeutic and love the smell of cake. However I have 3 teenage boys in the house who will eat anything and are not picky about the baked goods on offer. Otherwise I’d eat all the cake & be much larger than I am now ( which is larger than I’d like to be). Pretty sure I won’t bake quite so much when they all leave home!

To be fair, 7 or 8" is more standard than 10". That's party cake size.

To convert a 6 inch cake to a 10 inch cake you'd need to increase the batter by 2.78 so a 10 inch is almost x3 the size/no. of servings. Even a 7 inch tin would need 2x the batter for a 10 inch.

www.cookipedia.co.uk/recipes_wiki/Cake_tin_conversion_charts

I know there have been a hundred posts saying the same thing, but you won't believe how well cake freezes. Even tarts with shortcrust pastry defrost to be as crisp and flaky as when it came out of the oven. Absolute game changer.

I'm also another that thinks homemade cake is tons better than shop bought. There's no comparison for me - unless it's a 'home made' cafe style. If I eat a cake I enjoy in a coffee shop, I seek out a recipe online to make my own version. I've actually ruined some of my go-to Costa and Pret cakes by making my own version that I now prefer.

I know what you mean about effort, but I'm a seriously lazy baker and I mainly rely on a variety of melt, mix and throw in the oven recipes that wow. And in my opinion, way better than a shop bought cake.

@PickAChew I know the previous tin size was excessive. I'm just highlighting that there are solutions out there to the problem of having too much homemade cake.

I love baking, it doesn't take me long to make things, I usually have the ingredients in the cupboard, and there's a queue waiting to eat the stuff before it's even cool 😂 I made a lemon drizzle tray bake last night and DD and DH were waiting for it while I put the crunchy stuff on the top 😂

[quote EmbarrassingAdmissions]To be fair, 7 or 8" is more standard than 10". That's party cake size.

To convert a 6 inch cake to a 10 inch cake you'd need to increase the batter by 2.78 so a 10 inch is almost x3 the size/no. of servings. Even a 7 inch tin would need 2x the batter for a 10 inch.

www.cookipedia.co.uk/recipes_wiki/Cake_tin_conversion_charts[/quote]
You sound like a reddit bot 🤣

I've just used the recipe in the link below to make brownies.

I scaled it down to 2/3 size and rounded down to 200 g for the chocolate, so I could just use 2 whole bars. They were everything you could hope for from amazing brownies, which is what you'd expect, the 'normal mum' is Holly Bell of Mrs Bell's Brownies, who will post you some for about twenty quid, or you can make your own for about a fiver. I did Turkish Delight ones, but you can add anything you like.

www.google.com/amp/s/closeronline.co.uk/amp/diet-body/diet-recipes/recipes-normal-mum-double-decker-brownies/

As well as hating creaming, I also don't like fiddling with greaseproof paper so I use premade liners. I get mine from the pound shop. I only do loaf and 7 inch round cakes because that's what liners they sell.

So for brownies I do two loaf tins and reduce cooking time a bit. (Loaf tins were lurpak freebies so even they were a bargain!).

On the matter of cost, baking can be expensive if you buy everything from an expensive shop like Waitrose or Sainsbury's, but it's all storecupboard stuff that's much cheaper in Aldi or Lidl. I don't spend ages trekking to different supermarkets by the way, I just rotate and stock up.

As said above, I use the 30 p value dark chocolate and it's all good. Lidl is probably the cheapest place for nuts. For butter, I pay £1.29 a block in Home Bargains, the slightly softer real butter that is.

On the matter of mixers, I used to have a smaller version of the Kenwood chef, which is similar and a bit cheaper, they claim the RRP is about £200 but it's usually on offer for about £100.

You don't want a big stand mixer if you're only making smaller cakes as all the mix gets lost in the bowl and it doesn't really work. I hardly used my mixer because it was a pain, so I sold it in the first lockdown baking boom and got more than I paid for it as new ones were sold out at the time.

YY on the matter of conversions. The amount of cake with increasing diameter increases exponentially.

If you sat in maths class wondering why you'd ever have to calculate the area of a circle, this is it, scaling cakes.

I never buy cake, it’s awful compared with homemade. Perhaps you need more practice.

I bake cakes small enough to be devoured by the family in a couple of days, usually a lemon drizzle cake in a loaf tin.

My brownies are a huge hit here too and muffins are quick and easy.

I bake bread because I love my bread more than any I could buy.

I use the same recipes with minimal ingredients and effort so I can prepare and bake them without thinking about it too much and without it costing too much either.

All birthday cakes I do however buy from local bakeries or Waitrose as I can't compete with their standard of flavour, ingredients and moistness.

I get you, and I do love to bake. Depending on the cake I also get bored of them sometimes. A lot of it is about the making and the sharing. At the moment, and it just being me, I bake a single eggs or two's worth of cake. I give some to friends I see when exercising.

If you don't get it and its a painful process for you - stop, get shop brought cake and don't look back.

For many though baking is a hobby and produces a pleasant end result.

I prefer to make biscuits, but then I would prefer biscuits when out as I never find cafe cake lives up to the "look of the cake" Or my favourite cake is fruit cake which lasts for much longer in a tin or ginger cake which is better eaten the older it gets as it matures (also great for freezing) particularly like www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/sticky-gingerbread-bundt-cake/you can make in a regular round tin but alter cooking times but looks better from a bundt tin

or I really enjoy making this cake and the house smells divine afterward www.theguardian.com/food/2020/sep/28/claudia-rodens-orange-and-almond-cake again this cake lasts for days in a tin

www.standard.co.uk/homesandproperty/interiors/mary-berry-s-cookery-course-easy-fruit-cake-recipe-a105376.html

Im not keen on chocolate cake though, I find brownies pleasant enough but I think Id rather eat a piece of heaven chocolate and enjoy - rather than make into cake - please don't shoot me!

www.amazon.co.uk/Kenwood-HM220-Hand-Mixer-White/dp/B0000YVNQG/ref=sr_1_3?hvlocphy=1007030&hvnetw=g&keywords=hand+whisk&hvadid=259003510050&qid=1614413143&dchild=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiA-OeBBhDiARIsADyBcE5iGveOStP-F08Y1yJ1F2v3THGSr22x7aLSDrokiKOtt_09ucfLHK4aAjsZEALw_wcB&hydadcr=25557_1769663&hvdev=c&hvqmt=e&tag=mumsnetforu03-21&hvtargid=kwd-298167027261&adgrpid=56028493649&hvrand=4456026672593706697&sr=8-3
I have a hand held whisk with a flat bottom, makes creaming easier

I like baking and find it relaxing. I don't tend to make cakes that much as we are not a big cake fan. I either do small batches or freeze the leftovers. Or in the case of my bacon and cheese soda bread inhaled.

Our local supermarket does a fab lemon drizzle cake that I get of we want cake.

I bake a lot - though I don’t actually eat cake much, I just like baking. You need oil in your cake if it’s dry - and buttermilk. I usually slice the cake for the family - then anything leftover I send to the neighbours so we never have anything leftover. Shop bought cakes are far to sweet and I like to know exactly what I’m putting into my cake - so I can make substitutions if I like. For example - shop bought buttercream is sickly sweet - I scale it down. Massively.

@notanothertakeaway

I make chocolate brownie, cut it into strips and freeze the strips separately

I make cookie dough, roll it into balls, and freeze them

If I make a chocolate cake, I freeze half for another time

Home made baking is almost always better than shop bought

100% this.

Supermarket cakes taste vile. You can’t beat a home made cake.
I cut them up and freeze them, then just defrost slices as needed.

Freezing cake works fine and tastes just the same. Some even improve slightly.

The calories & all the artificial crap that goes into shop bought things If I buy from supermarkets I always regret it the toppings are like chemicals or like plastic because of the shelf life, I make a delicious lemon cake & custard for under 300 calories you can’t buy that in the shops, I don’t particularly enjoy baking I do it for my families health

@waitingforautumn

It’s fun and a challenge.
Setting is also fun like a very complex cheesecake or trifle!

I absolutely agree. I find it so much more expensive to bake then to just buy the product and much less waste

I agree, but my dw likes to bake.

I feel the opposite. I think that making it yourself is a lot cheaper and tastes way better. You can easily scale it down by making half the recipe so only one cake tin then cutting it in half and sandwiching it together rather than 2 cakes sandwiched. Try this recipe for chocolate cake;
5oz SR flour
1oz cocoa powder
6oz caster sugar
6oz margarine
3 eggs
Splash of milk

For the butter icing;
8oz icing sugar
4oz margarine
4 teaspoons cocoa powder

It will be worth it!

I agree, I am a good baker and actually enjoy the baking, but having to eat the finished product is a nightmare! I actually like a lot of my partners workmates so when I bake he takes the majority to work with him after, I just keep a few pieces back for the two of us!!