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 love cooking, but baking just seems like a way of stuffing everyone full of fat, sugar, refined carbs.

Why on earth would you think that that is the purpose of home baking? I bake because I know what goes in anything I make, the same as when I'm cooking savoury food. It doesn't mean I stuff my family with cakes every day. When we do want a treat, I would much rather eat something homemade and there are lots of ways to sweeten a cake without using sugar or sweeteners. You just have to know how to do it properly.

My DC are adults and still fight over who gets the Raw Cake

I made Christmas Cake last year ( 2 x 6" square) one got decorated and eaten, the other is wrapped waiting un-decorated for Easter .
That s a theraputic, planned cake , smells amazing .

We don't bake because of the opposite reason to you.

A few weeks back Mr LemonCrab made banana bread as we had some bananas on the turn.

The thing was gone so fast. We had it for breakfast! I know DH was sneaking bits every time he was in the kitchen. I was too.

We can't be trusted with home baked goods.

I hope I don't come off as sanctimonious but I enjoy baking with my children for several reasons:

• They love it and get excited by it
• I enjoy baking too!
• I can bake healthy breakfast bakes with them which eliminate the guilt (although we still have been baking a batch of cupcakes every weekend quite regularly now)
• I can decide what ingredients go in - my middle child is a handful and seems quite sensitive to e numbers or something in sugary processed food

-The kids learn their way around the kitchen and over time (they are all small) I will be properly teaching them to cook and bake

• I want the cosy memories I had. I baked bread every day it felt like with my dad when I was small.

Baking can be cheap it it also can be so bloody expensive I agree. We do a mix of stuff and I have plenty of times picked up a cheap kit so for the lower effort needed :)

I actually find it relaxing and... by doing it myself I know what ingredients I use!

I had no idea that home-baked sponge cakes could be frozen! Since OH doesn't like sweet stuff I at the whole cake (which lasts almost a week and isn't really good for me lol

I portion said chocolate cake, and freeze it.

I find baking very stressful, in that everything has to be so precise. I'm a pretty good cook but I only make things you can somewhat wing as I can't be doing with precision and technical stuff, i don't have the attention span. You'd never guess I did a PhD and worked in a lab and had to follow super precise methods with chemicals and stuff, although I had a bad habit of winging those too...

That said, my MIL makes the world's most amazing cookies and couldn't even tell you the recipe, she just lobs stuff in randomly.

I always halve the recipe.......so if I'm making Victoria sponge I'll make one layer then cut in half and add jam and cream etc. A bit like a half moon cake. Same with donuts or whatever I'm making.

Cake doesn't hang round long enough to go stale in this house. So it's purely to protect our waistlines.

That's a good idea JesusAteMyHamster

I worked with someone who baked as a hobby and I dreaded her bringing in tins of stuff all the time. She always took it badly when I turned her down, but she never seemed to eat any of it herself.

Cake's something I eat on birthdays.

There are home-made recipes which are just not worth the effort, I found. Such as brioche or hot-cross buns. They are really cheap and lovely shop bought. Things like fruit pies, quiche, galettes, loaf cakes, biscotti, muffins, monkey bread - easy to make and taste much better. I am however still to discover the secret to Rise and Shine breakfast muffin at Costa - it is heavenly and I haven't been able to replicate it.

I’m coeliac with a gluten intolerant DD and gluten free shop bought cake is horribly expensive for tiny quantities, not to mention very sickly. We are four adults in the house, and shop bought costs £2.50 for one tiny weeny cake each to have with coffee.

So I bake. It’s nicer, healthier, I use a lot less sugar, and I trust that my kitchen is completely gluten free.

My gluten free efforts were fairly inedible at first but now I have lovely fluffy cupcakes off to fine art. I can make 12 really nice ones for about a pound - would cost me £7.50 in shop prices.

No cakes go to waste in this house!

I do find it's expensive to bake certain things but I tend to make flapjacks (not really baking but they are handy for the dc and gone very quickly). Crumbles etc I just scale down enough for 4 people after Sunday lunch. But yes, Rich cake and so on are way too high in calories and not needed.

I much prefer my own baked cakes. But then I have two children and we finish a cake within 1 to 2 days.

I can bake and I agree Op. Massive amounts of unhealthy stuff at vast expense with the risk it goes wrong or burnt etc.
I do put excess in the freezer but I haven’t got the space.
Choux buns are my go to, easy pud. You need cooling time but the actual ingredients are just a small amounts of butter, water, flour and eggs. So no sugar and not very expensive. Cream and coffee icing and you’re off.

@MandalaYogaTapestry

There are home-made recipes which are just not worth the effort, I found. Such as brioche or hot-cross buns. They are really cheap and lovely shop bought. Things like fruit pies, quiche, galettes, loaf cakes, biscotti, muffins, monkey bread - easy to make and taste much better. I am however still to discover the secret to Rise and Shine breakfast muffin at Costa - it is heavenly and I haven't been able to replicate it.

Haha I tried making gluten free hot cross buns this morning. The only resemblance they have to hot cross buns is I’m cross about the effort I put into them! Flat angry biscuits more like....

Cupcakes, flapjack, scones, loaf cake - I can make all those gluten free cheaply and easily and they come out better than the rubbish shop ones.
Hot cross buns...I think I might give up.

I agree with the wastage . I've been doing pudding Sunday (something nice once a week) did a chocolate fudge cake recently snd despite having generous portions over three days threw a quarter out. Baking ingredients are too expensive to waste 😂

Just made some peanut butter flapjacks after reading this thread 😋

I’m not a precise baker at all! I don’t tend to follow recipes (and when I do it usually comes out worse) and I don’t measure things out. I was taught to bake using a tablespoon as the only unit of measurement so I spoon things in sometimes - and add one for luck. But honestly mostly I just chuck in ingredients until the mixture looks right. No measuring. 99% of the time comes out lovely.

I do the same for cooking. The only annoying thing about it is when I find something really nice I usually have to try and recreate what I added last time and it can take a couple of goes before I get it back to the taste of the first. It’s all a bit George’s Marvellous Medicine round these parts.

I have found a variety of cake mixes does the trick - no fail, just add more chocolate, berries vanilla or citrus etc to make it more moreish/decadent/ original.

Then pour off a small 1 portion tester cupcake and drop the family size cake to your skinniest friend's house as a "surprise" leave it at theirs. You will have vented your desire to bake, made a friend happy, and enjoyed your cupcake totally calorie -guilt free 😂.

Coeliac family here, why would I not bake? My teens (and DH) devour my scones, cookies cheesecake and Madeira sponge

Shop bought gf if you can get it is inferior and expensive

I recently did a 4 layer fully iced rose gold birthday cake for one teens 18th, special cakes are virtually impossible to buy for us so baking is an essential skill

Love cupcakeJemma, this weekend I’m doing Black Forest New York cookies from this week’s recipe which I can’t see lasting the weekend in this house

So much pearl clutching over the calories and the carbs on this thread, but I'm willing to bet a lot of money that people who regularly bake are actually much less likely to be overweight than the general population, as cooking from scratch is a really good marker for general health consciousness. The British population isn't so unhealthy because they knock up too many sponge cakes at the weekend.

OP, it's funny that you need to 'cover yourself', and are so apologetic and feel the need to explain.

It's fine not to bother with baking. I find it very, very boring. It makes endless mess, and everyone loses interest long before it gets to the clearing up stage. I don't like cake particularly, and if I wanted one, I'd buy one in M&S (the same goes for bread/pastry type stuff, which I don't much like either). I'd have a slice of cake or a biscuit if someone else had baked them, just to be polite - but I wouldn't dream of making anything like that.

It's bad enough having to cook every day, without adding baking to the list of 'must do' jobs.

I enjoy baking and do it every couple of weeks. I don't like shop bought cakes that much any more but do like the ones in cafes.

Scones, muffins and biscuits are so nice when they are fresh out of the oven, and are fairly simple and easy to make. Made rhubarb and ginger scones last week and they tasted amazing.

Also I've discovered I can make lemon tart at home which is my favourite dessert. I'm already dreaming of making it again.