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?

My teen has converted me to Brownie mixes for quick & easy chocolate hit.

Cheaper and fresher than shop brownies - and I can have fun adding peanut butter & nuts etc to make it ‘my own’.

How about making individual bakes like muffins which can be frozen individually? Also, if the cake is a little dry, blitz it into crumbs. Melt some chocolate with butter and cream (like making truffles) and stir in the cake crumbs. Cover and chill until firm enough to scoop. Then scoop out and roll into truffles... really easy way to enjoy some chocolate treats and not worry about waste!
Flapjacks are also a great budget bake that last well and are much cheaper than the shop bought one (plus you can customise with your own fruits and fillings).

@Hardbackwriter

I actually do think chocolate cake is quite tricky to get right - they often come out dry - so if you're not a frequent baker you may have set yourself up for failure a bit there. Brownies are much more foolproof.

I’ve noticed this. Find it nicer to make vanilla sponge and just put chocolate icing on. Also a fan of brownies 😋 Home made - at least means you know what’s in it and you get to kick out the bowl 😋 😋

Lick !

I bake most days but I have a big family so even if I cook double portions it usually goes on the day I’ve made it.

I completely agree OP. I love baking and I'm very good at it but I only do it if I'm cooking for others eg. get asked to bring a specific baked item to a party or pot luck meal or if I'm expecting guests. Then if it doesn't all get eaten I can box it up for them to take home. If I make a whole cake when just DH and I are at home we are bored of it after a couple of slices. I'd rather buy an individual treat from a shop. I can really enjoy it and there are no leftovers hanging around.

The one exception is sourdough. I love making it because I'm perfecting my shaping and slashing techniques so it's still a challenge and it freezes so well that there is no waste.

The exception to this is sourdough bread.

@FlowerFluffer

My teen has converted me to Brownie mixes for quick & easy chocolate hit.

Cheaper and fresher than shop brownies - and I can have fun adding peanut butter & nuts etc to make it ‘my own’.

This is my little cheat, I use M&S brownie mix & they taste so good, home made but without the faff.

We bake bread a couple of times per week, but since we have an Aga that is always on anyway it makes sense to use it than buy in.

I rarely bake sweet things because I will just eat them all

I find it fun, it's something to do and feel like I've achieved. Depending on who has bake, I can find it taste better! It's also nice to know what's in it.

We find shop bought cake too sweet .
If you take something like a Victoria Sponge , a home baked one made with butter is miles better than a chemically tasting one. You can use a good quality ( or better still homemade ) jam , proper buttercream . Yes they might not last as long freshness wise, but do you really want to eat something that can sit in a tin for months without spoiling ?

And because of covid I don't just pop to the shop, so needs must

I love baking and only found this out during lockdown. I love using colours and making and perfecting things like macarons, meringues, decorated cookies etc. The problem is that we end up with too much to eat and I love eating sweet things - which I try to watch for health and weight reasons.

I’m sure most of you are at least good, some excellent bakers. Believe me shop bought can taste better then some home baking. I’ve tried baking a few times then gave up. It sounds so soothing maybe I’ll try again.

Goodness, my imagination is pretty much stretched to the limit by the thought of someone who prefers shop bought cakes. Maybe funds them less pfaff, but better tasting.....

The ultimate in convenience is to keep a batch of chocolate chip cookie dough in the freezer, in slices separated by grease proof paper. Produce freshly baked cookies in the time it takes to welcome someone in and make some coffee.

So, why have my stores of these run down during this time when we have no visitors?

Why indeed?

I've just remembered I have a bag of individual sticky toffee puddings in the freezer that I baked for Christmas Day when I thought DH's family were coming over. They are delicious but I get very little pleasure from eating them on my own, a lot of the pleasure comes from sharing.

I never knew you could freeze cake! Presumably before you ice/frost it?

I much prefer a home baked cake. Made with love, as they say!

There are certainly some excellent shop cakes. Pret a Manger does a good lemon cake & passion cake with all natural ingredients. My local coffee shop has excellent home-made cakes.

I enjoy baking, but limit it to things I'm taking out of the house. If I baked for us, we'd be sooo fat. Consequently, I've been baking a lot less in the past year.

I also stick to things I do better than store-bought (cakes, pies, and cookies mostly). If I can't do better than store bought (breads), then I don't do it.

When you have chickens it's a necessity, we'd drown in eggs otherwise, I've given away 30 ish eggs this week alone!

Yup - I love baking, but there's just two of us here so I can't justify making a cake just for us so it's much easier to go down the bakery and buy one of whatever I fancy. If there's a good reason, I'll happily bake for a crowd, but they're few and far between currently!

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.

So true. The people who say "Ooh I couldn't possibly eat that" or "That's so many calories" are usually people on diets and are therefore likely overweight. And of course diets very rarely work long-term. Most people I know who are slim or a healthy weight are people who cook, eat normally and don't fuss about having some homemade cake.

The best thing about baking is eating cake mix - yum!

Nigella has some recipes scaled down for 1 or 2 people, so you wouldn't be eating that indefinitely.

You can also bake something and then portion it up and put it in the freezer (we did that with scones and sausage rolls I made with the children, but you could freeze slices of cake).

Home-made ice cream and frozen yoghurt keep in the freezer obviously, to serve again another time. Home-made ice lollies are nicely portion-controlled.

At the start of lockdown, I baked a fair amount of banana bread. Then I decided it would be healthier to do puddings like baked apples and baked bananas with chocolate. We've also made savory items like flavoured foccaccia.

Gosh this resonates so much.

I'm a good baker, if I say so myself! When I am requested to bake it's well received.

But god its so expensive - well I think it is if you "occasionally" bake, so you never quite have enough butter in, or eggs or a stock of half decent chocolate, so you always have to go out and get some.

I also like to have an afternoon of baking. So make brownies, cakes, and cookies. I mean, if I going to get all the stuff out and make a mess, I might as well spend a good amount of time on it.

But its just me and my partner...He's just not a baked goods person . So half of it goes to waste, as there is only so much a single person can eat - and I'm not exactly a sparrow...
Because there is really no preservatives like shop bought ones, once they're cut they really do only last 2-4 days, even less if you used fresh cream.

I really do enjoy it and most of "baking" is the enjoyment of the activity itself. But the other part of it is seeing others enjoyment of what you've created.

I knit at the moment, and while most of it is in a drawer for the as yet unplanned children, the few piece I have put on a child have filled me with real warmth of seeing my creation enjoyed!

So baking for no reason in particular, knowing full well most will go to waste, means yes... for the most part I pick up cakes from the supermarket occassionaly grumbling...I could make better.

Having said that, I make this sort of stuff much more than I would otherwise because I have a small daughter who likes cooking!