I have a sweet tooth but I don`t like eating ingredients I cant pronounce. For me the best way to do that and on a budget is to bake my own treats. And I know people often say “I don’t have time to bake”, I say it myself sometimes but then I remember that if I make a big batch of goodies, freeze half, have the other half as snacks in my lunch then next time that sweet tooth is crying out, I have something on hand, no work required to make my sweet tooth happy!
If you are really stretched for time, especially around this holiday season, organize a baked goods exchange with some friends and/or colleagues. You each make 3 dozen (so for say 6 friends, each person gets ½ dozen) of your favorite cookie, square, etc, then get together, exchange the treats and everyone walks away with a couple of different goodies! I was introduced to this idea in an office I worked in a couple of years ago and think its a great idea! It is especially great to do around the holidays. You can show up to Christmas dinner with tins full of a variety of scrumptious goodies and let everyone believe you are a domestic goddess!
Bake your own … granola bars, muffins, cookies, you name it!!!
Green and health reasons to bake your own – make that sweet tooth happy:
- reduce packaging (no individual wrappers, no cardboard box or plastic clam-shell
- no artificial sweeteners made in a lab in some far off land
- no extra shipment (in addition to the ingredients) of product across the country)
- ingredient control – we don’t add trans fats
Financial reasons to bake your own:
Cost to make your own oatmeal chocolate chip muffins
| Ingredient | Cost Basis | Quantity | Costs |
| bag of oats | $5 for 2.25 kg | 112.5 g | $0.25 |
| chocolate chips | $0.55 for 100 g | 81 g | $0.44 |
| egg (local, free range) | $2.85 for 12 eggs | 1 egg | $0.24 |
| brown sugar | $2 for 1 Kg | 165 g | $0.33 |
| flour | $5 for 10 kg | 125 g | $0.08 |
| baking powder | $2 for 450g | 16 g | $0.07 |
| melted butter (local) | $4.50 for 2 cups | 1/2 cup | $1.12 |
| TOTAL | $2.53 |
Total = $2.53 for 12 muffins! Where we live you usually cant get 6 muffins for less than $5 in the grocery store. So even if we made these muffins with all organic ingredients which would double the cost, we would still be saving money!
So, for me personally the financial incentive is a great one, and of course avoiding those weird sounding ingredients, but the best part is the wonderful smell that fills our house while baking and nothing beats fresh from the oven muffins to go with your afternoon tea on a cold winter day.
Please share your baking creations and habits so we can all benefit from your great ideas!
Oh my, they look delicious! I have never actually baked muffins even though I make bread. I stayed with a woman who baked organic muffins for a local health store and no muffin I have ever eaten since can touch those! Bran muffin with cinnamon and apple was divine.
Agreed! Home baking, especially fresh from the oven simply can not be beat!
Great post. I don’t like eating unnatural ingredients either so we often home make things we eat. I was actually going to make some muffins shortly.
Mmm mmm! Those muffins look delicious.
Making muffins or cookies on your own is so easy and doesn’t really take that much time (maybe 30 minute to an hour max?). I like how our society is shifting back towards natural food items and we are realizing that packaging, preserved foods are terrible for our health!
Agreed! More like our Grandma’s used to do it!
Wow 1/2 cup of butter!
Nothing beats good home baked muffins!
Do you think 1/2 cup is a lot? Mrs. SPF finds 1/2 cup of butter to be pretty low for baked goods – especially spread across 12 yummy muffins.
We never use butter – too much fat – except for sauces.
We use applesauce.
butter = flavour
regardless, compared to how much butter and additional trans-fats are added to grocery store baked goods, 1/2 cup is virtually nothing
A fellow Canadian! how nice :)
Welcome.
Your post is exactly the reason why I feel bad paying for restaurant food that I can make better at home, or desserts that aren’t difficult.
Which reminds me.. sugar cookies to come next week :)
Hiya FB! Yep, we’re Canuck thru and true!
Mrs. SPF has been reading the comments on her post and it is great she is getting so many! Her baking is superb. Now only if I had more of a sweet tooth …
Thanks for checking out our site, i’ll check yours out soon!
I am not a baker nor I am a cook. My husband does both. :-) But I do have a sweet tooth and those cookies look delicious! Ingredients that I cannot pronounce scare me too.