Day 3 — Home Baking and Cost Efficiency
’Tis the season to be jolly, and of course, to start thinking about all the sweets that will land in your mouth this holiday season.
Actually, if you’re living in Japan, you’re sort of late only starting to think about your cake choice now. The fancy, most renowned patisseries start Christmas cake reservations in October, which means you need to get in your Christmas mood to choose your cake before Halloween even comes along. It is all for the best, however, that patisseries give you so much time to make your decision. In the labyrinth of cake catalogues and web advertisements, you can easily be overwhelmed with all the things you need to consider: what type of cake do you want, how many people does it need to feed, which cake looks the most dashing on your dining table, and, most importantly, how much can you pay for it?
Being a kitchen snob, I take pride in ignoring all the fabulous cake ads out there and baking my own Christmas cakes every year. Baking does take a lot of time and energy, but the moment when you are taking photos to post on your Instagram baking account is certainly rewarding enough. However, for those who don’t understand the joy of spending hours in a kitchen watching the dough rise in their oven, home baking may just seem like pure labour, and therefore not really worth the effort unless it pays off somehow.
Which brings me to the common question that all bakers have probably been asked at least once before: Wouldn’t it be cheaper to just buy it from a store? If you’re like me and considers baking a hobby, you’ve probably never really calculated how much money goes into your baked goods. But if you’re considering learning how to bake for the purpose of saving money, this is probably a pretty important question.
This blog post is about me scrambling together numbers trying to help all of you money pinchers who don’t want to spend even an extra dime for your sweets. I am using the prices of each ingredient that I can find in my neighbourhood supermarket (which is a normal supermarket, nothing fancy), and a typical recipe to make each dessert. Note that I am not including the price of baking tools, as you can buy one baking tool and basically use it forever so the price will eventually become close to zero.
1. Gingerbread cookies
I might as well start with the cookie mandatory for Christmas to be Christmas. Unless you’re one of those people who think Christmas without gingerbread men is acceptable. If that’s the case, well, I don’t mean to be offensive, but I don’t think you’re doing Christmas properly.
Ingredients for a typical recipe for a batch of 20+ gingerbread cookies:
450g flour … about￥135
300g cane sugar … about￥175
250g non-salted butter… about￥500
1 egg… about￥30
2 tsp ginger powder…about￥10
1 tbsp cinnamon powder… about￥15
1 tsp nutmeg…about￥5
1 tsp cloves…about￥5
Total ingredient cost home-made: ￥715
Price of a box of gingerbread cookies found in store*:￥750
*I had to search multiple supermarkets until I finally found a box of gingerbread cookies. I guess most people aren’t doing Christmas properly at all around where I live.
Considering the huge effort it took me to buy a box of gingerbread cookies at the store, home baking is definitely more cost efficient here. It looks like I am already winning my point that baking is worth the effort. Another good thing about baking your own gingerbread men is that you can decorate them in any way you want and give them different facial expressions. The ones bought from stores all come in the same shape and size, and I think that we should care more about diversity in modern society.
2. Strawberry shortcakes
The next batter up is the most popular type of cake to have for Christmas in Japan. Made of a simple sponge cake with whipped cream and strawberries layered within, you will hardly ever come across a strawberry shortcake that doesn’t taste good.
Ingredients for a typical recipe of an 18cm strawberry shortcake:
90g flour… about￥27
130g granular sugar… about￥45
3 eggs…about￥90
30g non-salted butter…about￥60
300ml whipping cream…about￥700
1 pack of strawberries…about￥700
A ribbon to go on top of your cake… about￥100
Total ingredient cost home-made: ￥1,622
Price of a 17cm Christmas shortcake from Seven-Eleven: ￥3,900
My friend who works in the fresh produce industry warned me that strawberries are going to be extra expensive in Japan this year due to the weather, but even if a pack of strawberries ends up costing￥1000, it still won’t bring the cost of a home-made strawberry shortcake close to a store-bought one. I even chose the cheaper option of the two 17cm shortcakes that Seven-Eleven offered on its Christmas cake catalogue this year, and yet my home-made option proved to be more cost efficient. The more expensive choice was ￥4,900 in case you’re dying to know.
I will note that if you’re not very confident with your cake decorating skills, however, paying the extra ￥2,000~￥3,000 for the perfect Christmas-y appearance may be worth it in the end.
3. Apple pies
I don’t even know if apple pies are a Christmas thing, but I always think of apple pies when it’s cold outside, so I’ll make it a Christmas thing starting today.
Ingredients for a typical apple pie:
200g flour…about￥60
220g salted butter…about￥330
130ml water…Free (I’m getting it from the tap)
1 large apple…about￥150
1 egg…about￥30
30g cane sugar…about￥18
1 tsp lemon juice…about￥10
Total ingredient cost home-made: ￥598
Price of an apple pie bought at Fujiya:￥1,500
I honestly didn’t even know that you can buy a whole apple pie for only ￥1500 at Fujiya. Even with Fujiya’s amazingly low prices, though, you can still save a lot of money by baking your own apple pies at home, not to mention that it is also the only way you can only enjoy the luxury of biting into a hot, freshly baked slice. I also think that apple pies are reminiscent of home-baking, and therefore there is no reason not to bake them yourself.
In conclusion, yes, home-baking is more cost efficient than non-bakers imagine. Of course, however, if you want to calculate labour costs from the amount of time you spend baking, you may end up with the opposite answer. In addition, if you live with a cranky mother who will get mad at you for making a mess in the kitchen, or if you live with roommates who will eat up all of your cookie dough before you can put it in the oven, the amount of stress you face in the process may not be worth it at all. In the end, although baking can save you money, it is up to you whether you can enjoy the process or not. If you want to save money, you need to work for the cake -you can’t have a cake and eat it, too.
This article is part of the HENNGE Advent Calendar 2020. An Advent calendar is a special calendar used for counting down the days till Christmas. HENNGE Advent Calendar 2020 presents one article by one HENNGE member per day for 25 days until Christmas, 2020.
