10 Reasons To Bake At Home

With so many cakes and biscuits available in the shops, you might feel there is little point in doing your own baking, but there are many reasons why baking at home is enjoyable and a better option. Of course I am not saying you should never buy shop baked goods. Sometimes you just don’t have time to bake at home, but when you do, there are lots of reasons to make the effort.

When you do buy from a shop, having baked your own you may be more tempted to buy from a local baker, where you can ask about the ingredients. You will at least find yourself checking the ingredients on the packet.

Reasons to bake:-
1. You know exactly what goes into your food. Shop bought goods often have ‘extras’ like preservatives and flavourings to improve shelf life, or to cut costs on ingredients.

2. You can adapt the recipe to suit your own tastes and requirements. You may wish to cut down on the sugar or change the balance of ingredients such as more cranberries and fewer nuts in the Cranberry and Pecan Cookies recipe

3. Your baking will be fresh and you can have that ‘fresh straight from the oven’ taste. Scones are definitely best eaten whilst still warm.

4. If you run out of cookies or scones, you can just rustle up some more within an hour – quicker than going to the shop and buying them. And you can use up food, such as using really ripe bananas for Banana Cake

5. The carbon footprint of baking at home is far less than the food processed in a factory, packaged, transported to a distribution centre and then to a supermarket, especially if you utilise the oven heat and bake two things at the same time. If you do buy from a shop, make it a local baker or shop that’s supplied with local goods like Real Food Exeter

6. Your house will smell fantastic! There are few better household smells than that of fresh baking!

7. Your friends will love you. Everyone loves home baked food.

8. You will save money. Work out the cost of your cookies, scone or cake and you will soon discover it is cheaper than shop bought items of the same quality.

9. Teach your children to bake and they will learn about where food comes from and how things are made.

10. It really is fun and quite therapeutic. It taps into your creative side, to bring together raw ingredients and create something that you, and others can enjoy.