Recession-Friendly Baking Tips

Desperate times call for…smart baking tips, not desperate measures like cake mix from the box or frozen cookie dough!  Oh, no.  Indulging your sweet tooth from scratch can be expensive, so we’ve come up with recession-friendly hints to help you get more out of your baking dollar without depending on Betty Crocker or the Dough Boy.

1) Say a recipe calls for ground pecans or crushed peppermint candy.  No need to spend a couple hundred bucks on a Cuisinart – all you need is a plastic ziplock bag, a rolling pin, and a counter top.  Just put the nuts, candies, or whatever else you need to process in the bag, and seal it up. Then think about that miniscule raise or bonus you didn’t get and smack away with the rolling pin!

2) If you’re an ambitious baker, decorating can be stressful, messy, and expensive.  We’ve worked with cloth pastry bags and torture trying to clean them afterwards. Then, there are the disposable ones, even triangle-shaped plastic can get expensive.  Both cheap and disposable, a ziplock bag works wonders.  Fill it as you would a pastry bag, and cut a small tip off the corner.  Decorate as elaborately as you want, save a couple of bucks while you’re at it, and throw the bag out when you’re done!

 

3) We like using ramekins, but there are so many different sizes and sets out there that it’s pricey to collect them all.  Our budget-friendly solution — just take a look around your kitchen and you’ll see tons of substitutes in all sizes. Espresso cups, muffin tins… we’ve even used empty tuna cans (washed thoroughly of course).  Ah, perfectly shaped desserts.