MoneySaving Bake Off - how do you save money on ingredients?

With the return of The Great British Bake Off last week, many have been bitten by the baking bug again - whether that's making the cakes or just eating them. Yet baking can often become quite expensive once you start looking at all the ingredients you'll need.

Read the full blog: The Great MoneySaving Bake Off: How I made a batch of brownies for £4 that tasted BETTER than my usual £8 version
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  • Browntoa
    Browntoa Posts: 49,281
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    Aldi/Lidl for the basics like flour , eggs , butter . Also good for quality kitchen stuff as a lower price . I believe they both have upcoming kitchen special buys including stand mixers etc

    Poundland for basic cooking utensils and cupcake moulds especially things you might only use once . You can often get cocoa powder cheap in pound shops as well
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  • euronorris
    euronorris Posts: 12,247
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    Forage! I'm drowning in blackberries in elderberries at the moment. What a wonderful way to go! ;)
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  • robin58
    robin58 Posts: 2,802 Forumite
    edited 4 September 2018 at 10:15PM
    If you have a Topcashback account, they are via thier instore groceries account section, offering money off baking basic items.

    20p off icing sugar 500g.
    15p off cake casings, any type.
    15p off Baking chocolate 150g, any type.
    10p off plain flour 500g.
    10p off sponge mix, any flavour.

    Cashback available until 11.59pm 12th September. Once only for each item.

    Added bonus you can submit a receipt(s) from any retailer, not just the big supermarkets.
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  • I agree that supermarket own brand items are absolutely fine for things like flour, baking powder etc. Also own brand stork for baking is fine. I don't bother with real butter unless it's for something you will notice the difference like shortbread.
    One tip I do is that if a recipe calls for hazelnuts they are normally more expensive if they are blanched. So I buy them with the skin on, put them on a baking tray and put them in the oven for about 10 minutes while it is on. Let them cool down and the skins come off really easy. I then put them in a jar. A little extra saves some pennies.
  • I made rocky road for our work cake club and a well off and quite snobby colleague commented how nice they were and you could tell it was really good chocolate.

    I took great pleasure in telling her that all the ingredients came from Aldi and the chocolate was the 30 p a bar value version.
  • catwoman73 wrote: »
    I made rocky road for our work cake club and a well off and quite snobby colleague commented how nice they were and you could tell it was really good chocolate.

    I took great pleasure in telling her that all the ingredients came from Aldi and the chocolate was the 30 p a bar value version.

    I always get the aldi or lidl bars of chocolate for baking. The lidl white chocolate is actually really nice to eat and much cheaper than milkybar.
    My OH works with people like that. When they bring in cakes they always go to m&s and spend a fortune (over 50 people in the office). Next time OH does cakes he wants to buy them all from aldi/lidl to see what they think.
  • LameWolf
    LameWolf Posts: 11,234
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    Annoyingly, our local @ldi has stopped selling bread flour. It's a shame, because it was way less expensive that Morries or T£scos own, and was really good flour.

    They still have ordinary SR and plain flour thankfully, which I also find very good.

    I also like @ldi's "Pantry" range dark chocolate for my HM choc mousse (which I have to make this week, request from Mr Wolf) - the recipe also calls for rosemary, which I have by the tonne in the garden.

    While I'm here.....
    does anyone know where I can get nuts for cooking inexpensively? I'm a vegetarian, so nuts are a good source of protein for me; and I make nut loaf, which I slice and freeze as a meal "building block".

    I always used to buy nuts from Julian Graves, but since H&B took them over and closed them down, nuts are now extremely expensive. I need quite large quantities, and the weeny little packets I see in the supermarkets just don't cut it.

    It doesn't matter if they are mixed or single variety, doesn't matter if they are broken as they are wuzzed in the food processor anyway.

    I use a mix of Brazils, walnuts, hazelnuts, cashews, almonds or any combination of the above; exact proportions don't matter, and not all the varieties necessarily need to be present.

    One nut loaf, which cuts into eight slices, (ie four meals for Mr Wolf and myself) uses 13 oz of nuts (sorry I can't do grams).
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  • Sainsburys do a mixed bag of nuits that has a nice mix .
    It is £3.30 IIRC.
    I was using grape tree but these worked out the same per kilo with a nicer mix.
  • Lidl do 200g mixed nuts for £1.99. I use them for granola, for snacking, and I seperate out the walnut halves to use for pesto or blue cheese and walnut pasta as there's always plenty of walnuts in the bag, and the mixed nuts are cheaper than the bags of walnuts. That's by far the cheapest I've seen.
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  • One of the few ingredients that never goes off is sugar, so never pay full price for it. Brands periodically do promotions which make it cheaper than own label, and it's also occasionally delisted as supermarkets swap out one brand for another, leading to nice "reduced to clear" savings.

    I've also found baking ingredients companies quite generous with coupons if you contact them about products.
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