The trend of home baking (also cheekily called circuit baking during the 2020 Circuit Breaker) is still going strong even as we transit into a post-pandemic world.
In the United States, sales of baking-related products soared by 24% in 2020, reaching $26.5 billion. Back at home, more people are hopping onto this line of business, from celebrities to our very own friends and family.
As an individual with an insatiable sweet tooth, I thought it’d be interesting to find out the real cost of home-baked cookies (in hopes of mending that hole in my pocket).
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It’s Not Always Cost Effective To Bake Your Own Cookies
When it comes to costs, there are 2 types we need to consider – tangible cost (e.g., cost of ingredients, equipment, manpower) and intangible cost (e.g., time and effort spent, whether the cookies turn out edible and tasty).
For this baking experiment, I’ve decided to follow a cookie recipe that went viral on social media during Circuit Breaker last year. Created by a Malaysian home chef who said that her cookies tasted just like the ones sold at Famous Amos, the Facebook post has since garnered over 512K shares to date.
Firstly, let’s discuss the tangible costs of a home-baked cookie.
Here’s a cost breakdown of the ingredients I acquired and a snapshot of the baking process.
| Ingredient | Quantity | Cost |
| Unsalted Butter (227g) | 2 Slabs | $5.15 |
| Brown Sugar (800g) | 1 Packet | $2.90 |
| All-Purpose Flour (1kg) | 1 Packet | $3.20 |
| Corn Flour (400g) | 1 Packet | $0.70 |
| Chocolate Chips (200g) | 2 Boxes | $4.50 |
| Vanilla Essence (26ml) | 1 Bottle | $1.45 |
| Baking Powder (70g) | 1 Bottle | $1.35 |
| Sodium Bicarbonate (100g) | 1 Bottle | $1.15 |
| Chopped Almonds (100g) | 1 Packet | $3.83 |
| 1 Egg | – | |
| Canola oil | – | |
| Total Cost: | $33.88 |
With the ingredients above, I made a total of 140 cookies (sized similar to the ones sold at Famous Amos). This works out to about $0.20 per cookie.
For comparison, a bag of Famous Amos cookies (200g) with approximately 10 cookies costs about $10.80. That works out to about $1.10 per cookie.
Just looking at the figures above, a store-bought cookie costs roughly 5 times more than a home-baked cookie. Before you’re off to the supermarkets for baking ingredients, let’s discuss the second type of cost – the intangible costs of home baking.
From acquiring the ingredients to prepping to the actual baking process to the clean-up after, I spent a total of 6 hours. Personally, I thought that it was rather time-consuming and that the effort invested in these cookies could be spent on other activities.
Not to mention that I was slightly disappointed that my cookies turned out sub-par compared to the ones sold at Famous Amos.
On a brighter note, my arms had a great workout.
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The Process Of Home Baking Might Still Be Worthwhile For Some
After having laid out both the tangible and intangible costs of home-baked cookies, some still find the process of home baking one that’s worthwhile.
A huge incentive for home bakers is having the option of customisation. For instance, if you have a gluten allergy or are diabetic, you can customise your recipe to produce cookies that are gluten-free and sugar-free.
Having the passion to bake is another huge spur to why people prefer to bake cookies of their own. Furthermore, baking can be a source of happiness and stress reduction for some people.
Cookies Made By Home Bakers Often Cost More Than Store-Bought Ones
So we’ve figured out that in terms of tangible costs, it is indeed cheaper to bake your own cookies instead of purchasing them from stores. Then why is it that cookies baked by home bakers are similarly priced, if not higher than bakeries?
Let’s start with recipe tasting. No one gets it right the first time. To produce the “perfect cookie” that stands out from the rest, home-bakers would need to go through multiple rounds of recipe tasting and that would mean spending more than expected on ingredients.
Home-bakers would also have to factor in the cost of packaging which would then be passed on to customers. The cost of packaging can range anywhere from a few cents to a few dollars, depending on the intricacy and customisation of the packaging.
Apart from covering the costs of ingredients and equipment, home-bakers have to factor in a “salary” for themselves. That’s probably why cookies baked by home-bakers usually cost more than store-bought cookies.
As for myself, I’ll continue to make regular trips to a bakery or order from a home baker to satiate my sweet tooth.
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