Monday, February 28, 2011

Cooking from Scratch

I have always enjoyed cooking from scratch because it is fun, tasty and economical. However, with this being said, I still enjoy buying mixes, pre-made cookies, frozen prepared foods and other "fun" items at the grocery store.

With the price of gas going up, and our grocery prices rising yet again, I began wondering just how much a person saves when making foods from scratch.

Lets start with homemade peanut butter cookies;
After calculating just how much I pay for each ingredient, I had a very clear picture of how much one batch of peanut butter cookies would cost.

Flour came out to 5-cents per cup
White sugar came out to 15-cents per cup
Brown sugar came out to 25-cents per cup
Margarine came out to 20-cents per stick
One egg was free since I have laying hens
Peanut butter came out to 48-cents for half a cup
For the remaining ingredients (salt, baking powder and soda) I added 3-cents

My batch of peanut butter dough made 50 cookies and weighed just over 1 1/2 pounds. The total cost came out to 1.02; peanut butter was the most expensive ingredient.

Our local Wal-Mart has Chips Ahoy on Roll Back for 1.98 per package; each package weighs anywhere from 9-ounces to 13-ounces. The Wal-Mart brand cookies were priced 1.16 for a 1-pound package.

Most of my baking ingredients are purchased on sale and stock piled. If I had gone to the store and purchased each item when I wanted to bake then my final cost would have been higher.

5 comments:

Packrat said...

You didn't add in your time. Of course, it takes time to shop, too. However, there are times that more expensive is better. There is no way I'd give up homemade peanut butter cookies for Chips Ahoy. ;)

Haven't visited here for a while. Hope everyone is well.

Helen Ruth said...

Thanks for doing the math. I LOVE homemade peanutbutter cookies. I've been stocking up on flour from Sams.

Anonymous said...

I agree with Sue.. taste is more important no matter the cost.. and homemade will always win the contest for taste and quality. I did enjoy your cost calculations tho.. and looking forward to more examples.

Packrat said...

Patty, I misread your blog the first time. Sorry. Your cookies look wonderful. :)

Annette said...

You can same even more by making your own brown sugar---just molasses stirred into white sugar. We do it here all the time. It's much cheaper IF you get your molasses for cheap. Thanks for the encouragement!

msn live statistics
Hewlett Packard Laptop