(WXYZ) — Baking is a holiday tradition for a lot of families, but with the prices of some ingredients going up, many are feeling the impact in their wallet. But there are some ways you can cut cost and keep that same great taste.
Marlene Hardy is an experienced baker, who bakes out of her home and runs Lena's Boutique of Sweets. And she has a few more tricks than just that neat little buttermilk hack to save a few bucks on your holiday baking.
"We see a lot of the generic brands like Kroger, Meijer, great value. Why do you choose these brands versus maybe some of the name brands?" I asked Marlene.
"The first thing is, it's cheaper," she replied. "And people might look at it like, it's only a dollar cheaper or it's $2 cheaper, but if you're buying ten things and each thing is like two hours cheaper, you're saving that. So it depends on the person. So some people think that if you use like Meijer Sugar versus the Domino's Sugar."
It's true. Marlene walked me through her shopping routine when she goes to buy baking ingredients.
"I search for where I'm going to go," Marlene said. "I'm gonna go to Kroger for my ears for Walmart. I'm gonna to see what's on sale. And then people say I'm crazy because I'll go to one store for one thing and go to another store for another thing."
And she says, sometimes the generic even tastes better.
"The vanilla from the brand name I love this I mean McCormick is good, and it makes it good, but this is the Kroger brand and I absolutely love it," she said.
Which makes the lower price that much sweeter!
"This is the one I use for $5.99 and than you have McCormick...$13.99," Marlene said.
That's a huge difference. And if you want to save time and money, there's a little cake hack Marlene says will cut your baking time down to minutes, and your ingredients cost down to mere dollars.
"If you do bake with a box cake, which can be cheaper, how can you elevate that cake to taste like it's homemade but save a few bucks?" I asked.
"Okay, so instead of using the water, you will use milk," Marlene said. "You can add sour cream, which makes it really fluffy. The milk makes it more dense, and that gives you more of that homemade taste. Extra egg that will work also. So but if you want like people can just always Google like different ways because there are so many ways to doctor up a box cake just to make it taste more homemade."
