How to turn white sugar into brown… and other secrets to baking on a budget
We always had cake in the larder when I was growing up and I still remember how proud I was, aged six, of my first batch of scones.
Even now, my day is not complete without a piece of cake.
But, like everything else, baking ingredients have shot up in price recently. For instance, a dozen eggs cost £3.26 on average last month, up from £2.59 a year ago, according to the Office for National Statistics — making a home-made cake much more of a luxury than it used to be.
Luckily there are canny substitutes you can make to keep baking costs down without scrimping on flavour.
These include using flax seeds to make your own cut-price ‘vegan eggs’ in place of hens’ eggs, according to the master bakers at fabflour.co.uk. To make a ‘flax egg’, combine one tablespoon of flax seeds (£1.20 for a 150g bag at Tesco) with three tablespoons of water and let it stand for five minutes.
Read Jasmine’s column in full here
