► Noel - Delia or No Delia? ◄ Yappari

Try as we might, at this time of year it's impossible to prevent a celebrity chef from telling us how Christmas food should be prepared and enjoyed. And they all have a unique perspective. Gordon's going for that authentic feel, Nigella's going for sassy with a twist of opulence - Jamie's championing local produce - and Delia's doing Christmas on a shoe-string.

Having watched many a cookery show I fancied giving baking a try this year and opted to follow Delia's Christmas on a shoe-string approach. I decided to make some mince pies!

Ingredients: Flour, butter, pinch of salt, drop of milk, mince meat (fruity variety - won't make that mistake twice!)

Very simple and Unit cost I worked out at 7p each based on cost of quantity of ingredients above to bake 24.

However - having not baked since I was at school I had failed to take into account the cost of hardware I needed to purchase in order to make the mince pies. Hoping this would be the start of a new hobby I invested in the necessary:

1 hand blender
1 mixing bowl
1 rolling-pin
3 pastry cutters (different sizes)
1 pastry brush
1 spatula
1 cooling stand
1 apron

I calculate that my unit price per mince pie has now risen to: £2.07p (excluding energy required for baking, cleaning products and my time).

To put that into perspective - I could have bought 298 mince pies from Tesco for the same outlay. So much for a frugal Christmas!

Oh yes… and the other thing you never see on TV - cooking's a messy business!!

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10 Comments so far

Genius! When are you starting your home-brewing to save yourself some money on beer?

How did they taste by the way?

Home brewing eh… sounds expensive.

Mince pies were great - well the second batch of 12 were the best. The first batch were short on pastry, too much filling, cooked too high and left on for too long. They were tasty, but crunchy and chewy - in much the same way as a mint hum-bug is crunchy and chewy.

Oh yes… and the unit cost of the mince pie has just increased - I forgot to mention the stainless steel sieve I had to purchase too!

There should have been a sieve in the list of purchases as well?

I knew your story had holes in it…

… what about the cost of the oven? If you’re going to fully burden the cost of each mincepie I think you should consider assigning some of the cost of your house to keep the blender (use your HANDS!), bowl, rolling-pin, pastry cutters, pastry brush (what do you need that for anyway?), spatular (again, why?), cooling stand, apron, mincepies (until consumed) and oven!!! You’ll find that the cost actually is closer to £50,000 each pie - how many pies do you have to make to compete with Tesco???!!!

I made some gourmet mincepies which worked out at about 10p each (excluding electricity & rent), a little more than Dear Delia’s as I used expensive French butter and made my own mince… I didn’t buy a bowl (just use a big bench space) and I reused my muffin tin which has been used to make so many muffins & cupcakes that the allocated cost for my 36 mincepies is negligible… and I find that a litre bottle of spirits with cling film around it works a treat as a rolling-pin with the added bonus of keeping me amused during the baking stage

I hope you have many more years of fun baking mincepies to get the unit cost down!!!

Happy Christmas xx

Blimey Saffron - lots of cool tips. Where were you before I started baking? Good point about the cost of the oven - although I didn’t attribute any of the cost of the oven to the unit cost of the mince pies deliberately. That was because the purchase of the fan-oven was a necessity for drying my socks after the microwave broke. Unit cost of emergency drying of socks currently stands at £107.50 per pair… but usually comes down every month or so! Happy Christmas too!xx

Also - wanted to point out that weighing scales weren’t on my original list either, and I had to fork out for those too!

.. remember to keep your old dog food tins for cutting out pastry circles too!

Oh Ian! I’m exhausted just from reading your mince pie cooking story… and you’re making me feel very lazy. I will confess to doing the cliched mince pie thing - buying a load then bashing them around and passing them off as my own. At least next year, with all the equipment you’ve bought, your cost per unit will be lower. Have a great break x

Hi Ian…
By chance you were starting a new same hobbies as I was at around the same time as well and came across your site just by chance of googling “yappari”…
Lucky for me I had my mom’s baking hardware…just need to try lots of trial and error on the recipes I’ve tried
Good luck with the new hobbies though

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Noel - Delia or No Delia?

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