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Since the beginning of the year my husband and I agreed that we would limit our dining out. I've been cooking almost all our meals making a lot of things from scratch, trying to avoid pre-made and pre-packaged food as much as possible. I am totally enjoying getting back to cooking and experimenting with new cuisines. My husband has been loving it, and we've saved almost $4,000 in restaurant spending from the same period last year (we dined out way too much).
I have a family occasion coming up and I volunteered to be in charge of the desserts. I originally was going to get cupcakes from a famous cupcake place here in SoCal. They are rather pricey and will be over $200 for 4 dozen cupcakes.
I have special photo cupcake toppers I am using and mentioned to my husband that I may just make the cupcakes myself, especially since I'll be supplying the main decoration, and it kind of seemed like a waste of money to pay the premium price for just the cake.
He immediately groaned and admonished me not to "cheap out". So now it seems like a home-made version will appear to be a lesser quality. I'll have to make them look "store bought" in order for them to be good enough.
It is ironic that a lot of restaurants tout their food as being just like "grandma used to make, or old country, made with love" etc , but if the meal actually IS homemade it isn't as special as dining out, seemingly.
What is your impression of a homemade spread vs catered food vs restaurant? (Assume competent preparation and quality ingredients).
That's $4 a cupcake.
Glad you have money for that. If you buy store bought there are less expensive alternatives. How much will it cost to feed each person an entree? $5-$10?
THANK YOU so much for this helpful advice on the tips and the buttercream flavorings. DIL is supposed stay away from all dairy due to the proteins not just the lactose, so she can't even use certain margarines that have whey or casein. She is fine just skipping the cupcakes herself so I don't have to adapt the recipe to be dairy-free, but I wanted to try it in case it worked. I'll keep that Dream Whip trick in mind for the future though.
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