Homemade versus storebought

Last night, my husband and I had his parents over for dinner. For dessert, I wanted to try out this recipe that I had found in Cooking Light for Angel Food cake stuffed with whipped cream and berries. It looked like the perfect thing for a hot summer evening, and so when I went to make up my shopping list on Sunday night, I was really surprised at how the magazine made a potentially super-simple recipe into an enormous pain.

What did they do? Well, the recipe has you make your angel food cake and your whipped cream from scratch. What does it take to make angel food cake from scratch? 12 egg whites, for one thing. And then beating them until they're nice and fluffy.

To heck with that. I bought a box mix, a container of Cool Whip, and everything turned out deliciously. And making the cake took about 10 seconds (just add water) instead of a half and hour.

But this made me wonder...where do I draw the line between buying storebought things and making them myself? Because I had no qualms buying a box mix, but I didn't feel quite right buying the pre-made angel food cake from the bakery. And I make my own pie crust, but I make brownies out of the box. Which is strange; buying the Pillsbury pie crusts seems like cheating, but brownies from a box are delicious.

I think it might have something to do with the fact that pie crust is supposed to be hard to make, and there's a certain amount of baking prestige attached to making your own pies. And, the pie crust recipe I use lets me make the crusts in advance, then put them in the freezer until I need them. So I don't have to spend all the time making crust and pie at once.

I'm still not sure, though. Maybe I'll have to do some taste-testing. Now that would be a shame :)