Maybe not to you, but I can see that there are no paper baking cups on this batch of muffins. This is not earth-shaking, frugal living, by any means. But over the last 15 years, I had become accustomed to using paper baking cups with muffins and cupcakes. I thought I was saving a whole lot of time by using them.
Well, I ran out of plain white, everyday baking cups a month ago, and don't want to use up my "special" holiday baking cups. Until I can bring myself to buy some more "everyday" baking cups, I'll be buttering the muffin tins.
But do you know what I was thinking about? There's a generation of young people who don't know that a muffin tin can simply be buttered. Kids and young adults who have mostly seen muffins in grocery stores and bakeries, always wrapped in a paper baking cup. Isn't that funny to think? Meanwhile, many of our mothers always buttered muffin tins. So many things have changed in just our lifespans.
So, you know I wouldn't just leave this post as is, don't you? That I would simply HAVE TO figure if there was any significant cost savings to buttering my muffin tins. LOL!
Okay, so a dozen paper baking cups are around 13 cents (Dollar Tree, 100 ct., $1.10 including tax). I use less than 1/2 tablespoon of butter to grease a 12-cup muffin tin. 1/2 tablespoon of butter costs me about 2 & 1/2 cents cents (at the price per pound I most recently bought butter, $1.69/lb). So I do save 11 cents per 12-cup muffin pan, by buttering the tin.
Now all of this, whether or not it's cheaper to butter your tin or use paper baking cups, is highly dependent on 2 things -- the price of butter and the price of paper baking cups. If the price of paper came way down, but the price of butter skyrocketed, the outcome of my calculations would change.
But wait . . . here's another possibility. I can buy baking cups in a super duper large quantity (about 10,000 which would be a 20-year supply even for me), for just over $50. Of all of my searching for cheap paper baking cups, this is the absolute cheapest that I found. A dozen of these bulk-purchased baking cups would cost about 6 cents. Even at this price, I still save almost 4 cents per dozen, by buttering my muffin tins.
But how about the work saved by using baking cups? It took me under 5 minutes to butter the entire tin. I was waiting for the oven to preheat in this time, anyway. So, not really an issue. How about sticking to the pan? My muffins don't generally stick to the pan. Higher sugar recipes will leave a sticky crumb residue, but the muffins still pull out of the pan.
So, will I continue buttering the tins? Well, despite all of this, there is this thing I call "mental time". It's not real time, but perceived time. My mind wants to believe that paper baking cups are SO much more convenient. I can read the facts that I just typed, but it's hard to convince my mind. I know myself. At some point, I will buy more baking cups. But I'll be looking for a great deal on them.
In the meantime, at 2 dozen muffins per week, I am saving at least 12 cents, maybe 22 cents per week. Okay, not a grand savings, but over a year, that does add up to a whopping $6.24 to $11.44 by buttering my muffin pans. I won't be getting rich by buttering my muffin tins, but I could go out to lunch on those savings. What I have figured is this -- my "stock-up wildly" price on baking cups is about 25 cents per 100 count. Could happen.
Do you do anything to save money that only saves pennies, but you do it anyway?
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