Housewares Business-to-business magazine for housewares retailers and their suppliers
The revival in home baking is now seeing 28% of householders baking from scratch at least once a week.
So says Mintel, whose latest research shows that the home baking market grew 13% between 2007 and 2009 to reach £523m, and it is expected to reach £576m this year.
Mintel says that, despite a trend towards smaller cakes, the item most baked at home is a standard cake, with 42% of consumers saying they baked this type in the past year.
Cupcakes follow with 39%, batters (such as Yorkshire Puddings) with 37%, biscuits/cookies (29%) and sweet pies, tarts and puddings in joint position with 28%. Brownies come bottom of the list with 14%.
Mintel says that the flour market grew 19% between 2007 and 2009, while cake decorations are also enjoying a boom.
However, it seems that consumers wanting to source baking recipes are turning away from cookbooks towards the internet. Mintel says that 52% of people now get recipe ideas from websites, against 46% who rely on books.
“The importance of the internet for recipes has been driven in part by television cookery shows and the celebrity chef boom – recipes from the programmes are often available online immediately while books take longer to come out,” explains Vivianne Ihekweazu, senior food and drink analyst at Mintel.
“Online recipes are more personal, free of charge and consumers can just print off the recipes they like. They’re also now an important tool for supermarkets, equipment and ingredients manufacturers as well as cookbook authors and publishers, and have supported the revival in home baking around the recession.”
