As my cooking skills have improved over the years, I’ve been delighted to find that so many impressive foods really aren’t that hard to make at home. Marshmallows, butter, bagels, meringues, macarons — we feel pretty confident about them all. But just because we can make these things doesn’t always mean that it’s worth the time and effort. Now Jennifer Reese of The Tipsy Baker has done home cooks a tremendous (and entertaining) favor with her new book, “Make The Bread, Buy The Butter,”  where she quantifies the difficulty, price, and relative pleasure of creating more than 100 foods from scratch, from bread crumbs (make them) to banh mi (buy them). Her goal, she writes, was to find the sweet spot between purchasing and creating, to empirically measure what the market does (and doesn’t) do cheaper and better. You may not always agree with her choices (we think it’s worth making butter, even though we don’t always do it), but you’ll almost certainly be inspired by her straightforward, engaging discussions and her solid recipes. Don’t get turned off by the more time-consuming tasks; Reese also notes that “make it” simply means to make it when you have time and energy, because there are days when even the simplest kitchen task is too much. “By no means do I think everyone should make all (or even any) of these foods, all of the time. I sure don’t.”

 Here’s a summary of a few of her rulings (in the book, each one includes a recipe):

1. Vanilla extract: Make it, at a fraction of the cost of store-bought. Reese notes that you can buy inexpensive vanilla beans in bulk, and all the extract involves is scraping the seeds from the beans and letting the seeds and pods macerate in alcohol for a few months. 

2. Potato chips: Buy it. Homemade chips are fun to eat, but “Lay’s are better. And Kettle are even better than Lay’s.”

3. Creme fraiche: Make it. “A 4-year-old could do it,” Reese writes. 

4. Camembert cheese: “If you think this sounds fun — which it is — give this a try.” The hassle factor is high, but “Is fishing a hassle? Is golfing a hassle? Whittling? Cheesemaking is a hobby, an art, an obsession, and a pleasure, and if you don’t feel this way about it you shouldn’t do it. Because it’s also definitely a hassle.”

5.  Mayonnaise: Make it and buy it, depending on the circumstances. Homemade mayo “is a magical food that manages to be simultaneously rich and ethereal, almost evaporating on the tongue.” However, Hellmann’s has its place, as homemade only lasts a few days and “it would be both exhausting and expensive to emulsify mayonnaise every time you wanted to make a tuna salad sandwich.”

What’s on your make it or buy it list?

— Rebekah Denn