Is it a semantics question? If yes, then YOU are not baking unless you get in the oven.

Actual baking occurs to premade cookies in your oven so you are, by definition baking something.

You can say that the MIXING was done by someone/thing else and that you are doing the baking.

I dont think any home baker can compare what they do to what a pro baker does because their baking is on a whole different level. Master bakers (not the flunkies that flip the mixer switch and pour formula-determined ingredients into the mixer) must understand the chemistry behind gluten, leaveners, fats, etcs.. that is what makes them a Baker with an uppercase "B".

I use time tested formulas for baking bread and cookies and cakes, I am a baker with a lowercase "b".

Thats the best I can do :-)

Do slice-n-bakes meet the dictionary definition? Who knows. What I know is that it does not meet my own definition. Slice-n-bakes qualify as heating, or even finishing. But no, true "baking" involves a wonderful alchemy, the mind-blowing concept of of taking disparate ingredients -- flour, butter, raw egg -- and turning them into a completely new form. Anyone who uses slice-n- bakes loses this magic. And it is their loss.

Bake: To prepare, as food, by cooking in a dry heat, either in an oven or under coals, or on heated stone or metal; as, to bake bread, meat, apples. - Courtesy of 1914 Webster

My mum used to make baked apples for my kinda, sorta step-brother, Mitchell, two or three years ago when he was too young to know what was really happening. He absolutely raved about how my mum made the BEST baked apples. He must have been so excited about them that he even managed to rope his birth mother, during split custody visits, to attempt baking apples. I think Mitchell's birth mother called my mum for the recipe.

They were frozen, boxed, Ms. Smith's baked apples. My mum popped them in the oven or in the microwave (I don't remember which). My mother bought the package. She baked the contents. She put them on a plate. She made them into dessert for a very happy little boy. She made Mitchell's birth mom at least a little jealous.

My mum never claimed to have made them from scratch. She baked by putting them in an oven nonetheless.

As I consider this question I keep thinking about the carrot-flavored-corn-nubbin cake mix as well, and I believe I see why otherwise well-meaning people do these things. It's not the convenience of pre-measured ingredients. It's that they don't have those ingredients in the kitchen at all! Lots of folks don't keep baking soda and powder, flour, or even eggs at home. Look in a typical urban-dweller's fridge and you are likely to find sixteen sodas, two oranges, and yesterday's Chinese takeout in a box. If that person suddenly gets a hankering for fresh-baked cookies, the ready-to-bake product provides an easy way to make those cookies without leaving a lot of baking supplies left over to get in the way.

I'd have to say technically yes.

my rationale: we eat very few cookies at a time in our household. I make a big batch of our favorite cookie dough and use my cookie scoop to freeze it all. Then, over the next month or so, I take out a handful at a time and bake them.

And when you think about it, if I can call taking a prepared cookie that I made, plopping it on a sheet and baking it, "baking"... then why can't the person doing the same thing with a prepared cookie someone else made call it that? That part really is the same, even if the making is very different.

I would never use the word "baking" on the day that I make the dough and freeze it. Um...I think I just call it "making" cookies.

I guess what I'm saying is, the making and baking are two different things, and just because you didn't do the making doesn't mean you didn't do the baking.

It's really more like faking than baking. I have two thoughts on this:

Many consumers not only don't have the kind of pantry to support spur-of-the-moment baking but they wouldn't even know where to begin. For instance, the term "cream the butter and sugar" wouldn't mean a thing to a novice.

I think that once a consumer starts down the road of prepared foods it changes the way they perceive flavors. If I ate a fake-bake cookie I would taste the preservatives because my palate is tuned to tasting real butter, real egg, real vanilla. Once your palate is tuned to the fake stuff I think the real stuff is too sublime (as in "where's the flavor?"). Then a taste/work ratio would calculate out to "not worth the trouble" to bake from scratch. Does that make sense?

This whole question actually has a pretty straight forward answer. Six key things happen for "baking" to occur.

1. Gas is developed
2. Gas is trapped and/or released
3. Starches gelatenize
4. Proteins coagulate
5. Moisture is driven off
6. Browning occurs

I would say that how you get to step one is irrelevant. Either you scratch mix or "cheat". No matter what, once you apply dry heat, you are baking.

That's my story and I'm stickin' to it.

Well done (heh, get it?) George. I'm with you.

Technically speaking, George is correct. Baking has occurred. But I think the "baked apple" story conveys another component of what we (as humans) consider baking (as well as cooking). It is about human caring and showing it by making something for either yourself and/or friends and loved ones. It didn't matter to that boy that a package was opened; someone cared enough to make him somthing he really liked and did it just for him. Since this is a food blog, ingredients matter. The concept is the same though. We bake something with the best ingredients to make the most wonderful thing we can. We then share that wonderful thing with ourselves, family, and friends. It both nourishes and enriches us. Now whether a "fresh baked cookie" from, say, today's industrial food chemistry product made by a person who for sure doesn't care one way or the other delivers the same "punch" as a made-from-scratch, made-from-real-food cookie you and your childen enjoyed making together, is a question only each person can answer for themselves. I do think that the concept of baking does go beyond the "technical".

They are called "ready-to-bake" - this implies that everything EXCEPT the actual baking has been done for you. so yes, you are still baking. I wouldn't call the finished product home-made, or credit you for making them, but it certainly is baked by you.

I think we need a new word for the process of making the mix from the raw ingredients (the bit that "ready-to-bake" does for you.)

Who gives a flying f*? Really?

I am always amazed at the philosophical questions of foodies about what is considered what and how everything "should be". I am not saying there isn't a right or ethical way of doing things but semantics questions like this have no right response except an etimological one, and even that you'll have people arguing over the fine details of it.

I wrestle with a version of this question often - doctored cake mix vs. made from scratch cake? I have to say honestly that I get the most raves from my doctored up cake mix cakes. I agree to a point with Vanessa - I can taste the difference in ingredients, but most "regular" people can't, or actually prefer the artificial flavors. If I ever make a business out of my cakes, I will have to take a stand and decide which side of the fence to be on, but for now, I am faking AND baking.

Simon wins. How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? "Baked" or not, save a cookie for me.

Anyway, Kate, you promised us your own answer so let's have it (or did you post it under an assumed name?)

My own answer? It's still baking, even if it lacks the knowledge or skill required to actually make a cookie.

I look at it as sort of analogous to martial arts levels. You have your black belts and your white belts, and then you have the kids who know karate when they see it, and can even fake a punch. Are they still doing karate? Kinda. And even a "kinda" means a basic "Yes".

Still, I have trouble giving mad props to anyone who took less effort to make a product than the child who makes a small cake using an easy-bake oven.

Not to mention some of those Easy-Bake Oven kids should be drawing hazard pay.

There's a fine line, and I have no idea where it's drawn. I have similar questions pretty regularly. Sometimes I'll make a quick, easy (but entirely homemade) dinner, and my boyfriend will tell me what a good cook I am. Invariably I'll protest that I didn't even really "cook" anything: I just cut up a bunch of veggies and threw them in a pan together. In my head, a certain amount of effort has to go into it before I'll call it cooking (not that I think there's any kind of hard and fast definition buried in my babbling).