Evil Week: Pass Off Cheap Baked Goods As the Expensive Stuff

Welcome to Evil Week, our annual dive into all the slightly sketchy hacks we’d usually refrain from recommending. Want to weasel your way into free drinks, play elaborate mind games, or, er, launder some money? We’ve got all the info you need to be successfully unsavory.

Usually I make it my business to transform store bought stuff into something homemade-adjacent, like manipulating frozen pie crust to trick your family into thinking it was made from scratch. However, that kind of deception only works for family members who value effort and skill. What about those jerks who only care about worth, status, and brands? You can’t show up to Thanksgiving with a homemade humble pie. You better walk in with a fancy box of designer brownies. Here’s how to fake it.

Get the packaging first

You have two choices here: Actually buy a quantity of high-end baked goods and destroy your budget for a relative who never liked you much (she married into the family anyway!), or fake it with a cheaper (but still delicious) product. To fake it effectively, you need the real packaging. Most bougie bakeries love to show off, so they have branded boxes and tissue paper. So go to the store and ask for some. If you’re comfortable lying right off the bat, say your mom just bought some cookies but you think you’ll need a box. The staff will often be happy to supply you with packaging, no money spent. You can also order one thing—a cookie for your drive home, perhaps?—and request packaging. Even if it’s not the appropriate size for one cookie, they normally don’t care. Sometimes you can be dead honest and say you’d simply like some of their packaging. Assess the situation, and add a few extra thank yous.

Fill the box with care

Much like Indiana Jones replacing a golden idol with a bag of sand, you’ll need a cheap replacement that will fool someone who isn’t actually paying attention. Remember: Low cost doesn’t have to mean low quality. The best options are scratch-made baked goods, or semi scratch-made. Factory punched cookies and cakes like Entemann’s will be a dead give away. Instead, go to the bakery section of a supermarket you like. Stores like Shoprite, Publix, Whole Foods, and Wegmans all have a bakery staff that bake a good deal of the products in-house. They scoop real cookies and fill real pies at a fraction of the prices a high-end bakery will charge. (Read here for all of the other ways grocery store bakeries can help you.)

Sometimes you can even pre-order things and ask for small adjustments. Trying to pass off grocery cookies for the giant ones from Levain? See if the bakers will double up the cookie dough for you. Or ask if you can buy the raw cookie dough, and adjust your baking at home to suit. Trying to fool your annoying cousin obsessed with those giant brownies they got once from Amy’s Bread? Ask the grocery store bakers to leave a sheet of brownies un-sliced. (Ghirardelli and White Lily also have excellent boxed mixes that you can cut to whatever size you want at home.)

Then, all that’s left to do is neatly arrange your low-cost baked goods in your bougie bakery box with care, and you’re ready to take the stage.

You can fake almost anything, as long as the bakery in question has recognizable packaging you can get your hands on. Try it with bagels, macarons, doughnuts, cupcakes, banana pudding, or full-sized cakes. The trick is most effective when used on “victims” who can’t tell the difference between the real thing and a substitute, even though they pretend they can—i.e., those family members who hold expensive things in high esteem but don’t really know why. (You can easily spot them: They’re the ones with their heads up their own asses.) Present your very expensive goodies to your uncle who always asks “how much money are you making this year” without exactly asking. Maybe this’ll shut him up.