The IKEA Baking Essential That's Less Than $1

If you're a regular baker, you know that this particular hobby can get expensive pretty quickly between ingredients, specialized equipment, and even just little expenses like paper towels. Luckily, while some essential kitchen tools can't easily be skimped on, there are others you can purchase cheap to save yourself some money. One such item is a mixing bowl, especially as IKEA sells one that's just $0.99. The FIKADAGS bowl is a handy little kitchen tool that's perfect for mixing together any number of baking ingredients. It's made of polypropylene plastic and is microwave, dishwasher, and freezer safe, meaning that low price fortunately doesn't come at the cost of convenience. 

It's four inches tall and can hold 74 ounces, so this mixing bowl is also big enough to mix together ingredients while not taking up a ton of room in your cabinets. It's ideal for not only baking, but prepping salads and storing food (with the help of some plastic wrap of course), making it truly versatile. The bowl is well-loved by buyers, with 406 reviews on the IKEA site at the time of writing boasting an average rating of 4.7 stars. Customers love the price, as well as the convenient size and the fact it's so lightweight. Daily Meal highlighted the product in our list of the best IKEA finds under $10, and naturally it's a great product to pick up if you need another mixing bowl for any reason.

The price of IKEA's FIKADAGS bowl is unmatched, with one of the cheapest mixing bowls from Walmart being $1.39. This bowl is metal, which some people may prefer to the plastic of the IKEA variety, and it's slightly larger too. However, the bowl currently only has five ratings online, and while they're positive, it doesn't inspire as much confidence as the hundreds of positive reviews that the FIKADAGS has received. There is also a $0.94 mixing bowl on the site, but at less than three inches tall, you won't be able to mix nearly as much.

Even the Dollar Tree, known for its cheap goods, can't match IKEA since all of its prices were controversially increased from $1 to $1.25 in 2022. While you can get a set of three bowls for $1.25 on Dollar Tree's site, they all seem to be much smaller than the FIKADAGS, which is inconvenient if you're mixing together a lot of ingredients for baking. These bowls also only have a few reviews and earned just 2.8 stars overall, which again, doesn't inspire much confidence in the product.

All in all, if you want a cheap and reliable bowl, IKEA's FIKADAGS is a solid option, especially since the brand is more widely renowned for its high quality than others selling at similar price points. You can even pick up some food at the café while shopping for it, including celebrity chef Andrew Zimmern's favorite IKEA dish, the moreish Swedish creamed roe.