In general, you should place a comma before a conjunction only if it links two independent clauses.
Sally bit her brother, and she smacked him on the head.
Sally ran to the ice cream truck and hit the driver.
Sometimes, a comma should also be used for clarity.
He thought she had lit a candle and started to cry.
He thought she had lit a candle, and started to cry.
My question is, should a comma be used for clarity after a conjunction when it's preceded by a list?
Our afternoons were spent baking cookies or cupcakes or visiting the bakery.
Our afternoons were spent baking cookies or cupcakes, or visiting the bakery.
Answer
The comma makes it clearer and helps avoid a garden path sentence. I would prefer the second sentence,
Our afternoons were spent baking cookies or cupcakes, or visiting the bakery.
A rewrite might make this clearer on first reading:
Our afternoons were spent either visiting the bakery or baking cookies and cupcakes.
In this rewrite, some parallelism is set up with the "either ... or" construct. The "cookies or cupcakes" was changed to "cookies and cupcakes"; this might not be as precise, but the reader would not be surprised if you only baked cookies that afternoon and skipped the cupcakes.
An even simpler rewrite:
Our afternoons were spent either visiting the bakery or baking at home.
If your desire is to have a list and not confuse it with the alternatives, here is yet another rewrite:
Our afternoons were spent either visiting the bakery or baking cookies, cupcakes, or pies.
(Whether you use this form of listing of the Oxford comma or not, please be consistent throughout your writing. But that is another debate.)
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