Betty Crocker Downsizes Cake Mixes To 15.25 oz.

[westie2]

i got to thinking about the cake mixes past and I was sure at one time it was add water only.  Sure enough women griped that they didn't add enough to make it home made.  So dried eggs were removed and the whole eggs were added as ingredients.  i think back then also the cake mix had solid shortening (lard ?) also blended in.  now it is add eggs and oil with the water.

 

here is a good timeline of the Betty Crockers cake mix.

 

http://www.dvo.com/recipe_pages/cakemixes/Over_50_Years_of_Cake_Mix_Success.html

 

[mattl]

I have to agree with others here, if it's worth making, it's worth doing from scratch.  A good basic cake is not that much harder to make, and the better stuff you can't make from a mix.   and extra 5 or 10 minutes to make from scratch is well worth it.  I've pretty much decided to avoid all processed, or prepared food, and feel much better for it.

 

[launderess]

Since One Always Used The "Cream" Method

For making box pound cakes when one first started out baking as a wee slip of a thing, it wasn't that much of a stretch to step up to making the entire thing from scratch.

Homemade "Cake Mixes"

All one needs to to is measure out the dry ingredients (by weight is best) ahead of time and store. This can be anything from a covered bowel the day or so before to putting in a zip-lock bag for longer term storage. When you think about it that is all boxed cakes mixes are except they add things to increase shelf life both in the box and after the product is baked.

If one really wishes to get fancy and save time subsitute dry milk or buttermilk if the recipe calls for it then all one need do is "add water",along with eggs and so forth.

Personally cannot see spending the prices they want for boxed stuff when flour is on sale often enough and can be used for other things as well. If one bakes allot it also is much cheaper to purchase cake flour in large sacks from commercial vendors.

Mixing A Boxed Cake By Hand:

Whenever Mother Dear made a boxed cake (normally Duncan Hines) one always remembered reading the mixing directions that stated if doing the thing by hand to beat 200 (or was it 300?) strokes.

 

[launderess]

I've Converted Many A Recipe To Weight

Even when directions are given in volume. Professional bakers and cooks have used weight for measuring when baking for ages and there isn't any reason to stop now. For one thing you never know how accurate particular vessels are marked.

The Cake Bible gives pretty accurate standard weights for most flours, sugars and other common ingredients (and some uncommon as well). I've used them to scale flour and what not when baking bread various recipes including "The Bread Lovers Bread Machine Cookbook"

When Fanny Farmer set about writing one of the first printed cookbooks to be sold in the United States she had a heck of a time when testing various recipes, especially for baked goods. Women/cooks used all manner of measurements much of them depending upon what was used in the "old country" for themselves or their mothers, grandmothers, etc....

 

[hunter]

the most lucid explanation I've seen..

...for why we use cup measures in the USA (and Canada? I don't know) is that, being frontier societies, scales and weights were heavy, and expensive. So folks used a 'teacup' for a measure. This evolved into our 8 ounce cup.

Logical, thought I.

 

[lordkenmore]

One question I'm wondering about is the difference between a cake baked from scratch vs. a cake made from a mix, or bought in a grocery store. From my limited experience years back, it seems to me that the cake mixes and grocery store cakes were noticeably lighter. But that is from very limited experience--I can only recall my mother baking one from scratch cake, which was a recipe that probably put a priority on "get it done fast". Plus it was baked with regular flour, not any sort of special cake flour. My own cake baking experience is pretty limited (and has been non-existent in recent years).

 

[launderess]

Generally Speaking

Most cakes are made with cake flour which is lighter and has less gluten than "all purpose". Also there are certain cakes that should be dense versus very light, but in general commercial mixes and cakes made for mass production (for sale in supermarkets and so forth)have various was to make their products lighter.

Finally commercial bakeries use very controlled conditons most housewives could only dream about.

 

[toggleswitch]

I believe we use volume here because of the huge number of people that speak the same language.

In smaller countries it becomes a PITA to accurately and quickly translate "teaspoon", "tablespoon" "cup" etc. from country to country across languages and have them mean the same amount.

5ml
15ml
230ml are more universal and easily understood "over there!"

You wanna die with "not standard" ?
Greek recipes tend to be conveyed with measures such as

demi-tasse cups
wine glasses
water glasses
"sweets" spoon
"tablespoon"

SHOOT ME NOW!
WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN in terms of quantity

So their "formal" recipes (by weight) are difficult for me (metrics); and their "casual" recipes (with non-standard measures) are not much better!

 

[frigilux]

Oh, those crazy Greeks, LOL.

We are lucky to have today's detailed, well-written recipes. I own a cookbook made in South Dakota of "area recipes" from around 1900. Some of them have no directions whatsoever. Several of the yeast bread recipes are like that. I guess a young housewife was just expected to know the bread-making process.

Others are written in paragraph form, which makes it difficult to organize the ingredients you'll need to prepare the recipe.

[this post was last edited: 2/28/2012-02:03]

 

[lordkenmore]

"We are lucky to have today's detailed, well-written recipes."

We probably are. And books/TV shows/whatever that teach why something is important can be quite useful. I was amazed at how much one can learn by watching Julia Child's old TV shows.

At the same time, however, it's easy to get trapped in a recipe prison where one does exactly what the recipe says, whether or not that recipe exactly matches one's needs/desires. And I wonder how well exact recipes age. Ingredients can and do change over the years, and thus an exact recipe from several decades ago might not work quite the same today.

 

[mattl]

The true basics don't change, flour is flour, eggs are still eggs, and milk is still milk- though with varying amounts of milk fat.  Now if you use something like  evaporated milk the can size like many others have shrunk over the years, 1 recipe I make now needs a second can opened to reach the needed amount, but all in all the basics of baking are as they have been.

 

As to recipe prison - how so?  If you like something you make it if it no longer meets your needs why would you make it?  Just curious...

 

[mixfinder]

Easy Peasy

Mixes are sold by weight. The heaviest and cheapest ingredient is sugar. Soft flour is used along with special leavenings, diatastics and conditioners to create an airy cake regardless of how it is or isn't beaten or treated. Fat and sodium are cheap and easy preservatives as well as many other chemicals added as stabilizers. Bottom line, mixes have more calories because of a higher ratio of fat, flour and unhealthy sodium than homemade. Bekery cakes are even worse. Recipes are ratios and mixing instructions the template for okay, good or extraordinary cakes. In small recipes, variances are more tolerated than in quantity cooking where weights are almost always used. Modern flours don't require sifting and if so it can easily be done in a processor. Room temperature ingredients have more to do with successful outcomes than precise measurements. Rosy Levy Beranbaum uses a recipe grid which gives you a choice of cups, weight or metric. The template is in the text and its distracting to follow and easy to mix the measurement grid offerings of volume, metric and weight having a recipe failure. Rose also advocates slow and minimal mixing of the cake which makes them more dense than most American counterparts and certainly more so than mixes. I say cut the recipe hyperbole crap of modern TV chefs who puff themselves up with a million bowls, tools and steps which intimidate the novice cook. Clear the clutter, get a stand mixer and older Betty Crocker Picture Cookbook and you'll make wonderful cakes. I have 4 recipes, Hot Water Fudge, 1234 Cake, Chiffon Cake and Pound Cake that can be blended and adapted to make just about every cake ever heard of. The hugest failure is over baking and creating flavored styrofoam. All that said, adding 5 other packages or ingredients to a mix to make a dessert is something I can accept moving away from the purity of homemade. I like the effort, appliances, tools, and steps of making any recipe as involved as it can be combined with the the trill of the beat to test my mettle. As long as each baker is happy it is not mine to lecture, judge or offer input.

 

[lordkenmore]

When talking about "recipe prison" I was thinking about cooking in general...something I probably should have mentioned given that this thread started talking about cake mixes. Or else not brought up at all. (It was late when I posted the above, and I think my mind was partly distracted by the tuna talk above.)

With baking, one does often need to use an exact recipe. Which is possibly one reason I never really got into baking, apart from bread: everything needs to be exactly right, or else disaster hits.

Why make a recipe one doesn't like? No sense in that. But in recipes where things don't need to be exact, why not make small adjustments to match tastes/needs? Many people do, of course, but I have known of "recipe slaves."

Ingredient character changes are also probably less of an issue with baking than regular cooking. I'm not sure how much things have changed over the years...but I have heard many people mourning various changes. James Beard felt the character of meat had changed during his life (and not for the better). Back to baking, I've heard that buttermilk is a much different product now, and I think I've heard some people express a feeling that it doesn't work as well in a given recipe.

 

[hunter]

regional differences even intra-USA

One thing that makes baking different, and might be why folks like mixes, is that there are regional differences in ingredients, even inside the USA.

When I moved to New England from the NYC area, I noted that sugar was quite different. The grains were larger and I found to get the same results I got previously, I had to put the sugar in a food processor for a moment or two.

Flour varies in protein depending on where it is grown; soft southern flour is better for cakes and (American) biscuits than northern harder flours.

Try to find good whipping cream. It is NOT full fat cream, but instead lower fat cream with gums in it as whipping aids. Meh. (Good thing I don't do dairy anymore).

 

[spiralator60]

Buttermilk and Baking

I very much agree with John's comment about baking with buttermilk. What is widely available in stores today has a different "mouth feel" than the product of, say, 40 years ago. This creamy, or to some heavy, texture is what is described as what makes the finished cooked product as being "filling." The current product is to many a lot lighter in texture, to the point of being watery.

It dates me, I know, but buttermilk that used to be sold in glass bottles was notorious for the somewhat greasy film that it left inside the container, and drinking glasses. This was because of the high fat content, as well as the bits of actual butter, present in the liquid after churning cream.

 

[launderess]

Buttermilk Sold Today

Is NOTHING like the stuff of old of old.

Rather than the by-product of churning butter out of cream, today's "buttermilk" is pasteurized, homogenized, then clutured thing for production on a vast scale. If one examines the labels on containers it most always clearly states "cultured" buttermilk.

Think it may be possible in the USA to find the real thing, but not sure. Know in parts of India traditional buttermilk is still easily found and sold.

And if you think real buttermilk is hard to find, forget seeking out clabber. Unless one owns a dairy farm it just isn't going to happen.

 

[mixfinder]

No Culture Left

Pastuerization wiped out naturally souring milk and cream. Fat is not a reason to add buttermilk but for drinking, "Bavarian" varieties have more fat. The acid in buttermilk works in concert with the leavening for more oven spring and to reduce gluten formation while mixing. In yeasted breads the culture medium in buttermilk makes a nice lunch for yeast bacteria to feed on.
Whipping cream can be as low as 31% and legal so that is what many store brands are. Heavy Cream is 36% butter fat and more often branded varieties. Restaurant Heavy cream is 44% butter fat and designed for high heat cooking so it thickens in a saute pan and won't curdle in extended baking times. Older cream whips better so look for shorter expiration dates if you need it right away. Cream whips much better at medium speed than high and if you add sugar before whipping the finish product is much more stable. Ultra Pastuerized cream does not whip as well because the high heat of pastuerization can cause fat cells to burst and then they cannot trap air.
Lord, I am with you. Regardless of baking or cooking I almost never use a recipe or a measuring device. It goes much faster, clean up is a breeze and I name it when it comes out of the oven. If you understand process and ratio you don't need a piece of paper to tell you what to do.

 

[launderess]

Professional Bakers/Cooks Measure By Weight

For it makes dealing with ingredients easier, but allows the scaling of a recipe up or down faster and much more accurate. One key one has always found is that it's much better to do so via the metric system (grammes,milliliters, etc..) than pounds, ounces, etc.

If one understands what the proper ratios are for what one is making (cake, bread, pudding, whatever...), then it is merely a matter of plugging in the proper measure by weight of ingredients to get where one needs to go. This is how professional bakers can take a recipe for say pound cake and make enough batter for enough layers to make a wedding cake or several smaller ones.

The Cake Bible along with several other great books speaks to understanding ratios and proportions for baking.

 

[launderess]

Speaking of Pound Cake & Weights

That is how the thing got it's name.

Original recipes for pound cakes called for flour, eggs, butter, and milk in measures of "pounds" depending upon size and or number being made.

Regarding standard weights:

Current American usage give eight ounces for a cup, two cups to a pint and four quarts makes a gallon. One pint of water weighs one pound.

However for the UK twenty fluid counces made an imperial pint, therefore the Imperial gallon was 25% larger than an American one.

But in the British empire, it took 20 (fluid) ounces to make an imperial pint, making the Imperial gallon 25% bigger than the American gallon.

Hence the common American claim that "a pint is a pound the world around" pitted against the English statement that "a pint of water weighs a pound and a quarter".

, 8 ounces make a cup, 2 cups make a pint, two pints make a quart, 4 quarts make a gallon. A pint of water weighs a pound.

 

[twintubdexter]

sometimes it pays to be a bitch

Concerning the downsizing craze that's used to cheat customers, recently I noticed a change in toothpaste. We all know the box and tube size has shrunk, but I began to have problems with the Crest Clinical stuff I like. The consistency of the paste started to get thinner and thinner. It became a race to see if I could get the brush in my mouth before the paste ran off (how I wish I had this problem with food on a fork). I sort of suspected that more water was being added to the mix. Think of it, a teaspoon of water added to millions of tubes saves a lot on manufacturing costs while the tube size remains the same. The net weight doesn't change much either.

I decided to email Procter & Gamble and they expressed their concern and asked me to send them the lot# on the box and also the receipt! I told them that this problem has existed for the last dozen tubes I've purchased and besides who keeps receipts for toothpaste?

They sent me 12 coupons for free large tubes worth about $50 so I was "pacified."

It only takes a second to find the email address on most packages so bitch, moan and complain.