Betty Crocker's New Cake Mix

[gusherb]

Insightful article, Launderess. I'm tempted to get a second oven thermometer just to make sure the first one is right. I've suspected the longer bake times are due to how fast the burner cycles on this oven, I've never seen an oven burner cycle so fast. And in the article they suggested that the recipes on the box are indeed being conservative as I suspected.

The message I'm getting is that there is no right or wrong when it comes to how hot or cool an oven runs, but the perfectionist in me doesn't want to accept this and wants to experiment and analyze this oven and the overall subject at hand until I'm blue in the face.

 

[johnrk]

Weighing

Funny thing, scales. Coming from health care I'd see variations of 10+ pounds from one set to another weighing patients. It's why they tell people to always weigh themselves on one set all the time. Most of those little bathroom scales aren't very accurate at all--digital or not.

I can remember as a chemistry major in college using those Mettler scales; heaven only knows what kids use today. Most accurate scales are still the kind with weights on one side and the item on the other.

Here in the humid South, the weight of flour can vary enormously from season to season and even week to week. And that's with air conditioning! I've found that weighing, for breads and cakes at least, can at times be correct and at other times be way, way off. The trick is to do enough bread doughs and enough cake batters to know what it should 'feel' like and look like.

 

[thomasortega]

It reminds me somebody I know very well... (I won't say it's my husband)

He cooks amazingly well (I never saw him cooking)

The only thing he "cooked" for me was cookies... only once..... he says he made it from scratch.

Coincidently, it tasted exactly like Toll House, that one that comes in a giant tablet you just need to break and toss into the oven.

His "homemade from scratch" was so perfect that i had the impression I saw the Toll House logo in one of the cookies.

Now, for me, a typical Brazilian... There's nothing more disgusting than boxed, canned, packed, industrialized, whatever food. Cake mix? NEVER! It can be the best brand in the world, it will always be a boxed crap. Real cake is made from scratch, and I mean it.

Obs. I REALLY know how to cook and I love cooking.

 

[thomasortega]

... and about buttering the pan...

Come on guys... One can do that in 30 seconds using a paper towel, butter and some elbow grease. No dirty fingers!

Spray? nah... It's useful in the bedroom, never in the kitchen.

 

[mikael3]

I can’t exactly explain why I dislike buttering the pans, but it really gets on my nerves.  It must be some childhood trauma that I’ve repressed!!  I do use butter, though, since the various sprayed products leave a little taste that doesn’t appeal to me.

 

[launderess]

If you bake often enough

A pre-made mixture of Crisco, vegetable oil, and flour for "greasing" baking pans can be made in advance.

https://iambaker.net/homemade-pan-release-baking-spray/

 

[ea56]

Thanks,

Thats a great hint Launderess, I’ll have to give it a try. The baking sprays do impart a slight flavor, not particularlly bad. I’ll get one of those silicon pastry brushes, so it will be easier to clean.
Eddie

 

[launderess]

Have always used a folded piece of wax paper to slather on Crisco or whatever shortening, then flour. Takes about a few seconds at best, and leaves one without greasy fingers.

Do not like any of the "PAM" type sprays; they leave a nasty residue on pans/bakeware that not even automatic dishwashers seem to shift. That residue also turns my aluminum and stainless steel pans an odd shade of brown/tan.

 

[norgeway]

Flour is the key

You can sift and weigh and whatever else you want to do. But if you don't use a good soft winter wheat flour. You won't have luck with cakes muffins or biscuits. Gold medal is fine for yeast bread. But I would no sooner try to make a biscuit with it as I would try to fly a broom. White lily is not as good as it once was. They don't make it in Tennessee anymore and it really is not the same. Biscuits need self rising flour I like virginias best or adluh for fine layer or angel food. Swans down cake flour most old biscuit makers never measure anything and turn out biscuits much better than mine. Real lard also makes for better biscuits but I rarely use it crisco is fine

 

[norgeway]

Most

Old ladies break every rule when making biscuits and get perfect results every time. Most keep a bowl full of self rising flour in their kitchen. They add a handful of crisco or lard. Pour some buttermilk on that then mix the milk and shortening together well then work in enough flour to get a soft dough working the dough three or more times as much as you are supposed too then pinch off the dough make the biscuits by hand and most bake them in a 500 degree oven when they are done they side more flour into the bowl on top of what's left for the next time

 

[appnut]

Oh good grief Hans,  That is breaking just about every rule.  But in some ways I don't blame them.  I kinda do drop biscuits like that and they aren't too bad. 

 

[nmassman44]

I can tell you first hand that I tried that cake mix at the top of the thread. I was intrigued at first when I saw it at the store. I bought the Yellow Cake and the Chocolate Devils Food one. I made the yellow cake with high hopes that maybe it would be good, but it wasn't. It was bland and OMG so dry. I baked it using a conventional bake instead of convection baking it so that might have caused it to dry out. Not even frosting it helped. Needless to say it went down the pig aka garbage disposal.

 

[norgeway]

I tried one too

It wasn't dry but it wasn't good either it had a artificial taste

 

[mikael3]

Speaking of grandmas that never measure anything...

 

My grandmother made excellent biscuits pretty much as you describe.  But she made them almost every day for decades—in other words, thousands of times.  I don’t make anything that frequently so I have to check myself with scales and measuring spoons and all that.  The problem with baking is you can’t adjust it at the end, the way you can with other things.  What you bake is what you eat.

 

[johnrk]

Cream Biscuits

I used to make biscuits intuitively because I made them almost daily for the ones I loved. No measurement.

For anyone who loves biscuits, check out James Beard's cream biscuit recipe, where he uses heavy cream instead of milk. They are amazing.

 

[frigilux]

I'm a fan of cream biscuits, as well. Have never made any other kind.

 

[lordkenmore]

Baking powder biscuits were somewhat common when I was growing up. My mother would make drop biscuits to round out a dinner. I think chilli was one such time. I think the recipe was probably Fannie Farmer (that was her basic cookbook). I think I even got tired of them at some point...but then later on embraced them again as something that could round out a meal.

 

I haven't baked them much in recent years. I had a phase of having them a year or so ago, although I'm sure that people in the south would be appalled with the recipe that used cooking oil and whole wheat flour. But it was a good match for the realities of today--whole wheat flour is healthier, and I don't keep solid cooking fat around (options all too expensive--like butter--or too unhealthy--like cheap margarine).

 

[lordkenmore]

It's interesting reading the comments about this cake mix above from people who hated it... I'd been half thinking maybe of getting a box to make myself a birthday cake when that horrible day rolls around again...but I won't bother now, and just keep my 20+ year streak of no birthday cakes intact.