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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   4502 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for March 5, 2023

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Sounds like an interesting topic, as someone who not good at baking I'm curious to learn more.

Here is an amazing chocolate cake mix, if you're looking for something you can make at home. I have high standards for chocolate cake and am happy to make one from scratch, but this mix does a darn good job. You'll still need to make the frosting yourself - I'd recommend a swiss meringue buttercream.

IMO box mixes are never worth it. They aren't actually any easier, since making a basic cake is already super duper easy. Dump ingredients in a bowl, mix, pour batter and bake. The only thing that a box mix saves you is measuring out dry ingredients. And more often than not, you're going to have a better cake if you make it from scratch! Box mixes are truly a ripoff which doesn't add value and only preys on novices who don't know better, imo.

That was certainly my belief in the past. This mix changed my mind.

Here is the recipe I use when I'm making a cake from scratch. It takes me about a half hour to put together (not counting baking time). The mix I linked to takes 5 minutes. Very little difference in the final result.

Now I'm hungry for chocolate cake.

I've made that recipe, actually. It took me almost no effort to put together, lol. Like I said, with a basic cake there's no need to follow the instructions about "do this, then this, then this". Just dump all the ingredients in your bowl, mix, and you're done. That's why I think box mixes are a ripoff, because making a cake from scratch is every bit as easy (unless you're trying to make a more advanced recipe like genoise or something, but a box mix isn't going to help you there).

It's not necessarily about ease of use. This video explains that mix cakes contain emulsifiers that allow for textures that would otherwise be difficult or impossible to achieve. And since these emulsifiers coat the flour at the particulate level, it's not the kind of thing you can do outside of an industrial process. Whether or not you actually like this effect is a matter of personal taste, but mix cakes and scratch cakes are decidedly not the exact same thing.

The mix @janeerie linked to doesn't have any emulsifiers on the ingredients list.

TIL, fair enough.

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