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Speaking as an American, this is a part of American culture that's so weird -- using a pre-made mix as a base for a recipe that it's not designed for. That rec
by gwd 1y ago
Speaking as an American, this is a part of American culture that's so weird -- using a pre-made mix as a base for a recipe that it's not designed for. That recipe looks like it just has flour, cocoa powder, baking powder, and salt pre-mixed (with a load of other garbage you probably don't need). People don't seem to realize that you can just buy those ingredients yourself. It doesn't take that much extra time to measure them out, and it's way cheaper.
- mh- 1y agoI think people know you can purchase baking ingredients. There are both familiarity (consistency) and convenience aspects here.
- rjh29 1y agoIf you're only making cakes occasionally it's a pain to buy all the ingredients and have them sit around. Besides, even professional bakers use premix.
- rimprobablyly 1y agoOh no they don't.
- ericpauley 1y agoOh yes they do: https://youtu.be/CZDFwqHkPec https://youtu.be/CZDFwqHkPec (Also linked above)
- llbbdd 1y agoThe confidence. Why wouldn't they? The nobility inherent in suffering more labor to make a worse final product?
- bigstrat2003 1y agoYou put in barely more labor to get a better final product, because cakes (and brownies, etc) made from boxed mixes never turn out as well as those from scratch.
- llbbdd 1y agoThat's just not really true though. There are other ingredients in box mixes, such as conditioners and other incremental improvements grandma doesn't have a container of on her counter. You certainly have more control over the final product if you mix everything from scratch, but these mixes are popular for a reason; they make good cake without having to reinvent decades of kitchen science and allow bakers to focus on stuff that matters instead of dick-measuring about who can sift and measure flour the best.
- Spivak 1y agoThe amount of people in the cooking enthusiast world that dismiss chemistry and assume it makes the end product worse is just a socially acceptable form of ludditeism. Meanwhile in the professional world Sysco does 80 billion dollars of business.
- llbbdd 1y agoYeah, there's a pervasive and strange focus on purity in cooking, for whatever definition satisfies that term. All food is the result of a sequence of chemical and physical reactions; understanding those reactions might take away some of the magic but also allows you to systemically and precisely hone the outcome. I think some people resent that the magic can be explained and improved.
- Spivak 1y agoAnd it's not as if boxed cake mix is better or that the properties of commercial cake mix can't be known and used in your own from scratch baking but it's so frustrating when people are just like, "just make recipe without all the chemistry and it will be better" as if any deviation from what they consider natural is automatically worse or that those "weird" ingredients are in there for no reason other than to give you cancer or something. A fun example from history is that currants used to be used for making all flavors of jams because they're high in pectin and would look at modern chefs funny for using this unnatural white chemical.
- al_borland 1y agoWhen a baker makes the cake from scratch I’m alway disappointed. Boxes mixes taste better. They can’t beat the emulsifiers in those box mixes.
- nkrisc 1y agoWhat’s the difference between making the mix yourself, or just buying the exact same ingredients already mixed at the correct ratio?
- throwaway422432 1y agoIf you mix it yourself, you know exactly what is in it. This means you can vary/substitute ingredients such as heart salt for regular salt if you're on a DASH diet (half the sodium chloride is replaced with potassium chloride).
- Eisenstein 1y agoDo you know if that will even work? Baking is not cooking -- you can't just swap ingredients and get a similar result.
- rkomorn 1y agoYes but that's the fun part of baking: thinking you know better, substituting things, failing miserably and then either: a- gaslighting yourself into thinking it's better than the original b- blaming the original recipe c- posting a one-star review on the recipe saying you replaced eggs with banana and it came out horrible Eventually, you succeed, and get to claim you were right all along (mostly because the trash can cannot speak of your failures).
- account42 1y agoYou can't swap arbitrarily but it's also not like the baking ingredients are the input to a pseudo random number generator that selects the result. You can absolutely make it more/less sweet, more/less chocolatey, more/less moist, add hints of different flavors etc.
- ufo 1y agoCommercial cake mix is ultraprocessed,you likely won't find those ingredients in your pantry. The flour is bleached, they add emulsifiers you wouldn't find at home, the vegetable shortening is jydrogenated, etc.
- phil21 1y agoI’d say it’s probably more common they use mixes than they create from scratch from the limited experience and talks I’ve had with bakers on the subject. The professional part are the modifications, frosting, and decoration. Hard to beat the premade mixes for a base though.
- data-ottawa 1y agoSlightly off topic, but I’m loving comparing all these sub discussions to programming. The issues of boxes changing and dependency management, and this thread is rough analogy to coders who just glue prepackaged stuff together or overuse of packages. I don’t know if there’s any real takeaway but I had never thought of programming problems in this way — things always felt a bit more abstract than cooking is.
- SamoyedFurFluff 1y agoAs an Asian I understood this as the same as when I buy curry cubes from the store. It would definitely mess up my day if the size of a bouillon cube changed even though I know I could make my own broth.
- AlotOfReading 1y agoCake mixes aren't just the ingredients in a convenient package. They're a complicated ingredient that produces different results than mixing from scratch. Adam Ragusea did a piece on the differences awhile ago: https://youtu.be/CZDFwqHkPec https://youtu.be/CZDFwqHkPec Boxed mixes came out of the same "scientific foods" fad in midcentury America that gave us things like Jello.
- flyinghamster 1y agoAlso, premade mixes are a godsend if you or a family member needs a gluten-free diet. I haven't (yet) noticed any shrinkflation, but I've certainly noticed that the King Arthur gluten-free muffin mix is noticeably more generous than any of the others I've tried.
- AlecSchueler 1y agoRelevant content begins at 03:40 But I'm not sure why they think I can't but the same emulsifiers etc online or at the local Asian grocery store.
- gwd 1y agoThanks for that. So there are basically three things he mentions: 1. Emulsifiers actually make the texture better 2. The flour they use has had some extra steps 3. They can use industrial machinery to smash their shortening and flour together in a way that's really not possible in a kitchen, that does make the texture better. As someone else has said, it should in theory be possible to buy "better" flour; and you could buy emulsifiers, or use more egg yolk (which has a natural emulsifier), or use Crisco (which the video says has emulsifiers in it). So it's really the last one that's not easily replicate-able at home. There is one thing he keeps repeating which I disagree with: "You're not going to be able to do a better job of engineering than the experts at Duncan Hines." Yes, both Duncan Hines and I are optimizing in part for taste. And I have some constraints compared with Duncan Hines: I don't have industrial grade machinery to mash shortening into flour; I can't experiment with and precisely measure an arbitrary number of potentially exotic ingredients. But Duncan Hines has several additional constraints they're optimizing against which don't apply to me: They have to make it simple enough for an average person to make. They have to aim for a "median" palate. They have to make it shelf-stable for years. They have the pressure to shave pennies off the cost (as evidenced by TFA), which may mean (e.g.) buying cheaper chocolate or using a lightly lower quality fat than would be ideal. So I disagree that it's a given that Duncan Hines' cake mix will be better than something I can make from scratch. I will, however, concede that there are reasonable advantages to using a "commercial base".
- brian-armstrong 1y agoThis sounds like the argument people make against Hawaiian food. Why use Spam! You can eat real food you know! Thing is, once something has been done a certain way, it becomes a tradition in its own right. It doesn't really matter how it got to be that way, but once people have nostalgia for it, they want to keep doing it the same way.
- pessimizer 1y agoSpam is a hell of a lot harder to make than cake mix. Cake mix is literally just measuring, and what was in the box when your mom made it isn't from the same suppliers, or probably of the same quality, as what's in the box now.
- brian-armstrong 1y agoBut these bakers don't want "cake mix", they want the specific Betty Crocker cake mix
- sniffers 1y agoWhat's in the box is unknown to most people. Unknowable, even. They are surprisingly complex mixes.
- AlecSchueler 1y agoDon't they have ingredients lists or is that a very European thing?
- sevensor 1y agoDo you, does anybody, actually eat Campbell’s concentrated Cream of Mushroom Soup? It’s nominally a soup, but it’s designed to be an ingredient. It’s the foundation of all our favorite gloppy casseroles.
- WillAdams 1y agoI was actually quite fond of it as a soup when I was young --- then I broke my jaw on the first day of summer vacation when I was 14 and after 6 weeks of living on various liquid foods, haven't had it since.
- Marsymars 1y agoI was on a liquid diet for a much shorter amount of time and my dad noted that he could blend chili. I still like chili and would probably default to that if I had to go back onto a liquid diet.
- al_borland 1y agoThat was my sister’s favorite soup as a kid. I ended up having it a lot as a result as well.
- Daneel_ 1y agoYes, I’ve eaten it as soup for decades. It’s great with some pasta mixed through it too.
- sevensor 1y agoI stand corrected !
- spiderice 1y agoMy mom always used Campbell's Cream of Chicken soup as gravy to put on white rice when I was a kid. It wasn't until I was a teenager that I learned it was actually a soup. Mentally, there is now way I could eat it that way. It'd feel like I was just eating gravy.
- Xcelerate 1y agoHomemade cake mixes rarely win blind taste tests against box mix. I baked two cakes with and without glycerol monostearate—it really does make a difference.
- hybridtupel 1y agoyes for your health
- gusgus01 1y agoI'm not sure a blanket statement like that can be made just because this will be so subjective and anecdotal. From a brief google, it would look pretty split. AI summary falls on the homemade cake mix side, but reading through some of the blog posts from both sides, I would really hesitate to view any of them as reliable just because bakers are going to be biased towards their preferred method, both psychologically and skill-wise. From my experience in baking competitions, my family and I have had better luck with homemade mixes. I'm not disagreeing since taste is subjective, and for blind taste tests I could definitely see most people choosing what they are used to which would probably be box mixes. I'd be interested to see if culturally it's different since I think box mixes are generally more popular in the USA.
- thaumasiotes 1y agohttps://satwcomic.com/family-time https://satwcomic.com/family-time On the merits of using a presold mix, you're likely to get a smooth batter with much less stirring effort.
- ip26 1y agoThere’s a standardization element. You can find the same premix anywhere in the country, at reasonable prices, and it keeps well. At competitive pricing, I would even tend to think of premix as just another bulk ingredient, like “1 cup flour” vs “1 cup premix FOO”. You can see this with baking powder, chili powder, and curry powder, which you could definitely mix yourself but few bother to do.
- mattkrause 1y agoDepending where you are, low (and high) protein flour can be hard to find at the supermarket.
- bigstrat2003 1y ago> People don't seem to realize that you can just buy those ingredients yourself. It doesn't take that much extra time to measure them out, and it's way cheaper. Yep, box cake mixes are a scam. They don't actually add any value, but people love to buy them because they (mistakenly) believe making cake is hard. In reality, most cakes can be made by dumping the ingredients together in a bowl, mixing, and then baking.
- bluGill 1y agoThe only thing they as is most people don't have cake flour even though it is near the flour in the store. (5 boxes vs a whole shelf of all purpose). Little things like that matter but many try to cheat anyway and then the box is better.
- account42 1y agoI've baked many delicious cakes using the standard flour. For some recipes it will matter, for many it's not as big of a difference in the final result.
- spiderice 1y agoSo confidently incorrect. The proof that they add value is in their popularity. They also do, in fact, contain ingredients that people don't have at home, which matter.
- account42 1y agoMickey D's is also a whole lot more popular than home-made burgers. Proof of their quality according to your logic, I guess.
- throw0101a 1y ago> In reality, most cakes can be made by dumping the ingredients together in a bowl, mixing, and then baking. Most 'proper' baking needs a scale, and how many American kitchens have that?
- lifeformed 1y agoI bet you couldn't consistently make a cake even half as good as a box mix for even triple it's cost. People who don't bake often then baking is just throwing some stuff together and heating it up. It's very hard to get consistent results! It's literally an exact science. Did you weigh all the ingredients exactly? Did your mix and sift them evenly? Is your leavening agent fresh? Did you account for the humidity in your area and kitchen? Does your oven actually heat at the temperature it says? Does it heat evenly inside? Maybe you can pull off a good cake once or twice, but can you do it again, in a different kitchen? What about a smaller cake or bigger one? Box mixes take as many variables out of the equation as possible. They are very forgiving and delicious. There is no shame in using one for the home.
- dml2135 1y agoBaking may not be easy but it’s not that hard. If you bake from scratch, then maybe your results won’t be as good at first, but like anything else you will get better with experience and improve with time. Like, would you suggest people only eat frozen TV dinners because the results will be more consistent than if they cooked a meal themselves?
- lifeformed 1y agoI'm saying its not trivial to replace a box mix in a recipe with from scratch ingredients. And no, frozen dinners don't have very good flavor or texture compared to the food it emulates. Boxed cakes are superior than from-scratch cakes by many metrics. But yes, I agree that people should definitely make their own and try to get better. It's just not a trivial replacement in a recipe. Box mixes in certain granny subcultures are a staple ingredient, almost on the tier of flour. If my meatloaf glaze recipe calls for ketchup, I'll just use Heinz or whatever, and not make it from scratch, unless it was really important to me.
- lazyasciiart 1y agoIf they’re only going to need dinner once a month? Hell yes.
- SamBam 1y ago
- jedimastert 1y ago> (with a load of other garbage you probably don't need) That stuff isn't just "preservatives" or whatever, it's the big difference in texture and flavor. I highly recommend actually trying a box-mix cake and a made-from-scratch mix side-by-side. It's incredible how different it is, especially with how little actual technique goes into the box-mix.
- ccppurcell 1y agoI'm glad it's not just anecdotal. I had an American colleague whose husband praised her amazing guacamole recipe. The recipe turned out to be a jar of guacamole and a jar of salsa mixed together. I may have forgotten the details but a jar of guacamole was certainly listed as an ingredient. I thought it was a joke!
- nmeofthestate 1y ago>Speaking as an American, this is a part of American culture that's so weird Just think of it as the Arduino Nano/ESP32 module of baking.