apartment therapy changing the world, one room at a time

I use Dr. Oetker's organic cake mixes, not to save time, but because I find them failsafe. My cakes from scratch are always dry, or tough, or I mismeasure something in the process and wind up with a /complete/ failure.

But this cake has always been yummy and on target: http://www.oetker.ca/en/product/organics/16502

Yeah, I might have to disagree. My homemade cakes (especially yellow cakes) tend to be dry or tough, even when I've been scrupulous about oven temperature, overmixing, and measuring. I think that a yellow cake box mix is really a great thing.

Has anyone tried Ina Garten'$ mixe$?

You don't have any really good recipes for a chocolate cake that is more solid chocolate than cake do you? My roommate used to get such a cake at a restaurant called Vinny T's (they've changed their recipe), and I'd love to try making something like that from scratch for her birthday >.>

@ ktothe04, the more solid chocolate than cake would be the flourless chocolate cakes. Try http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Flourless-Chocolate-Cake-I/Detail.aspx (usually those with a lot of reviews as well as a high star score are the best ones from allrecipies and this one was 4.5/5 stars and 152 reviews)

While I now know the box mixes are especially unhealthy due to the trans-fats before I knew that I had an awful lot of fun with the cake mix doctor cookbook. The cakes were universally loved by people at work who have a diverse range of food tastes including one who nearly snubbed the cakes prior to tasting them.

ktoth04 - The basic chocolate loaf cake in Nigella Lawson's baking book is to die for -- a dense, moist, but not terribly sweet deliciousness! This is different than a flourless cake though, not sure which you are looking for -- but Nigella's is defitely worth adding to the list.

I agree that homemade cakes are tastier and healthier than the mixes-- and not much more effort. But my pet peeve is pancake mixes! Homemade pancakes are so easy. And yet almost everyone seems to use a mix. Like you I don't want to be elitist, but the mixes often have terrible ingredients. How did we become so estranged from our kitchens that we thought we needed shortcuts for food that is already quick?

I won't argue that from scratch is healthier, but how could it possibly be quicker? A cake mix is ready to go in the oven in literally two minutes.

Yes, it's definitely faster. Although! Wouldn't it be fun to do a side-by-side time test? If someone does it - Iron Chef style, maybe with a video? - and sends it in I will so post it.

This is just my opinion but I so agree with this post and wish people would take the time to look at the ingredient list on those foul mixes and see how truly unhealthy cake can be!

I am chronically ill so I must be extra vigilant about what I put in my body, preservatives and trans fats aren't it.

I would much rather spend the 15 min. taking what I already have in my kitchen and making it the right way (for those who think boxed mixes turn out better cake, perhaps you just need some baking practice? Try a red velvet cake by scratch and you'll never want the boxed stuff again.) than dumping a bunch of junk in a bowl and making myself more ill.

Besides why does everything have to be super quick anyway? I would rather use good, fresh ingredients and take the time to cook or bake good quaility food that I can be proud of than not having any idea what these additives will do to my body over time.

J-fer, it's symptomatic of our go-go-go culture that we reach for mixes and readymade foods instead of ingredients these days. Making your own pancakes from scratch might be easy, but how much easier is it to just grab a box of Bisquik? Anything to save half a minute. And who knows how to make pancakes from scratch anymore anyway? This is what really troubles me - people are forgetting how to MAKE even simple foods.

And there's nothing at all elitist about paying attention to the contents of these mixes. If you want to be healthy, you need to pay attention to what you eat.

Here's a fascinating article from the NYtimes on the hows and whys of cake mixes -- and how Freudian -- women did not embrace cake mixes until the mixes required adding their own eggs (!). Actually, that was part of a movie too.

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F04E7D71F38F937A25757C0A9629C8B63&scp=21&sq=cake mix&st=nyt

for the record: always scratch, all the time (pancakes, cakes, mac'n'cheese, pizza....)

Normally I'm a big fan of from-scratch cooking. But for some reason when it comes to brownies, I'm okay with a mix. I guess I figure that the ingredient list in brownies is usually so short anyhow, why not just start with your dry ingredients already combined? I particularly like Dr. Oetker Organic's brownie mix, which I doctor with walnuts or chocolate chips.

For cake though, it has to be homemade. My mom's recipe for chocolate cake (infused with a little hot coffee and covered in homemade buttercream frosting turned rosy with a little beet juice) is the best I ever had. It was always my birthday cake request growing. I posted the recipe over at The Jew & The Carrot blog:

http://jcarrot.org/happy-birthday-to-us-win-a-cookbook/

I used to be a box cake mix person, but since having my daughter last year, I have changed the way I cook - I am trying to make so much more from scratch - cakes and pancakes, as well as dinners (which I did pre-baby). But I have to say, when I serve the homemade cakes, people often comment - this is "from scratch" isn't it? And they are very excited about that - and that makes me feel so good! I will admit, my favorite recipe is from Joy of Cooking - the 4 egg golden cake - DOES take more time than a box mix, but I think the flavor makes up for it. If I want to make something quick, I make from scratch brownies - a cake is for special times!

While me my mom was never big on "healthy" she was also never big on box mixes either, so when it was my turn to cook for my family box mixes just never came to mind.

One of our family favorites was a family recipe for Wacky Cake. It contains no milk or eggs and relies on baking soda and vinegar to rise. It's also denser and moister than a traditional chocolate cake. It seriously had about 7 ingredients and was good enough with no frosting. But then again, homemade cream cheese frosting takes about 5 minutes to make anyway.

Someone said that cake mixes take "literally" two minutes. Actually they take a little longer. I'll compare a boxed chocolate cake with "Dark Chocolate Cake" (recipe #2496 on recipezaar with 160 5-star ratings).

INGREDIENTS
Boxed mix: 4 ingredients (cake mix, water, eggs, oil)

Scratch cake: 11 ingredients (sugar, flour, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda, salt, eggs, milk, oil, vanilla, boiling water)

PREPARATION
Takes the same time for both: preheat oven, get out cake pan(s), spray or grease and flour pans, get out measuring cups, scraper, handmixer, and bowl.

MEASURING OUT INGREDIENTS
Takes about a minute longer for the "scratch" cake.

MIXING
Both cakes: Thirty seconds to blend ingredients. Two minutes to beat at medium speed.

Scratch cake:Fifteen seconds extra to stir in the boiling water.

CONCLUSION
You can make either cake in about ten minutes and since you have to heat up the oven which takes ten minutes anyway, it doesn't really matter which one you make. If you have the extra ingredients in the house, the scratch chocolate cake is a better product. However, like gretchenann said, yellow cakes are tricky.

As fanatic as I am about much of my food, I am hopeless at baking and resort to mixes for brownies and cakes. I know they're terrible, but everything I make ends up: flat, wierd, heavy, burned...

Is there a really good set of tips to apply to baking? The only good thing about my efforts have been the scones... as ammunition to throw at would-be intruders

Bobcatsteph said, "Besides why does everything have to be super quick anyway?"

Here's why. I enjoy cooking and baking. I've made many dishes that I'm proud of, and a few failures, too. But I have a very demanding job. I don't live close to a good grocery store. And when I get home, what I want more than anything is something quick, tasty, and healthful.

The cultural zeitgist is, right now, moving towards promoting slow food, conscientious cooking, and more time in the kitchen. But let's remember that the reason why packaged and boxed foods became so popular in the first place was because those foods liberated women from their kitchens and gave them the gift of more time. In our rush to promote a culture of cooking, let's also remember the importance of that gift of time.

The beauty of boxed cake mixes is that they never fail. Really, unless you char them, they taste pretty good every time. And if I have to make three sheets of brownies for a party, it's easier to get three boxes and know that all of them will turn out.

Gretchenann--as someone who is progressively, degeneratively ill, I quite understand the virtue of time at 29 years old.

In fact I'd argue that I have more of a reason than most to use boxes and premade food, since I quite literally pass out if I stand for too long, and spent the previous 2 years bedbound due to my illnesses and surgeries.

But I no longer mess with that I put in my body, and if that means taking time to make better quality food--so be it.

I'm with bobcatsteph3. I've got chronic fatigue and simply cannot spend the time cooking and baking elaborate dishes. However, I'm not willing to compound my problems by putting all sorts of poisons in my body. I am constantly on the lookout for super-simple, healthy, delicious foods that take just a few minutes to make.
I rarely eat or bake sweets, but when I do, I usually take recipes from my favorite cookbook, Cakes in 5 Minutes (sorry, not in English).

I like to have my (non-boxed) cake and eat it too! :)

well, I can tell that no one read that fascinating article about cake and cake mixes that I linked to above...

like ADonuts pointed out, there isn't a time savings by using a mix; the food industry has convinced you that there is, and moveover, has convinced you that doing it from scratch is too difficult (the markup on cake mix is pretty good for the manufacturer!)...

baking is very simple, although it requires precision. If you don't feel secure, pick up a copy of Nigella's Domestic Goddess cookbook, where she deals with all of it.

Here are some good points from the article:

''The kitchen has always been the place where housewives who feel inadequate must confront their own failings,'' she wrote.

Baking cakes is at the heart of her book: cake, she argues, is where the food industry did early battle for the hearts and minds of women. ''The American layer cake is a sign and symbol of more than dessert,'' she told me. ''It's your best work in the kitchen, the highest thing you can offer to someone you love, the most emotionally laden thing.

...Ms. Shapiro's book describes how advertisers, to help sell the mixes, bombarded women with rhetoric that implied that cooking was drudgery and time-consuming.'

I am with Gretchenann here - sometimes, when it is late and one is tired, it's easier not having to deal with creaming butter and sugar until white and fluffy.

Also, I find the notion that advertising can so easily persuade women that "mixes are superior to scratch" insulting. I believe that most women are quite capable of deciding for themselves when they feel like playing baking goddess and when they don't feel like it.

I understand being pressed for time when it comes to daily cooking. I don't understand it for baking. Are there people who need to bake cakes on a near daily basis?

Also, there's ways of having your convenience and eating it too.

I routinely freeze extra dough when making cookies. It keeps very well and I have something made at home and ready in minutes on a busy evening.

And, I don't do this, but I've heard of people measuring out dry ingredients and storing them on a slow afternoon and making "mixes" that just need liquid ingredients added later. Google "homemade mixes" and you'll find a bunch of recipes.

My from-scratch waffle mix takes less than 10 minutes to put together. My crepes take 3-5 minutes to combine. I have not been cooking from scratch for long, but once I have made something once, it goes much faster each time.

Plus I am convinced that when you make something from scratch - you can taste the love. Unless you were cooking that batch of cupcakes during raging PMS :)

Magda, I totally agree. I haven't been cooking from scratch for long, but honestly, each time it goes a little faster and for the most part, the extra time spent compared to a "mix" is almost negligible. And we are talking about a cake here, like someone else mentioned, not something most folks do daily so an extra ten minutes at the most, really isn't that big of a deal. And definitely, you can taste the love.