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Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

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Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#111

Post by dtgriscom »

dmoy wrote: post #105
userbinator wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eggs can be considered continuous with a large enough volume of them.

Also you totally can reduce an egg by 30%, it's just a pain in the ass. Separate yolk and white (as though you were going to beat the whites). Weigh both, reduce both by 30%. Recombine. Better is to just base the entire recipe off the weight of the egg. Start with the egg(s), scale everything else to match. 50g egg? Cool you get even increments of 50g, 100g, etc. 48g egg? Weigh out 96g instead of 100g of the other in…

Why separate, split, and then combine? Why not combine and then split?

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#112

Post by pests »

striking wrote: post #84
Balgair wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait I thought Gris Michel went extinct?! Where oh where on God's green earth did they survive and can I get them shipped!?

Miami Fruit will reportedly ship them to you. Unless you live in California or Hawaii, much to my chagrin...

Link for the lazy:

https://miamifruit.org/products/gros-michel-banana-box-order...

$17 for a single fruit!

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#113

Post by airstrike »

nanolith wrote: post #45

Much to the chagrin of my mother, I made it a point about a decade ago to standardize old family recipes on "from scratch" versions. As part of the process, I also did some research on old recipes and fixed some of the corruption of these recipes that occurred during the copying and recitation, bolstering them with culinary techniques that were in use at the time. I also captured things that drift over time, such as…

Please consider publishing that somewhere! Dozens of us would appreciate it. I could even watch a small Netflix series about this, tbh

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#114

Post by inferiorhuman »

gus_massa wrote: post #83
mh- wrote: post #4

> “It’s just so upsetting,” says Judith, whose cookie recipe was passed down by her mother. These “perfect little cookies” once made the rounds at bake sales, Christmas cookie exchanges, and birthdays. > a box of Betty Crocker chocolate cake mix, two eggs, and 1/3 cup neutral oil I realize it's not the point of the story, but this is like that Friends episode[0] where Phoebe finds out her grandmother's secret cookie…

The main problem here is that eggs are discrete, and you can't reduce a 30% when you use 2 eggs. (Actualy eggs are classified by size, but nobody is going to search for the exact shrinked egg.) Also, even a perfect escaled recipe will have different cooking time and temperature.

Sure you can. Scramble them a bit and weigh them.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#115

Post by ksenzee »

ip26 wrote: post #93
Dilettante_ wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The flour should not be packed? I've always done it like that, it seemed so obvious that that would give a less random result that having it loose. I guess I'll weigh it and check against the markings on my measuring cup next time.

Some pack, some sift and scoop. You have to know what the recipe wants. Weigh is in my opinion superior, it just wasn’t widely accessible before cheap digital scales.

In my four decades of baking, I have never seen a recipe that calls for packing flour. It is always sifted, spooned and leveled, or weighed.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#116

Post by al_borland »

e28eta wrote: post #85
zurtri wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for this. I had never considered this "drift" in recipes and ingredients.

I first learned of it reading the intro to American Cake, by Anne Byrn. It covers the history of cakes in America, through (updated) 125 recipes. The current recipe for pound cake calls for 6 large eggs, but the notes on ingredients in the book’s introduction said early recipes needed 12-16 (!!) eggs in order to get one pound of eggs. Side note: pound cake uses 1 lb each of eggs, flour, sugar, and butter

This is very interesting.

I recently bought an older Better Homes and Gardens cookbook from 1953. I wanted one from before science took over the kitchen too much. I haven’t had a chance to cook anything from it yet, but now I’m questioning if I’ll have issues trying to cook with a 70+ year old cookbook, especially when it comes to baked goods.

I’m not into cooking enough to have the patience to experiment and tune things. If something doesn’t work, I’m more likely to get discouraged and order take out.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#117

Post by roxolotl »

twodave wrote: post #97
declan_roberts wrote: post #87

When I actually started cooking I was shocked at how simple a lot of these box ingredients actually are. They somehow tricked a whole generation into buying "pancake mix" which is just flour, sugar, baking soda and salt!

I looked into this not long ago, and the main ingredient that is hard to store the way you would a mix is fat. Most recipes need it, and “wet” fat like butter or oil behaves quite a bit differently than the milk solids or whatever else they add to premixes. It’s not impossible to account for, of course, but there is a real convenience factor.

You can actually buy stuff like that if you really want to keep a mix on hand.

The King Arthur powders are great:

https://shop.kingarthurbaking.com/items/bakers-special-dry-m...

https://shop.kingarthurbaking.com/items/dried-buttermilk-pow...

And I’ve never tried it but here’s powdered butter:

https://hoosierhillfarm.com/shop-products/butter-powder/

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#118

Post by marssaxman »

llbbdd wrote: post #98
foofoo12 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Because you have little kids and you want to give them a single easy-to-follow box with instructions on it? Box mixes are a very US thing. I promise you that kids still get to bake in other countries. Having done both it is my opinion that messing with the raw ingredients is more fun.

Everything is a raw ingredient.

With that attitude, you might as well just buy a finished cake from the store!

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#119

Post by charles_f »

What I hate most about shrinkflation is how shady it is. That recessed middle section in cookie boxes so that they give me one less cookie makes me feel like I'm being played for a fool, and I do not like that.

With that said, if the grandma's secret receipe is industrial cake mix, I don't know how much of a secret receipe it is. Especially since these are usually mostly flour, some sort of yeast or another, and chocolate or sugar, feels like something pretty straight forward to fix.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#120

Post by ksenzee »

declan_roberts wrote: post #87

When I actually started cooking I was shocked at how simple a lot of these box ingredients actually are. They somehow tricked a whole generation into buying "pancake mix" which is just flour, sugar, baking soda and salt!

Why on earth would I make pancakes from scratch when I can buy Krusteaz? If someone gets enjoyment from buying their flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, buttermilk, and oil separately, and turning pancakes into an entire weekend morning activity involving a sinkful of dirty dishes, then they should definitely do that. Meanwhile I’m dumping a cup of Krusteaz into a bowl, adding water, and eating pancakes within five minutes of walking into the kitchen.
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