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Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

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Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#131

Post by al_borland »

nixosbestos wrote: post #125

I love how capita, er, enshittification is taking hold in every fucking god damn last corner of our puny lives. I know I'm stretching enshittification a bit here, but it's the same basic premise at it's heart. Exploit your captive, often naive/ignorant audience. It's so , so exhausting.

Shrinkflation has been a thing for a long time. It goes in cycles. They shrink everything to preserve their profits in lean times, then in a few years they will compete with each other by adding the product back. You’ll see boxes with labels like, “now with 20% more ______!” All they’re doing is giving back the product they took during the shrinkflation era and acting like they’re doing you a favor.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#132

Post by DimmieMan »

Leavener example might be genuine tweak because they thought it would be better but it could easily be cheapening of ingredients which is a problem with premade mixes too.

The box might be the same volume but i'd expect most mixes wouldn't taste the same these days either. Any mix with chocolate in particular has had the cocoa quantity + quality reduced to the point I can often barely taste it because it's such a comparatively expensive ingredient.

Who else has family recipes with "can of X"? that can of soup from 50 years ago is not the same as today for the worse. I know one of my parents recipes will be gone forever if the creamed corn they use is discontinued or changes to be like every other brand.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#133

Post by al_borland »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #110
eichin wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

According to some (youtube) experiments, commercial brownie mix produces some aspects of brownies more consistently because it's ground finer (and mixed more uniformly) than the ingredients you can usually source. So it's not quite that simple (though it mostly is.)

So, cake flour?

From what I remember it’s more about the industrial emulsifiers. They give a more sponge-like cake they people tend to enjoy.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#134

Post by ggm »

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...

They cannot be shipped to locations which grow commercial cavendish for risks of viral infection. Australia has restrictions in place on movement of all kinds of fruit and vegetables inter-state for exactly this reason.

Also, if travelling in S.E.Asia try the small "sugar bananas" and ladyfinger, commonly available in a few places alongside some of the dozens and dozens of "not-cavendish" bananas that locals eat.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#135

Post by throwaway173738 »

airstrike wrote: post #113
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

Seconding this! I would pay between $20 and $30 for a text that provided detailed information on variability in ingredients and how to measure or eyeball it and what to do to mitigate it.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#136

Post by saltcured »

dtgriscom wrote: post #111
dmoy wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I am guessing: unless you blast them in a blender, the beaten mix isn't really uniform and you may end up extracting more egg white or more yolk than intended when you remove some of this lumpy content.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#137

Post by nkrisc »

rimprobablyly wrote: post #60
rjh29 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 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.

Oh no they don't.

What’s the difference between making the mix yourself, or just buying the exact same ingredients already mixed at the correct ratio?

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#138

Post by phil21 »

rimprobablyly wrote: post #60
rjh29 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If 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.

Oh no they don't.

I’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.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#139

Post by bigstrat2003 »

gwd wrote: post #16
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…

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 meas…

> 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.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#140

Post by bigstrat2003 »

llbbdd wrote: post #101
rimprobablyly wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh no they don't.

The confidence. Why wouldn't they? The nobility inherent in suffering more labor to make a worse final product?

You 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.
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