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Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

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Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#371

Post by aDyslecticCrow »

jaggederest wrote: post #163
charles_f wrote: post #119

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 choc…

> feels like something pretty straight forward to fix. It is actually not. This is something I learned as a lad working in a bakery, professional bakers use all kinds of ingredients not readily available at home. Especially in e.g. boxed cake mix, it's actually a half dozen ingredients that are totally impractical to keep on hand. Various gums, starches, dextrins, mono- and di-glycerides, surfactants, encapsulated fl…

Ive made great cookies from 100 year old recipes. Why do would i want a carbon copy of a store cookie.

Ive never used or really seem cake mix in stores my whole life. Feels... American.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#374

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

nvader wrote: post #191
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…

After reading this, I have to comment with this link to https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-review-my-fathers-inst... This story describes the dangers of NOT standardizing on a single, proper version.

I was enjoying reading that until I hit this line:

> The potatoes were swimming in their own gluten, released during the granule-making process

Whatever the potatoes were swimming in, it wasn't gluten.

By the way, the discussion of mashed potatoes reminds me of the excellent old "Smash" adverts on UK TV that featured martians/robots and a tagline of "For mash get Smash": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBRCZLzn5pM

(Smash was surprisingly popular in the 1970s but then UK convenience food was abysmal back then)

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#375

Post by inferiorhuman »

davebranton wrote: post #230
al_borland wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I very strongly suspect that this preference is learned. I've never made anything from a mix, but I've baked brownies, cookies, sponge, tarts, biscuits and bread. They have all turned out perfectly delicious, without any need for the addition of whatever emulsifiers and what-not you'll find in the premixed packets. This isn't to say that there's necessarily anything wrong with those ingredients. I'm sure that they're…

  I've never made anything from a mix, but I've baked brownies, cookies,
  sponge, tarts, biscuits and bread. They have all turned out perfectly
  delicious, without any need for the addition of whatever emulsifiers
  and what-not you'll find in the premixed packets.
Without having tried the alternative that's a pretty weak claim.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#376

Post by extraduder_ire »

thaumasiotes wrote: post #268
extraduder_ire wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

6 large (US) eggs is between 12oz and 14.5oz.[0] This has been stuck in my head since I first learned European sizes were different. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_egg_sizes#United_State...

Could the six eggshells weigh half an ounce each? It's easier to weigh eggs whole. That would imply, though, that "one pound" of eggs is more egg now than it was then.

That table includes the weight of the shell. I don't think six chicken eggs of a normal size were ever a pound.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#377

Post by gwd »

throw0101a wrote: post #177
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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?

There are lots of tools that it's not reasonable to expect a random home kitchen to have -- expensive grinders and mixers, mortar and pestle, double boilers, marble rolling pin to press out pastry, etc. But a kitchen scale is just a huge win for any kitchen. They don't take much space, they're not at all expensive, and it takes less time to convert "half a cup of flour" into grams using your phone than it does to wash the measuring cup.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#378

Post by inferiorhuman »

ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #364
joshstrange wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve also digitized some recipes and had to deal with “1 can” or “1 bar” without size included. Some things aren’t sold like that anymore or their size has fluctuated. In the example about it was for a candy bar pound cake and “1 can of Hershey’s syrup” isn’t a thing anymore that I can tell and even if it was, I had no clue the size. Same with “1 Hershey’s bar”, uhh, no clue what 1 standard bar was then. Thankfully m…

> It’s so much easier to measure with a kitchen scale than it is to wonder “did I pack the X in too tight or too loose into this cup?”. Here in the UK, I get irrationally annoyed by seeing recipes that use "U.S." measurements. A "cup" is mostly meaningless to me as I've got lots of different size cups and as you state, it's not a consistent way to measure most ingredients (I can understand it being used for liquids,…

No need for scare quotes, US customary units are a thing. A US customary cup is, at least, quite standard at 8 fluid ounces. This is more standardized than the unit of measure used in British recipes and whatnot. The issues surrounding volumetric measurements for dry goods is an entirely separate matter. 240 mL of apricots is just as useless as 1 cup of apricots.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#379

Post by paintbox »

kortilla wrote: post #363
teekert wrote: post #361

Ok, this is weird right? '“It’s just so upsetting,” says Judith, whose cookie recipe was passed down by her mother.' Why pass some boxed commercial mix through your family? Maybe I have too much Italian in me (I'm not Italian, just love their mindset when it comes to cooking) but that's like passing some cheap plastic kitchen utensil down the family, instead of your cast iron skillet. Just learn to bake properly base…

Do you mill your own flour? Or do you just use some boxes commercial mix like a filthy commoner?

You have been able to buy milled flour for thousands of years, and will probably be able to for as long as there is civilization.

Betty Crocker would be lucky to survive another hundred years.

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