Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

cubbyathome.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

431–440 of 721 posts

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#431

Post by joshvm »

unwind wrote: post #359
joshvm wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something that I didn't notice until I lived in the US was the implicit availability of standard ingredients, like graham crackers. So many classic American recipes are very simple but assume you have access to that one brand of canned pumpkin or cherries that everyone uses to make their pie with. It makes online recipes a lot easier. A beverage example is the Piña Colada. The original recipe calls for Coco Lopez (se…

Yeah, it's like people who spend time around campfires and have watched American media are all going "let's make s'mores" [1], and then they realize that "graham crackers" [2] are a mystery ingredient that nobody knows anything about. Digestives [3] are the typical substitution in my experience, but again nobody knows how close they're getting. They look thicker, to me ... [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%27more…

Well also that you can buy graham cracker crumbs, for making things like pie crusts. My friend gave me a weird look when we went shopping and I picked up whole crackers. And then the revelation that graham refers to a type of flour and is not in itself a brand. And Kelloggs sell the crumbs? Wild.

A biscuit base in the UK would usually require a pack of digestives and a rolling pin. I suppose some supermarket sells crumbled biscuits but...

As an aside, Golden Grahams used to be popular in the UK and I don't think anyone stopped to ask what the name meant.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#432

Post by Liftyee »

I'm always amazed that techniques like shrinkflation work (or I presume they work, because if they didn't I assume no one would be doing it!). Do the manufacturers just think that consumers won't eventually notice the reduced amount of product, leading to only short-term gains?

Perhaps more people need to stop buying certain brands out of spite when they try and quietly shrink the packages.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#433

Post by pertymcpert »

campital wrote: post #350
lifeformed wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't be so snobby about cake ingredients. There's nothing wrong with using processed food in a recipe. I garuntee a box mix will make a much better cake than "from scratch" unless you are very experienced. Cooking is not always about making the ultimate gourmet meal, it's about connection and tradition. Processed food is a normal part of every day people's lives and makes it's way into traditions. Grandma's secret r…

"A Man Ate Expired Boxed Cake Mix. This Is How His Organs Shut Down." (Frozen Hot Sauce, iykyk)

something something presence in blood...

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#434

Post by joncrocks »

apparent wrote: post #338
lifeformed wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If someone is eating cakes at the scale at which the artificial ingredients are causing issues, the nutritional content of the cake itself would overtake most of the problems. A lot of scary sounding processed ingredients are perfectly safe and as natural as like orange juice or cheese. I know it's more ideal to eat a perfect from-scratch cake, but I wouldn't let a few processed ingredients get in the way of apprecia…

Agreed, but you claimed above that: > I garuntee a box mix will make a much better cake than "from scratch" unless you are very experienced. That is simply untrue. It does not take an experienced baker to make a better cake than a boxed cake mix. The fact that you can avoid the other weird ingredients (which are probably not terrible at small scale) is just the icing on the cake.

Just to push back on this slightly, I'm sure I've watched Youtube videos with someone who bake cakes for a living who said they used boxed mixture for most of their baking.

As others have said elsewhere, some of the ingredients involved are not easily available/cost-efficient for the home baker. This means it's more than possible that you will get an objectively better cake from a mix, e.g. from blind tasting.

This does depend on the type of cake you're baking and your expectations of 'better' though.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#435

Post by arethuza »

dfxm12 wrote: post #126
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…

She's upset that the recipes are different If she's like my mother, she probably thinks of these recipes as a connection to her parents and grandparents. The importance is not in the finished dish, but in the history of this specific artifact, including: the hand writing, the original index cards, the references to the bowls she remembers as a little girl. I understand this. When I see my grandmother's recipes, hand-…

I really wish I had kept a note of what my parents called "neeps and tatties" soup - which was served with thick oatcakes from the local baker.

I do see recipes for it online but they look very different (spices? cream?).

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#436

Post by pcthrowaway »

mongol wrote: post #370
Theodores wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am loving this thread, and how cake is suddenly up there as a controversial, polarising topic. Respect for working in a bakery, just hope you haven't got too many burn scars on your forearms from doing long night shifts. I am in broad agreement with you and I appreciate the difficulties of making a consistent product, particularly when there are variables in temperature, seasonal availability of ingredients, lots o…

> The Fairtrade cocoa goes and the 'Rainforest Alliance' cocoa comes in, and you can guess the ethics of the latter are not to the standards of the former. This part interests me. I have no idea what seals of approval are worthwhile or not. I just see that they are printed on the package and assume it counts for something. Is there some controversy relater to cocoa in this case?

Cocoa/chocolate is an industry that happens to use a fair bit of child slavery, unfortunately (among other bad practices, I just single out that one because it's the one that I consider the most abhorrent)

Getting a fair trade certification requires a supply chain inspection, and in theory, would not be possible to get for producers which have child slavery in the supply chain. Though of course, supply chain inspections are complicated and I believe this is by no means perfect (nothing is).

Rainforest Alliance certified has nothing to do with ethics in treatment of the humans involved in the supply chain, just environmental impact.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#437

Post by nmeofthestate »

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…

>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.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#438

Post by alexdbird »

unwind wrote: post #369
AlecSchueler wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't they have ingredients lists or is that a very European thing?

Sure they do, but nobody seems to have posted it yet. The exact box in the article (it had a link!) has the following ingredients listed: Enriched Flour Bleached (wheat flour, niacin, iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), Sugar, Corn Syrup, Cocoa Processed with Alkali, Leavening (baking soda, monocalcium phosphate, sodium aluminum phosphate). Contains 2% or less of: Modified Corn Starch, Palm Oil, Corn…

This list isn't really selling it to me! Mmm, aluminium, yummy propylene glycol.

The things you need from that list are Wheat flour (white), corn flour (starch), Sugar, Cocoa, Baking powder, Salt, Vanilla. I doubt carob adds anything that a spoonful of instant coffee wouldn't.

Now I get your point that it wouldn't produce the same result, but I'd be surprised if it produced a worse result.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#439

Post by sneak »

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…

If you still buy it, you are being played for a fool. I don’t buy shady products like this.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#440

Post by rkomorn »

Spivak wrote: post #161
bigstrat2003 wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The 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.

There's such a high amount of snobbery (with a sizable pinch of classism) in the comments on this post. Ick.
Post reply on HN