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Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

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Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#441

Post by cowsandmilk »

aDyslecticCrow wrote: post #371
jaggederest wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Europe accounts for 31% of baking mix sales while North America accounts for 24.5%.

https://www.grandviewresearch.com/industry-analysis/bakery-p...

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#442

Post by sersi »

julianz wrote: post #236

This does seem like a very US-centric problem. None of the recipes I was brought up on base their quantities on third party packaging, and generally don't use premixed ingredients. It's very strange.

I was thinking that and feeling rather proud of being European where we rarely use pre-mix (I've seen some in supermarkets but don't know anyone who uses them).

Then I realized that I typically buy my puff pre-made (made with butter) because it's good enough and it's hard to make at home... Most people I know do the same. Now granted, making puff pastry is quite a bit more involved than mixing ingredients like a pre-mix cookie recipe but still...

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#443

Post by rkomorn »

Eisenstein wrote: post #213
throwaway422432 wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you mix it yourself, you know exactly what is in it. This means you can vary/substitute ingredients such as heart salt for regular salt if you're on a DASH diet (half the sodium chloride is replaced with potassium chloride).

Do you know if that will even work? Baking is not cooking -- you can't just swap ingredients and get a similar result.

Yes but that's the fun part of baking: thinking you know better, substituting things, failing miserably and then either:

a- gaslighting yourself into thinking it's better than the original

b- blaming the original recipe

c- posting a one-star review on the recipe saying you replaced eggs with banana and it came out horrible

Eventually, you succeed, and get to claim you were right all along (mostly because the trash can cannot speak of your failures).

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#444

Post by AlexandrB »

phil21 wrote: post #299
yAak wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Box cake mix almost never tastes better than scratch. Next you’ll tell me store-bought frosting tastes better?

Cake mixes almost always come ahead in blind taste tests. Very few bakers short of folks with a lot of volume are doing stuff from scratch. It may or may not be healthier, but the subjective taste preferences of the masses is pretty much settled fact at this point. Frosting is a different topic - totally agree there, but I haven't seen any blind taste tests on that one. The professional bakers around me who do a doze…

> Cake mixes almost always come ahead in blind taste tests.

Could be a "New Coke"[1] thing, where people just like the one with more sugar. There's a reason food companies pack the stuff into everything - it (usually) works.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Coke

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#445

Post by traceroute66 »

qlm wrote: post #397
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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,…

I’m in the UK too and you can buy measuring cups here easily. It doesn’t mean “a mug from your cupboard”. It _is_ a volume measurement. I do agree it doesn’t make sense for things that aren’t fluid-like.

> It _is_ a volume measurement

Yawn.

Except there's no such thing as a "volume measurement":

   - The so-called "cups" will have different manufacturing processes, some will be a bit smaller, some will be bit larger.  Plastic cups will warp and deform with time.
   - When measuring dry materials like flour, the amount in your "cup" depends on your usage.  Are you weighing sifted flour or flour out of the bag ?  Are you accidentally/deliberately compressing the dry goods when using your cup ? (e.g. are you scooping straight from the bag of flour).
   - etc. etc. etc.
Just weight the damn ingredients using a scale. There's a reason no professional kitchen in the world uses "cups".

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#446

Post by sersi »

lifeformed wrote: post #200

I feel like nobody in this thread has made a cake before and thinks it's trivial to do, and boxed mixes are just premeasured flour, baking soda, and sugar.

Making cookies or basic pound cakes from scratch is trivial. You take a scale, you follow the instructions done. For some cakes it's slightly more complicated when you need to do steps like separating egg whites from egg yolks, whipping the egg whites and reincorporating them to the dough but I've been doing that with my 4 years old son and he starting to get it.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#447

Post by Fluorescence »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #409
closewith wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is more standardised than the unit of measure used in British recipes and whatnot. How so?

There's no such thing as an imperial cup ergo the cup is not a standardized measurement. Within US customary units the cup is defined.

No "cups" in old British recipes I've made but there will be measures you have to look up like a "gill".

Old family recipes would just say things like "add flour" and that amount was taught face-to-face and hands-on where you added enough till it looked "right" because onions and eggs etc. were not a uniform size.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#448

Post by rkomorn »

Fluorescence wrote: post #447
inferiorhuman wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no such thing as an imperial cup ergo the cup is not a standardized measurement. Within US customary units the cup is defined.

No "cups" in old British recipes I've made but there will be measures you have to look up like a "gill". Old family recipes would just say things like "add flour" and that amount was taught face-to-face and hands-on where you added enough till it looked "right" because onions and eggs etc. were not a uniform size.

This reminds me of a boxed item I bought ages ago where the instructions were basically: cook to desired doneness, season as desired.

Also reminds me of a coworker in a restaurant in Palo Alto who, when I asked him the recipe for a dressing I needed to make, told me "ginger juice, lemon, and just make it good". It turns out there were a few other ingredients.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#449

Post by bob1029 »

sersi wrote: post #398
bob1029 wrote: post #395

Cooking in larger batches has been my solution to the current trends in grocery pricing. It also helps to smooth out variability in recipes. Small batches are impacted much more severely. For example, if a recipe calls for 1 egg, you get exactly one chance to use an egg that's reasonably sized relative to the other ingredients. If you scale this to a dozen eggs, you could simply forget 2 of them and the difference wo…

> 1 egg, you get exactly one chance to use an egg that's reasonably sized relative to the other ingredients. I've always had the habit of weighing the eggs I use and adjusting the rest of the recipe for baking. Some recipes also includes weight of eggs in grams for exactly that reason. (Tip for converting, if it's a European recipe assume 45g per egg), if it's US assume 60g per egg. > The cost savings has been incred…

> A lot of food don't taste as good after being frozen (especially in a home freezer)

How you reheat the food makes a huge difference. Freezer => microwave is noob tier. What you want is something like: freezer => thaw 24-48h in fridge => stir fry for 5 minutes. Make some fresh pasta each time. Start preheating the oven right before your 1130 meeting starts. This stuff doesn't take that long. Adding a bit of extra ceremony on the backside can make a huge difference in the final result.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#450

Post by muppetman »

foofoo12 wrote: post #95
muppetman wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you live in a small apartment and don't have storage space for a thing of flour, a thing of sugar, cocoa you might use twice a year? Because you have little kids and you want to give them a single easy-to-follow box with instructions on it? Because you value convenience? Honestly, what a silly take. The world thrives on convenience products.

> 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.

Well I live in New Zealand and we get them (various box mixes) for the kids to bake cookies, cakes, brownies etc. Yeah we have all the raw ingredients but it's easy for them to follow at their age. When they're older we'll get them to make them from scratch but for a Sunday afternoon activity a box mix is a great easy fun thing for them.
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