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

521–530 of 721 posts

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#521

Post by jamincan »

lifeformed wrote: post #188
bruce511 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Various gums, starches, dextrins, mono- and di-glycerides, surfactants, encapsulated flavors, specific leavening ratios, basically the whole chemistry set. Um. Ok. You say this like it's a good thing? I'll be honest, your statement makes me want that less rather than more. Now granted, I never use mixes anyway, so I'm not the target market. I mean, baking a cake or cookies from ingredients is so simple a 5 year ol…

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…

My Beppe's (Frisian grandmother) boterkoek (butter cake) was a well-loved staple at church and school bake sales. She closely guarded her recipe, but shared it with my eldest sister who, after she died, told me that she actually used margarine instead of butter in her recipe. Everyone, not even just her family, loved her boterkoek, and yet it didn't even have butter in it.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#522

Post by aDyslecticCrow »

MisterSandman wrote: post #500
OtherShrezzing wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's despite Europe having 2x the population of North America.

Europe is also somewhat poorer than North America, to be fair.

Is cake mix expensive? Wouldn't powdered milk and egg be cheaper than real eggs? Is it actually more expensive to bake with cake mix than with short shelflife milk and egg?

These companies must be making bank.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#523

Post by ndsipa_pomu »

inferiorhuman wrote: post #507
ndsipa_pomu wrote: post #489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can't recall seeing any British recipe that uses cups so the difference between imperial and metric cups is irrelevant to us. At least with something like "5 apricots", it should be obvious to the cook if they've got really small, big or varying sizes. Meanwhile, the "cup" measurement can vary depending on the order of which you put the apricots into the cup - do you put the smallest fruit in first, or the biggest?

One of my favorite dessert recipes is Dorie Greenspan's French Apple Cake. It calls for "4 large apples". The recipe is equally enjoyable with a wide range of apple mass, but the character is definitely changed depending on what you do. I think baking is a lot more flexible than most folks give it credit for, but getting more precise units helps ensure consistency from cook to cook and from batch to batch. For refere…

Yep, some recipes don't require precision, but something like a soufflé might.

Weighing things out is the correct method. What could be useful is if recipes provided the ratios of the ingredients along with error margins, so that you could easily type in an amount (e.g. 100g flour) and it'd scale the other ingredients to match. However, maybe that's overthinking it.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#524

Post by traceroute66 »

fireflash38 wrote: post #473
traceroute66 wrote: post #445

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 accide…

For casual bakers, exact precision using grams can help... Or it might not matter at all. You'd need to have everything else be as precise for it to matter. Are you weighing your eggs? Do you adjust based on the humidity of the air? Do you know all of the hot spots in your oven and is the thermometer accurate? It's science, but ya gotta realize you arent baking a sphere in a vacuum ya know? At least a gram is a gram…

> Are you weighing your eggs?

Yes, always.

I don't know what its like where you are, but where I am you can get eggs either in mixed packets, or sorted by size.

So where I am, 1 egg != 1 egg unless you weigh it.

It doesn't matter for soufflé's or meringues. But for everything else you'll have problems if you use random sized eggs.

> Do you adjust based on the humidity of the air?

Absorption capability of flour tends to be more important.

> Do you know all of the hot spots in your oven

Put it in fan mode and reduce the temperature. Hot spot problem disappears.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#525

Post by ginko »

ksenzee wrote: post #120
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 minu…

I can't tell if this is supposed to be ironic or not.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#526

Post by mfro »

iterance wrote: post #36
brianwawok wrote: post #3

I feel like a giant buying groceries anymore. Oh great 10 ounce box of cereal; that will be 2 bowls if I am lucky. So dumb, just show the real price and keep the portion the same.

Consumers may do this, but consumers also hate shrinkflation with a passion. Raising a price is understandable and a consumer can rationalize inflation, but shrinking the amount given can feel deceptive, untrustworthy, or exploitative. Brands that do it are playing with fire. They may not yet get burned.

You assume the average consumer is paying any attention to the net weight of their purchases.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#527

Post by jjkaczor »

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…

Uh... I would buy this cookbook... I suspect many others would as well...

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#528

Post by cogman10 »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #459
cogman10 wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not the claim I'm refuting, this is > That's also why making your own cakes trying to imitate them quickly becomes a fool's errand. You're never going to beat the chemistry that's in the box, and even if you did it would look more like molecular gastronomy than baking. My point was that these added ingredients aren't special space magic, they all have a purpose and that purpose is something home bakers can oft…

Okay, that's fair then. But I wish you would have replied to the comment making that claim. Not one by a different person making a different point.

The comment I replied to stated

> That person listed a lot of completely different ingredients. Did you dismiss them all out of hand for a specific reason?

I gave the specific reason to dismiss those ingredients. I took the two comments together trying to say that the boxed goods do things impossible for a home baker.

I apologize if the intent of my comment wasn't clear.

Re: Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes

#529

Post by Finnucane »

snthd wrote: post #462
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 the grandma's secret receipe is industrial cake mix, I don't know how much of a secret receipe it is There are a few interesting paragraphs on it in the book "On Food And Cooking: The Science And Lore Of The Kitchen" (2004) by Harold McGee[0]. (p555) > Modern American Cakes: Help from Modified Fats and Flours Beginning around 1910, several innovations in oil and flour processing led to major changes in American c…

Note that today, one can easily find cake flour that isn't chemically bleached. Also, shortening manufacturers have gone to fully-hydrogenated oils, rather than partially hydrogenated, to reduce the amount of trans-fats. But some are still using palm oil, so it's not a total win.
Post reply on HN