Do I avoid the "do you use a mix" question?? - Page 14

You know your a CC cake decorater when you but aside booking travel for your boss to read all 14 pages of a discussion thread about box mixes vs scratch cakes

Another gray area might be if you use "Rose's Heavenly Cakes" boxed mixes....no preservatives, still a box.

i do both scratch and mixes..although im having a hard time finding more scratch recipes that come out right...id ohave the cake bible and the few recipes ive tried have come out dry..the one great one is from the buttercup bakery book..LOVE IT...

ive had cakes that have been scratch that were awful (like some of the ones ive made lol) and cakes that are from mix that were awful too... so i guess to some extent it depends on the person making the cake lol

as far as the question: i tell them i do both..what is your preference?

"Needs to slice and serve with pinpoint accuracy and freshness. No glopping, no excess of crumbs, no crumbling.

It needs to not go stale and not grow a crust while sitting out on the plate for an hour or more.

Emusifiers and gums anyone? "


I think K8 just summed up the entire argument for mixes in that single post. Awesome!

Mike, it's not just that chick who went to culinary school who worked on the recipes with me...it was her AND my lead baker who's had more than 10 years experience.
AND I never said our cakes came out dry, or crumbly, or bad. They just simply didn't come out AS GOOD as the ones from the mix OR the ones using fluid flex and other added grossness. And what I mean by AS GOOD is everything K8 just wrote in that post a few posts back.

Our bakery right now does over 100 custom cakes per weekend, and more and more of those are 3D's, cut outs, tiered cakes and other architecturally challenged peices of work. That means whatever cake I end up using HAS to be able to pass SEVERAL tests, not just whether or not it tastes good or whether or not it has a 'melt in your mouth' feel (which, by the way, a lot of times translates into crumbly messy cake that won't sculpt right or hold up...tastes great but not a lot you can do with it more than sheet cakes and stand-alone rounds).

I'm not offended by any comments people have made regarding my posts, I just don't think they've read them well enough to assess my intentions. As I said, scratch cakes aren't bad, they just don't live up to what the mixes can do. That's why the mixes were invented in the first place.

I've got a question for all box bakers...

Have any of you tried starting out w/ the recipe that is suppose to be equivalent to a box mix? And I can't find it to save my life! It has flour, sugar, leveling agents, etc that are suppost to be equivalent to what's in a box.

I would like to try it to see how it holds up, but wondering if anyone here has done it already?

I have one if you want it; it's for bulk quantities, though, and it uses grams and whatnot, not cups. I'll pm it if you're interested

Yea... I know it's weird wanting a "healthy piece of cake" LOL I really try to limit what my kids eat to real foods. I know sugar isn't that great for you, but sometimes I'd rather feed my kids a cookie made from real ingredients than a kids meal that includes artificial colors, flavors and preservatives. I love to buy organic foods when I can, but we live in a small area and there's not really a big market for that. I just try to buy foods that are actually foods and not the things you find in a box that are supposed to be dinner. I'm not perfect with it or a freak about it. My kids have gushers and fruit roll ups at friend's houses. We eat at Mc Donalds on occasion, I just try to make healthier choices for them... even when it comes to cake.

You are right... most customers don't care what's in their food as long as it tastes good. (all the fast food chains are evidence of that)

jessieb- thanks for the heads up on the hershey cake ill look for it. i also have a scratch carrot cake....yummy...my search continues for a great white scratch cake..until then its a doctored BC for me lol

It's not so much about a "healthy" piece of cake so much as wanting to know what is in things. I don't eat a lot of processed foods and if I was to go to a baker to order a cake I'd want a cake without propylene glycol and transfats and all that jazz.

I really really wish that the "mix' bakers woud stop saying that a box offers what a scratch cake cant. And that scratch cake taste heavy or like jiffy. NO thats how YOUR cake taste. You can achieve superior results from scratch if you know what the heck youre doing. It just takes some presision.

amen!

Yeah well, the actual intent of the original post was how to avoid judgement from others when you use a mix instead of baking from scratch.
The original post had to do with the judgement coming from customers, but there's a stigma from other bakers, too, it seems.

Personally, I'm into raw foods, I don't eat refined sugar (unless I'm testing recipes in which case, I have to build up to it or I get sick), and I try to eat as whole and natural as possible. And yet, I feel like the hippocrite of the century selling cake at all, much less selling artificially enhanced mix-cakes. *le sigh*.

The good part is, in January when I start my personal cake business, I'll be really low volume, which will be a welcome break from the 100 cakes we crap out per weekend at the bakery, which means I can spend more time putting together worthwhile, wholesome cakes that may not be healthy, but are at least REAL FOOD. I'm completely in agreement with you all about that. And that's why I'm excited to try out some of the recipes some of you have pm'd me. I really want my cake shop to be 100% in line with my ideals, and I'm kinda pissed that it isn't yet. I mean with the mixes and all.

As someone said, there's totally a market for slow food, organic cakes. People want that. I hope to be able to deliver.