Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes
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But then the product would cost more and people would immediately go to whatever other brand was available out of spite or budget consciousness.
Margarine? I didn’t know people still used that.
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The products already cost more, regardless, and they HAVE sent me to a different brand in a different store that didn’t change sizes. The other one costs more than the 12oz., but it less per pound (something like $1.59 for 12oz or $1.99 for 16oz. – you get the idea). Pre-COVID, these would regularly go on sale for $.99 a pound.
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For me it is oil and not margarine, just like the example says. You will find lots of kosher recipes do not use butter because you can’t eat dairy with meat – and even if you aren’t eating meat, you still need dairy from a kosher animal. Cheese can’t have animal rennet. There are lots of rules. Anyway, it is easier to skip butter for anything that might get eaten with meat.
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I was making a galette for the first time and while I was going over the epic saga that is making your own puff pastry I said, “fuck it, I’ll just buy some from the freezer section at the store”. It came out great and I saved 3 hours of my life.
Same only with Pasteis De Nata:
Pastéis de nata from the Big Green Egg
Craving pastéis de nata? No need to buy them when you can bake this sweet Portuguese delicacy yourself using this recipe on your Big Green Egg.
Big Green Egg (www.biggreenegg.eu)
My problem: There are different puff pastries out there and so I made the recipe THREE TIMES to figure out the best one to use.
Spoiler - The most expensive one.
Dufour.
PUFF PASTRY DOUGH - Dufour Pastry Kitchens
Dufour's puff pastry is the epitome of fine dough—crisp, buttery, and flaky, perfect for both savory and sweet creations.
Dufour Pastry Kitchens (dufourpastrykitchens.com)
Here’s the difference:
“first enclosing a “butter block” in the dough”
Compared with:
Frozen Sheets Pastry Dough - Pepperidge Farm
When you start with Pepperidge Farm Puff Pastry, you can create extraordinary dishes, both savory and sweet. Let your imagination take you to delicious places! Each Puff Pastry sheet is made up of many delicate layers, each one essential to creating its supremely light, airy texture. Sheets are ready to be shaped, filled and baked. […]
Pepperidge Farm (www.pepperidgefarm.com)
“VEGETABLE OILS (PALM, SOYBEAN, HYDROGENATED COTTONSEED)”
Store brand is the same.
None of them were AWFUL, just the Dufour is head and shoulders above the others, and 4x the price.
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The products already cost more, regardless, and they HAVE sent me to a different brand in a different store that didn’t change sizes. The other one costs more than the 12oz., but it less per pound (something like $1.59 for 12oz or $1.99 for 16oz. – you get the idea). Pre-COVID, these would regularly go on sale for $.99 a pound.
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For me it is oil and not margarine, just like the example says. You will find lots of kosher recipes do not use butter because you can’t eat dairy with meat – and even if you aren’t eating meat, you still need dairy from a kosher animal. Cheese can’t have animal rennet. There are lots of rules. Anyway, it is easier to skip butter for anything that might get eaten with meat.
I figured the no butter on my own. But I would take oil over margarine almost any day of the week.
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This makes me wonder if a quarter cup of butter was ever less than half of a whole stick…
That’s an American thing. In most of the world butter comes in ~half pound units. So half a stick would be half a cup. Except Australia which 500 gram blocks. America has been 1/4 pound units since 1800s but didn’t move to the stick shape until the 1950s.
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I’ve shared my grandmothers recipe before, worth sharing again. Caution: Makes a metric fuckton of pancakes. Make for multiple people. You cannot eat this many pancakes.
1 Qt. Buttermilk
2 TBS Baking Soda
1 TBS Salt
4 Cups Flour
2 TBS Baking Powder
1 Pkg Dry Yeast
1/4 C. Oil
6 Eggs
1 cup of milk the next morning.Put 1 quart buttermilk in large bowl and add 2 TBS Baking SODA and 1 TBS Salt.
Mix 4 cups of flour with 2 TBS Baking POWDER, stir this mixture into the buttermilk.
Don’t mix up the SODA with the POWDER. You might not think it will make a difference, it does.
Add one package of dry yeast, 1/4 cup oil. Mix.
Whip 6 eggs till foamy, fold in mixture. Do not use electric mixer, use mixer tine by hand.
Pour batter into large pitcher or bowl. Cover with foil. Refrigerate overnight.
The next morning put a cup of milk in the pitcher to thin the batter.
Heat pan until hot. Add 3 TBS or so of oil, when water droplets sizzle in the pan it’s ready.
Cook pancakes in 2s or 3s. When the tops are covered in steam-holes then it’s ready to flip. 2 to 3 minutes or so. Can be as fast as 1 minute. Do not turn your back or they will burn.
Lasts 10 days to 2 weeks in fridge. Yeast will turn black over time, this is normal. Stir batter before use.
Baking powder and yeast. They weren’t taking any chances. Did she work in a kitchen of lumberjacks?
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Cooking freehanded can work. Cooking is art. Baking, on the other hand, is science. Every ingredient must be measured precisely, or you’ll get seriously funny results. And often on the bad side of funny.
Once you figure out the science you can even freehand baking. Salt, flour, water yeast. Got a flour with more protein? Up the water and decrease the salt a little. Trying to make bread out of cake flour? Decrease the water a touch. Know what your target hydration level is for a bread type and you can pretty much wing the rest. Can’t do a double rise today? Do a slow rise in the fridge overnight. Want a slightly thicker crust? Add more salt. Baking has a lot of potential for freeform once you figure out the mechanics behind what goes into a recipe.
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I stock three different protein levels in my kitchen. Cake flour is used up in my Ukrainian paprika chicken and dumplings recipe. I never make cakes.
I had not heard of that one. Thank you for something to research!
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How do they distinguish between those flours in the US? Here we have three main grades: 405, 550, and 1070, denoting low to high protein wheat flour.
Usually percentage of the flour that is protein. It is marked on the bag as well as usually marketed as pastry, cake, bread, all purpose, high gluten for like bagels and pretzels, and then it is up to the grind for super fine flour for pizza would want high protein to make the gluten but finely ground.
but either way it is by percentage on the side of the sack.
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Baking powder and yeast. They weren’t taking any chances. Did she work in a kitchen of lumberjacks?
You haven’t met my family.
The hard part is letting the batter sit overnight that first night!
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Grandma grew up in the 80s eating microwave dinners. She never learned to cook.
Your grandma maybe
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Stuff like that is available to buy at places like bulk barn. You can buy by weight or volume there.
Never heard of the place around here, but I like the thought. Buying things for odd amounts like to top up a spice jar without having a separate large container.
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White cake mix is easy though:
2¾ cups cake flour
1½ cups granulated sugar
4 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon fine salt, sea salt or himalayan
4 tablespoons softened unsalted butterIn a large mixing bowl, whisk together the flour, sugar, baking powder and salt.
Then use a pastry blender to cut the butter into the dry ingredients. Blend until the butter is not longer detectable and the mix is a fine crumb.
Store in an airtight container and refrigerate until ready to use.
Alternately, skip the butter step until just before use. No need to refrigerate then.
Yeah, which is the real way to go. Sub-recipies end up screwing up my flows at times, ‘self-rising’ flour is another thing that I don’t keep around premade and have to stop and make separate.
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That’s an American thing. In most of the world butter comes in ~half pound units. So half a stick would be half a cup. Except Australia which 500 gram blocks. America has been 1/4 pound units since 1800s but didn’t move to the stick shape until the 1950s.
i can assure you most of the world does not measure butter in pounds, we have 500g blocks here in sweden as well and i’d expect that to be the european standard at least.
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During the previous round of shirkflation I warned people about knowing what year a recipe was from because “a can” means something different in 2004 than in 2010. And now it means something different again in 2025.
Now boxes are getting the shrink treatment too.
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.bestiver.se/post/618032
Great comment thread here! Just found this book…kind if a game-changer for me…
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My favourite is “one cup of spinach”.
If you cook a cup of spinach you gonna be left a single spinach leaf when it’s done lol. Spinach follows no rules.
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Once you figure out the science you can even freehand baking. Salt, flour, water yeast. Got a flour with more protein? Up the water and decrease the salt a little. Trying to make bread out of cake flour? Decrease the water a touch. Know what your target hydration level is for a bread type and you can pretty much wing the rest. Can’t do a double rise today? Do a slow rise in the fridge overnight. Want a slightly thicker crust? Add more salt. Baking has a lot of potential for freeform once you figure out the mechanics behind what goes into a recipe.
I’ve seen recipes that are based around the water content (I.e. put X ml of water and add flour until shaggy) so your comment makes a lot of sense.
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Great comment thread here! Just found this book…kind if a game-changer for me…
That’s on my wish list.
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i can assure you most of the world does not measure butter in pounds, we have 500g blocks here in sweden as well and i’d expect that to be the european standard at least.
The ~ was to indicate that it’s not actually that amount but close to that amount and the difference being the rounding error between metric and imperial
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Your grandma maybe
The average grandma. My grandma is 90 and grew up in a very different world.
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Great comment thread here! Just found this book…kind if a game-changer for me…
Thank you for sharing, was just thinking there needed to be some literature on simple cooking ratios. Looking forward to giving it a read
