Betty Crocker broke recipes by shrinking boxes
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Cake mixes use cake flour which is a super low protein flour great for cakes. Pastry flour likewise is a lower protein percentage wise. Bread flour is like 12%, AP is around 10 or 11% protein by weight. Cake flour is like 8% which is great for cake but limited.
So the boxed cake mixes are pre-mixed with leaveners like baking powder and soda but they are a way to buy not too much cake flour, as well.
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.
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On the flip side you get goofy things like this where you are supposed to use a specific amount of something that so far as I know you would have to buy as a pre-made mix. Either that or start a separate recipe to make you own cake mix.
Yeah, that’s not a recipe I’m ever using.
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On the flip side you get goofy things like this where you are supposed to use a specific amount of something that so far as I know you would have to buy as a pre-made mix. Either that or start a separate recipe to make you own cake mix.
Stuff like that is available to buy at places like bulk barn. You can buy by weight or volume there.
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While this is true, Betty Crocker is shooting themselves in the foot with this.
Back in the day having a recipe for a specific box made cooking easier and locked people into one brand of ingredients.
This move is undoing a lot of the marketing they did back in the 40s and 50s
Yeah they’re really burning that 1940s marketing asset
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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
Before this, I’d been complaining about frozen vegetables for a while now. I have several soup/casserole/savory-pie type recpies that all call for frozen vegetables by the pound (ex: Defrost 1lb. broccoli and 1lb. cauliflower). Now all the veg comes in 12oz bags instead of 16oz, and I don’t want to make 3/4 the food, I want the WHOLE recipe – and I don’t want a bunch of half-used bags in the freezer.
Messing with cake mixes is an even bigger problem for me. On the rare occasion I make a cake, it is either homemade carrot cake or from a box because I all my attempts to make a decent regular cake (chocolate, angel food, or whatever) have been too dry, too crumbly or otherwise inferior. I guess Betty Crocker just doesn’t want my money. S’alright. I like my carrot cake and its surely more healthy.
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At least if I bought the 20 ounce bag, that’s divisible by 4, and taking out 12, leaves 8… but still…
Baking shouldn’t start with a Tower of Hanoi puzzle.
I’d cry if I had to tower of hanoi every time I started up my stand mixer!
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This just reminds me of recipes that are like “how to make homemade soft pretzel. step 1, buy pretzel dough”. I get that some boxed mixes are just pre measured ingredients, so why not learn the ratios and make them yourself?
I know for cake mixes, at least, they add some chemicals that improve the texture and moisture retention of the cake. It’s stuff you’d never find in the baking isle, but it improves the resulting cake so much that many professional cake bakers just use the box mix. They have access to the same food suppliers and would just end up duplicating the work of giant conglomerates research.
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“we can’t have pancakes because I didn’t buy any mix” “What? Mix? You know you can just make that stuff on your own. Right?”
We have reached a point where, despite celebrity chefs existing, some people have zero idea that you can make stuff without a can of this, a block of cream cheese, a box of that and a bottle of this. They don’t know the first thing about cooking. To them pretzels are something you buy from someone else and sometimes you have to bake them yourself.
Cream cheese? Does that belong in that list?
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This just reminds me of recipes that are like “how to make homemade soft pretzel. step 1, buy pretzel dough”. I get that some boxed mixes are just pre measured ingredients, so why not learn the ratios and make them yourself?
But pretzles are harder than average because you need to boil them in a lye solution and who has lye hanging around these days? Bagels are only slightly easier because their boil doesn’t require lye.
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I had a chicken casserole recipe and it called for “a can of cream of chicken soup”. Ok, this soup comes in the normal, single serving size and the jumbo “cooking for a family” size. It made the recipe unusable.
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“we can’t have pancakes because I didn’t buy any mix” “What? Mix? You know you can just make that stuff on your own. Right?”
We have reached a point where, despite celebrity chefs existing, some people have zero idea that you can make stuff without a can of this, a block of cream cheese, a box of that and a bottle of this. They don’t know the first thing about cooking. To them pretzels are something you buy from someone else and sometimes you have to bake them yourself.
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.
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Cream cheese? Does that belong in that list?
Have you seen people adding it to every Mexican or Italian slow cooker recipe?
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But pretzles are harder than average because you need to boil them in a lye solution and who has lye hanging around these days? Bagels are only slightly easier because their boil doesn’t require lye.
I made soft sourdough pretzels this week with just baking soda and brown sugar and they turned out great!
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Guess everyone learns this at some point. I just skip any recipe that doesn’t give me volume or weight for everything. Otherwise, the chance of messing up the recipe is too high.
You must do some high stakes cooking. I always tweak recipes, sometimes even if I’ve never made it before.
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I made soft sourdough pretzels this week with just baking soda and brown sugar and they turned out great!
Cool! Not traditional, but it’s an alaklai so I’m sure it’s a more practical way than hunting down lye at the grocery store.
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You must do some high stakes cooking. I always tweak recipes, sometimes even if I’ve never made it before.
Sometimes it doesn’t matter much, sometimes it does. There are probably some recipes I’d give a go. But really, it doesn’t actually come up all that often. I think a lot of people have converted cans in old recipes to actual measurements before posting online.
My family doesn’t really have any recipes they passed down. Pretty sure they did everything by feel.
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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.
Phyllo dough and puff pastry are things I will totally cheat on. And if I’m turning leftovers and my frequent surplus of eggs into quiche I will cheat with a frozen pie crust. Even Alton Brown says that last one is allowed.
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Before this, I’d been complaining about frozen vegetables for a while now. I have several soup/casserole/savory-pie type recpies that all call for frozen vegetables by the pound (ex: Defrost 1lb. broccoli and 1lb. cauliflower). Now all the veg comes in 12oz bags instead of 16oz, and I don’t want to make 3/4 the food, I want the WHOLE recipe – and I don’t want a bunch of half-used bags in the freezer.
Messing with cake mixes is an even bigger problem for me. On the rare occasion I make a cake, it is either homemade carrot cake or from a box because I all my attempts to make a decent regular cake (chocolate, angel food, or whatever) have been too dry, too crumbly or otherwise inferior. I guess Betty Crocker just doesn’t want my money. S’alright. I like my carrot cake and its surely more healthy.
I’d look to see if there is a different veg I could add to fill out the quarter pound. Like maybe some raw carrots could be chopped and added to the cauliflower And if they’re cut to the right size they’ll cook them the same amount of time.
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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
Recipes that don’t specify things in grams and millilitres can go screw.
“Now add a traditional american furlong of bushel sauce to the 25 ounce pot until it bubbles up by five and a smidge horse hands” … yeah, no
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Recipes that don’t specify things in grams and millilitres can go screw.
“Now add a traditional american furlong of bushel sauce to the 25 ounce pot until it bubbles up by five and a smidge horse hands” … yeah, no
I didn’t learn to measure anything until I was 30. I just cooked by vibes. My girlfriend started getting really irritated that I would make something and she would never have it again. Something like it? Sure. But it? No. So I started actually learning how to cook and know how much was going in .
