I have been decorating for about 6 months and I love it! I am going to be baking cakes for other people and hopefully starting a business soon. I have some cakes that I make from scratch but I didn't know if it was ethical or not to sometimes use cake mixes. I just wanted to know if everyone makes all of their cakes from scratch. Thanks

why would it be unethical to bake from a box? restaurants to do not do everything from scratch, are they unethical? they have pre-packaged ingredients. many big ethical bakeries do not bake from scratch, they use prepackaged mixes (not from the grocery store, but they buy them in bulk) so, to answer your question, i think mixes are great

There's nothing "unethical" about selling cakes made from a box mix unless you advertise yourself as a "scratch" baker. Many reputable bakeries use mixes. Do whatever you're best at and whatever your customers love.

I'm curious as to why you'd even think it was unethical? Did someone say something to you when you brought the topic up to them or something? I don't even know how the idea gets started that everything in a restaurant/bakery is made from scratch .... Sysco and GFS don't own big cornfields ... they own big warehouses stocked full of premade and premeasured food items.

I've been using mixes only for over 25 years.

Here's a thread that I saved that you'll find interesting. Not sure if the thead actually works or not.... I saved it in Word, so I'm cut-n-pasting from there:

http://forum.cakecentral.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&p=5797069#5797069

Post by a fellow CCâer, cariage, regarding bakery using cake mixes on Page 4 of thread....

we have a very prestigious bakery in our town. people just absolutely RAVE over this womans cakes. They are the creme de la creme of cakes around here, and none of the "country club set" would dream of having a cake made by anyone else. Well, a friend of mine got a job decorating cakes at this bakery. She called me on her second day of work and said "OH MY GOD you are never going to guess what this woman uses for her cakes". Yep you guessed it....box mixes!!!! and the cake mix doctor book. She buys all of her mixes at walmart. She sent my friend one day to Walmart to buy baskets full of mixes. she started her bakery out of her home using these recipes and once her business got so big, she was afraid to change.

I don't give a cr** what people say, make what is good, moist and delicious. My French Vanilla cake, which is the most popular, starts from a FV cake mix. I add melted butter and lots of other stuff but bottom line, it has a cake mix in it.

I have a really good Dr'd chocolate cake but it's a little thick and heavy on the bigger cakes so I started looking for a 'scratch' recipe...... everyone loved the box one better.

My pound cake is from my Grandma (no box) as is my carrot cake but sometimes I will simply doctor a cake mix and add vanilla or extract....and no one knows the difference!

My neighbor always ordered the FV from me and then saw all the boxes in my recycle bin one day... she had no idea they came from a box. About a week later on a Sunday night she comes to my door with a sad little cake and asked me what kind of a hex I had put on the cake mixes because hers didn't look or taste like mine! I think the 'doctoring' has a lot to do with it.

Unfortunately, the link no longer works.

If you're baking/decorating for pay; your first consideration should be providing what your customers want.

Cake mix and doctored cake mix recipes will always be perceived as more moist than scratch cakes:
(Properties of all the artificial ingredients.)

http://en.allexperts.com/q/Desserts-747/BROWNIES.htm

Using a commercial base (cake mix) is the basis of Speed-Scratch Baking:

http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-223341-.html

Boxed vs. Scratch Cakes:
(This is a very common question.)

http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-199341-.html

http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-153611-.html

http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-117381-.html

http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-115431-.html

http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-56846-.html

http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-49415-.html

http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-52482-.html

http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-48676-.html

http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-43557-.html

http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-32614-.html

http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-26625-.html

http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-22159-.html

http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-7170-.html

http://forum.cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-7228-.html

HTH

I use mixes. I've tried a few recipes, and they are never as good to me as the mixes are. In fact, I have a friend who is a scratch baker, and, to be honest, I have never tasted anything she baked that I liked. Her cakes are dry. People tell me mine are so light and fluffy............ I love them, too.

I actually did get a comment. I brought a cake into work for a potluck. Everyone always loves my cakes and a coworker asked if they were from scratch. This particular cake was a modified one from a box. She indicated that if I was planning on charging people for my cakes, as I've talked about at work before, that people would expect that they would be getting cakes made from scratch and that she could tell the different between boxed cakes because they have an after taste. A couple other people agreed with her. I thought I would ask since I don't have any friends around here who decorate. Thanks for the advice though! It makes me feel a lot better.

beth, while it IS true that "some" people can tell the diff between scratch and box, I would say that a lot of them (not sure if I can use the word "most" or not) can't. I believe it all depends on what you grew up with and what you're used to.

Like the brides and brides' moms who sit at my table and swoon over my "homemade" cakes, with statements of "Nothing tastes like a scratch cake!!" Yeah .... right!!!

I would wonder if this same person goes into any pizza place and is shocked to see canned tomato sauce in there .... bagged cheese ..... presliced pepperoni. Does she go into any restaurant and stomp out when she sees the delectible (sp?) dessert she just ordered came out of a box from their freezer? How do I know? Because Sysco and GFS wouldn't stock so dang many of htem if they were only selling them to housewives!

Where in the world do people get these ideas????

Debi - You are so right! There is a wonderful, high-end restaurant where I live which uses a lot of local ingredients. Well, I went to a Sysco show one day and the next day get a newsletter from this resaurant talking about some of the new desserts they were going to feature - and it was all the same things I had tasted at the Sysco show! I had just assumed that if they didn't actually make cakes themselves, they sourced it from a local bakery, but no - they were buying frozen cakes from Sysco (which by the way, were very fancy and delicious)