I forgot to add that Martha Stewart recipes have a reputation in the baking world of being *ahem* not too accurate. In other words, it might not be you, it could be the recipe you were using.

I use a poundcake recipe that I developed and it works wonderfully. It is moist, light with a fine crumb, and tastes very good. I was recently given a wonderful compliment, in that my cake is better than the pastor's wife cakes. I do freeze it and it locks in the moisture and comes just as if it had not been frozen.

But, as memphis8 has pointed out it is all about preference and most people do not know all the details concerning cake. They just want it to taste and look amazing. So, if you do that with a pure scratch, or doctored cake then so be it.

I do a lot of taste tests with family and co-workers only because I am a scratch baker and it has been a very painstaking process. But, that's the OCD in me that drives me.

I am still looking for a yellow butter cake outside of my poundcake recipe. I will probably work on a butter/oil combo.(butter flavored extract doesn't do it for me).

On another note I recently tried a chocolate cake that is on the Martha Stewart website and it is phenomenal. People that don't like chocolate cake LOVE IT!!!! It is everything light, moist, chocolatey. I used Ghirardelli cocoa and Nielsen Massey vanilla, and subbed the flour for the equivalent amount of cake flour.

So, try a poundcake recipe with some leavening it - baking powder, and salt this will produce a nice cake.

GOOD LUCK!!!!!



cakeymom

Hi!!
I am making my first wedding cake this coming Sunday. I have been baking for a long while though...
I made the bride taste the WASC and a cake made straight from the box. She said she liked the boxed one...So why bother, boxed cake it will be.
Maybe you should try to make her sample a WASC and the boxed and see what she says!

Did you do a tasting for this bride? I do tastings for all of mine, and for the first few I did both scratch and boxed (doctored) mix. I kept my opinion out of the discussions - and hands down, the doctored mix was picked EVERYTIME. Not once in a while, EVERYTIME. I won't get into the debate with everyone, I just know what works for me - and it was after many trials.....not my decisions, the customers.

What really sealed the deal for me was also doing a petri dish test - put a piece of scratch cake in the medium and a piece of doctored cake mix cake in another and watch and see what grows what and how soon. That little test alone is what I use as my arguement for doing the doctored cake mix.....yep, give me the preservatives every time thank you.

If there is not an allergy issue - I would not hesitate to do the doctored mix. Works perfectly everytime and gets rave reviews.

Good luck, you can do this!

First I want to say Good Luck! Wedding cakes are stressful enough without having to worry about your recipes.

I use both scratch and the WASC. I was kinda worried to use all scratch because I've had some fail me, but I believe I've found the scratch recipes that work for me (as mentioned above the Sylvia Weinstock Classic Yellow and the Double Chocolate from epicurious) These scratch recipes have not failed me yet (okay...one time when I got distracted and left it in the oven way too long) While I like the WASC, I love these scratch recipes! To answer your question...I can also tell when a cake is from a mix. If I was in your situation, I think I would bake, bake and bake to test out some recipes that you like and if all else fails, I would be honest with the bride. Do you know the reasons why she wanted scratch? Could she be allergic to something in a mix?

And, because of CC, I now freeze all my cakes overnight (WASC and Scratch) and I've gotten lots of comments on my moist cakes since.

Good Luck and charge more next time

The Cake Bible is a good book for theory and for icings but as for cake--it has a reputation among pastry chefs for being tempermental at best.

The Doubleday recipe I printed is killer.
Sylvia Weinstock's yellow cake recipe is killer.

The recipe on the back of the Hershey can is perfect for chocolate cake. But for marbling it would be a lighter batter than the other two I listed so...

from http://chemistry.about.com/od/chemistryfaqs/f/whatchemical.htm

Duncan Hines white cake mix has no preservatives.

Every substance we use has an additive.
I mean even eggs have been washed.

So we all gotta draw our own lines.

Good luck with the final product! And thank you to the ladies for their yellow cake recipe recommendations -- I've been looking for a good one. I am not a fan of mixes (or doctored up mixes); I don't like the taste, texture or color.

My absolute favorite chocolate cake is one of the Barefoot Contessa's. It uses buttermilk, and you add the wet ingredients to the dry (instead of vice versa). Be very careful not to overmix it, since that seems to create problems, based on some of the reviews it has gotten. http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/ina-garten/beattys-chocolate-cake-recipe/index.html

You could also go to epicurious.com and look up cake recipes. I like that site because it has user ratings for the recipes, so if a recipe stinks you'll be able to avoid even bothering with it.

Wow,

Everyone has been so helpful, thanks a bunch.
I think I'm going to spend the weekend baking my butt off, I'm determined to pull this off.

And yess I have learnt a valuble lesson.

Thanks again everyone.

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Double-Chocolate-Layer-Cake-101275

Here ya go jsweetspot! Just google "double chocolate cake", it was the first on the result list.

For your chocolate layer I recommend a recipe I've used for years and just made a layer cake with filling this week for a coworker of my husband. Go find a can of Hershey's Cocoa- there's a recipe on the back of it for a Deep Dark Chocolate cake. It's an oil based scratch cake so like K8 said- it was fine in the fridge for me. I had to crumb coat it and fridge overnight before ganaching and it was moist and wonderful- everyone loved it- it did not dry out. I used cake flour this time and it came out wonderful. But I also agree with K8 - do what YOU have to do. This was the first cake I made to sell and I so didn't make a profit but that isn't b/c it was scratch- alot of other factors. I filled it with the frosting recipe on the back of the can also and crumb coated it with that icing b/f ganaching. Also....I use Ghiradelli Cocoa instead of the Hershey's and it's not too much more $ and makes a difference to me. Good luck to you!!!

K8 thanks for the advice on the butter vs. oil cake in the fridge- I just did a white butter cake recipe from wilton a while back- tasted good when I was filling it at room temp- by morning in the fridge it had gone dry. Was unsure why it wouldn't bounce back once it was room temp. You answered that for me.

Here is an interesting blog entry from Warren Brown (of The Food Network's Sugar Rush) about Box Cake vs Cakes from Scratch.

Reading it made me a little sad, Warren sounds so dejected. He doesn't give a lot of background info in the blog entry, but apparently there was a blind taste test going on in Washington DC and a lot of people preferred the cupcakes made from box mixes over his scratch version.


http://blog.cakelove.com/?p=122

I'm preparing to launch my business in the next month so this week I did a tasting with friends and members of my local community to see which recipes I would adopt. I gave each of them four slices of white cake with different fillings and a survey to fill out. Three of the cakes were from scratch and one from a box. My cake decorating friends and I thought that the scratch cakes were very moist and tasty, but overwhelmingly everyone else preferred the box cake. I was actually really shocked and disappointed.

Has anyone tried mixing a scratch batch with a box mix batch. I've done that several times for 3D cakes I've made and it really brings the best of both worlds. I may try that in my business. I just feel the pure box mix cakes are two fluffy and wouldn't hold up to the heaviness of a fondant cake. Does anyone use the box mix for multi-tiered fondant cakes for primarily for buttercream covered cakes.

Pink...that is basically what WASC is. Search WASC in the recipes...I have tried it, helped out in a pinch once or twice, especially ona huge freebie cake!

Thanks Jamie. I kept seeing WASC but didn't understand what it was. I'm new to the site and have a lot to learn about the lingo

You're so funny! I've done everything wrong at least once ~~ takes me a while to catch on ~~ but being almost a fossil does have it's occasional perk.

BTW--the whipped cream thing was from egullet--a bunch of cake-buddy pastry chef types over there finally convinced me. I mean what caker doesn't love the idea of stabilizing something huh.

I mean think about it--the stuff turns to freaking butter if you're not careful right? So there has to be a point where it will be plenty stable and not weep and no gelatine is needed.

However, if you do wanna use gelatine, use piping gel.

Hey Loucinda... I'm still dying to hear about the scientific process here...

I'm thinking the entire country could benefit from a microbiology class (or two). Most bacteria in this world are pretty harmless to humans. Most bacteria can't survive once consumed... lack of oxygen kills them off readily. Without bacteria... we would die. We need e. coli to survive... it lives in our intestines at all times helping us metabolize vitamins. You would have to live without beloved things like yogurt, cheese and sour cream if there were no bacteria. If you were to rid your skin of the billions of beneficial bacterial colonies that inhabit it you would leave yourself open to infection from a wide variety of more harmful bacteria. Bacteria covers pretty much everything on this planet every minute of everyday. Bacteria were the first organisms here... and they'll be here long after we are gone. Only in this country do you find this mass hysteria about bacteria. Yes... be safe when preparing foods. Wash your hands to thwart contamination via the fecal oral route... sanatize your equipment and work areas... but to do your own science experiments with no real method behind it and call it earth shattering proof that mix cakes are SO much safer than scratch cake... very "Chicken Little" to say the least.

I'll happily accept your findings if they were indeed done in a lab under controlled circumstances and you actually isolated and classified your findings and showed a marked increase in detrimental bacteria, but if you just put some cake in some agar and watched what happened... that's laughable.

I have to add to the butter cakes in the fridge discussion that I put scratch butter cakes in the fridge all the time, and I use them for tasting appointments. I don't have trouble with them being dry after they get to room temp. If they're cold when served they will feel denser, but once they warm up they're fine.

If you leave any baked good in the fridge too long they'll get the moisture drawn out of them, but just for a day or so is no big deal.

Nope, no lab, sorry. Just my kitchen. It was enough for me - you can do yours however you want to scientific words and all! I apologize for not being scientific enough for you - I did this myself to see the results AFTER reading about another person on here doing (this has been several years ago) I wanted to see for myself how it turned out.

I also did the tasting thing with the brides with the scratch and doctored mix - doctored mix won hands down each time.

I am not trying to be a scientist or tell anyone how to do their own thing, these are things I did myself through trial and error. I do not try to use fancy words or belittle anyone for their choices.

Yes I grant you that the frige pulls the moisture out.
I'm not focusing on cakes that are not moist.
My focus is oil based versus butter based.

Yes they are still moist when they return to room temp--but the extra denseness is a factor on the mouthfeel after chilling. And I've experienced it with butter based cakes and not oil based cakes.

I'm just saying that the butter based ones need a little heat to relax back to it's pre-chilled texture. Moistness remains the same, but people in general will describe this sensation as 'dry'.

All I'm saying is test it for yourself. Butter stays more solid than soft in an air conditioned room when it's coming from a straight chill. It seems to do the same after it's baked in a cake. Does for me.

Wrap them well and leave a slice out of the frige--and then get a slice back to room temp and taste the difference. I can see where some people will call that dry by comparison.

Loucinda:

Thank you for sharing the results of your experiment. Having preservatives in food is a choice, and it is your right to make that choice.

As a professional baker, I prefer (as does my customer base) to use "from scratch" baking. And yes, that includes flour without added elements (King Arthur). And yes, I grow my own fruit. And yes, my eggs are from a local, free-range farm.

To each her own.

What's important is disclosing what you use to make your cakes, and, if asked, why. For the OP of this thread, and the other thread in which you quoted my comments, my advice remains the same: choose as you wish, but please share the full story with your customer base.

The customer has a right to know, and we each cater to a different market!