Anyone Having Problems With Dh Cake Mix
Decorating By cakesondemand Updated 9 Mar 2007 , 10:24pm by Anna31
Ok. So I used the last of my french vanilla DH mixes for a birthday cake. Thank God that the lady ordered 1/2 white and 1/2 chocolate or no one would have eaten any cake. I make the chocolate from scratch. The DH cake looked fine, baking time took longer but it was a 3" deep pan. I used the tier receipe with jumbo eggs. It rose fine, no hump or sinking, so I thought it would be okay. I even sprayed the outside with simple syrup. I guess I didn't use enough because it was SUPER Dry. If the lady had not loved the decorating so much I think she would have asked for some of her money back.
Maybe I am just imagining things, but when I buy the super-cheap on sale DH mixes from Wal-Mart, they shrink and dip in the middle. When I buy them from the more up-scale grocery store near my house they work great! I wonder if Wal-Mart puts them on sale b/c they are getting old? I don't know. My husband tried to make my birthday cake for me and was so upset that it came out all distorted, but I assured him that it was just a bad DH mix. I will be trying the DH mixes for a large wedding shower this week, so I hope my theory is correct!
Coolmom - the reason for this may be that Wal-mart goes through more and has the newer (aka screwed up) mixes. The up-scale grocer probably buys less volume and may be pulling older (aka better) mixes from their warehouse.
I've found that adding one egg and one box of pudding to 3 mixes helps them bake more like they used to. It also reduces the amount of nasty thoughts directed towards the DH nitwits who decided to screw up a good thing.
Years ago I was told by DH that they don't market to bakeries and home bakers. They market to people baking a single box at a time and the mixes are geared for that instead of the large, multiple mix pans. Granted - that was a couple of owners ago, but they seem to still be dismissing us. Bet they'd feel different if we all switched to another brand for one month and they saw the hit their sales took. Unfortunately, my reputation has been built with DH mixes and that's the flavor my customers expect so I will continue to figure out fixes whenever they play with their formula. .
Just got this info from a friend. Perhaps it means that our DH troubles will soon be over and they are reverting back to the original formula (it doesn't say that, but let's hope). Of course that means using all the ones currently in my cabinets!
The news that Duncan Hines had reversed its 2005 decision to make its cake mixes dairy was seen as a victory for consumers clamoring for the pareve cake mixes. It also put a new focus on a category that retailers say has emerged as trendy new kosher product. Some consumers could hardly contain their excitement that they could once again have the Moist Deluxe Classic Yellow - the best selling cake mix in the country - and other consumer favorites such as Devils Food, Lemon Supreme and Butter Recipe Golden. According to the Orthodox Union, which certifies Duncan Hines, pareve production began in September and Duncan Hines has begun shipping product to stores. It should be in most locations by November and December, the company says. We are very excited to again offer Duncan Hines Moist Deluxe Cake Mixes as non-dairy pareve products, declared Chief Executive Officer Jeff Ansell. We are now able to ensure that our production facilities can produce dairy-free product with certainty. This is based on moving our dairy-based cakes to another production facility. We made this shift in production because we wanted to once again offer our long-time and valued pareve consumers non-dairy cake mixes. It was a difficult decision last year to change away from pareve. We heard both from consumers and trade customers and that is why we worked hard to make the move back to pareve, said Ansell. Successful companies make smart decisions, even if it means reversing a previous decision, declared Rabbi Menachem Genack, CEO of OU Kosher.
Yay! This is great new, indeed! I will now be checking my remaining boxes of DH that I've been avoiding to see if they have the "pareve" imprint on the boxes. Maybe THAT was the problem, not the Wilton endorsement?
Anyhow, where did this information come from? Where can I get a copy of the publication so I can keep it on hand? I'm hoping that this long and difficult nightmare may finally be coming to an end! Hooray for CakesbyEllen! Hooray for all of us!
Odessa
[quote="Kathyf"]
Years ago I was told by DH that they don't market to bakeries and home bakers. They market to people baking a single box at a time and the mixes are geared for that instead of the large, multiple mix pans. Granted - that was a couple of owners ago, but they seem to still be dismissing us. Bet they'd feel different if we all switched to another brand for one month and they saw the hit their sales took. Unfortunately, my reputation has been built with DH mixes and that's the flavor my customers expect so I will continue to figure out fixes whenever they play with their formula. .
I guess they underestimate the power of the little guy here. We ARE the general public in that many times we are baking one box at a time. We make cupcakes. We make small cakes. And whether or not we use multiple-box recipes/pans, we still buy their mixes in a grocery store like the little old lady down the street and the other soccer moms around the block! It just yanks my chain that they can DISMISS a group of people so readily because we don't fit their "consumer profile".
As an update, I did get my coupon for ONE free box of DH product, any product I choose. What a crock! This does NOT even begin to compensate me for the dozens of boxes of cake mix that have been destroyed because of this one shoddy business decision. It doesn't even come close to the hundreds and hundreds of eggs I've used, the gallons of oil, not to mention the gas and electric bills my family has incurred for having the oven turned on, or the water bills and dish soap I've purchased to wash my dishes! And where is my coupon for 2 weeks worth of napping/sleeping time? I KNOW I've stayed up very late more than once trying to make a DH mix work when it just wouldn't. It makes me wonder how those CEO's can sleep at night with their big, fat paychecks while they damage a perfectly good product their customers no longer wish to buy. Whatever would possess them to do such a stupid, stupid thing?????
It boggles the mind......................
Odessa
its to bad DH hasn't read this thread they would have known long ago that there was something wrong with the mix. Seems that some of use got the new mix and some not. Looking forward to being able to use it again thats all I use to use DH and swore by it until I lost 10 cakes in 1 day.
Hi, everybody i to just read all 13 pages of this due to my problems with DH. I always use the French Van. Not only have had all the problems that everybody else has had, but I also just noticed that they want you to use 2TBS of veg oil instead if the 1/3 cup that we use to always use. And the taste is awful. CakesByEllen I thank you for this info.I hope we see this ASAP. Where do I look for the pareve imprint at ?
I went to www.duncanhines.com again to voice some concerns and see if I could get any more info regarding the mixes. My email was responded with a statement that my concern would be answered within 2 days. I was not answered months ago when I had questions but if I am this time I will let you know.
Odessa,
I originally got the email from a friend of mine that has a child with dairy allergies. I must have deleted her email, but when I saw this thread, I did a google and found the following site with the information:
http://www.koshertoday.com/
Mistycakes - The OU simble is really a circle with a U inside it. Until you get used to looking for it, you probably miss it. I always did, until I had to start buying for parties that my friend's son would be attending. It's usually on the lower part of the box or bag. You could probably look in your pantry and find some right now. You might also see a triangle with a D in it. That means it has dairy. Check out any chips bags you have. Tortilla chips and pretzels are almost always OU.
You know, I got thinking this morning about the DH comment about how they don't make their mixes for bakers like us, that they are for the average person that makes one cake at a time, etc. Then why would Wilton want to put their endorsement on the box, because if you are the average person making a cake, you certainly aren't going to attempt to make your cakes look like Wilton's do. Before I learned the Wilton way, all I did was make one mix at a time, and open up a can of their icing and spread it around, might go so far to swirl the knife, but I never wanted or expected my cakes to come out looking like the Wilton's fancy cakes. Just a thought...why would you put it on there if you didn't think bakers like us would see it and buy it thinking that these were the mixes to help us make cakes like theirs!
OU-D symbol indicates:
The product is a Kosher dairy product (but not necessarily Kosher for Passover),
The product contains a dairy ingredient or a dairy derivative.
Alternatively, the product, while not containing dairy ingredients itself, was made on equipment also used for making dairy products.
Kosher laws do not permit a dairy food to eaten or cooked with meat or with foods made with meat ingredients.
Kosher laws dictate that if one has just eaten meat, one must wait a prescribed time before being allowed to eat a product marked OU-D.
An OU-D product may not be reheated on or with any equipment, pot, pan, dishes, cutlery that was used for meat.
An OU-D product that had been reheated on or with any equipment, pot, pan, dishes, cutlery that was used for meat, would possibly make both the product and the utensil not Kosher
WOW! That is strict. So do you guys think this is the old box or the new box?? Will the new kosher mixes just have OU?
I wrote Duncan Hines to ask how we would know what boxes were the "good" formula. Here is the answer:
Thank you for taking the time to contact us about the Kosher status of our Duncan Hines® products. In response to the many consumers who contacted us over the past year requesting that we go back to the prior formula, we
have changed the production location where we make some, to allow us to offer several cakes that are dairy free. The dairy free cakes have a pareve status and are identified by a U in a circle or a U in a circle Pareve on the label. Production on these items started in September and should be hitting the store shelves around November. However, during this
transition time we ask consumers to please check the ingredient statement for dairy ingredients and check the front of the package for Pareve status.
The cakes that will be dairy free are: Devil's Food, Yellow, Lemon Supreme, Butter Recipe Golden, Swiss Chocolate, Spice, Fudge Marble, Pineapple Supreme, Butter Recipe Fudge, German Chocolate, Red Velvet, and Dark Chocolate Fudge. There is no change to our brownie formulas at this
time.
Thank you for your support of our business. Please contact us again if we can be of assistance in the future.
Sincerely,
Teresa Madden
Consumer Services Representative
---------------------------------------------------------
I went to Walmart today and saw that there were some of both on the shelves. I noticed that the price was down to 82 cents so I guess they are trying to move the old stuff out! I don't know what I'm going to do because they didn't list French Vanilla as changed. BooHoo. This is the one I've had the most trouble with.... darn.
So this morning, I started making my final cake for course III. I'm making one layer strawberry and one layer classic white, then I'm going to torte them and alternate the layers. Well, I used DH for the strawberry layer and it just didnt turn out right. I added a box of pudding, and substituted some of the water for milk, but it still didnt turn out right. For the white layer I used Pillsbury and it came out excellent. Their white cake directions are different from DHs so I wasnt sure what was going to happen. One more interesting thing, I put the strawberry cake in the oven before the white cake and it wasnt done, whereas the white cake was.
This is what I used for the strawberry cake:
1 Box DH Strawberry Supreme
3 Large Eggs
1/3 Cup Milk
1 Cup Water
1/3 Cup Oil
1 small box of French Vanilla Pudding
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1 Cup of fresh strawberries
1 teaspoon of McCormick Strawberry Extract
For the white cake:
1 Box Pillsbury Classic White
5 Large Egg Whites
1 Cup Milk
1/3 Cup Water
1/3 Cup Oil
1 small Box French Vanilla Pudding
1 teaspoon of baking soda
Needless to say, the white cake rose perfectly straight above the pan with out baking strips. We wont discuss what the strawberry cake did.
okay I am a little confused...maybe I am not understanding this so could someone explain..
I have always used DH without any problems. I am not sure, do we WANT the mixes with the dairy, or no dairy? I looked and didnt see any symbols that were refered to, and the ingredients say that it contains milk. Is that the kind that is good, assuming you dont need it kosher? I am confused.
merissa, you WANT the Pareve (i.e., dairy-free) product. Supposedly, it's the one that works correctly. (I say with fingers tightly crossed ...)
Odessa
okay so I have the symbol on my boxes...this is the "good" box? It is supposed to be dairy free? It says on the ingredients "contains milk" I dont get it still. I keep re reading the past few pages. Forgive my ignorance, but I dont know a lot about kosher rules.
OK, call me ignorat also (Please don't I might cry ), Whic formula do I want and what am I looking for.
Yes to Dairy with OU D on package?
or
No to Dairy with OU D on package?
or
Yes to Dairy with just D on package?
or
No to Dairy with just D on package?
or
Yes to Dairy with nothing on packag?
OR!
No to Dairy with nothing on package?
And does anyone know if the French Vanilla DH mix was/is/or will be changed? Is the problem I am having because of something I did or because DH did infact change the mix?
I am so confused
The mix that we have been having trouble with that was changed earlier this year is marked OU-D. This has dairy. Dairy isn't necessarily the problem, but they changed the recipe.
Some mixes are being reverted to the old (Non-Dairy) formula marked OU.
French Vanilla was not on the list they sent me. I'm so sad because this the one I have been having trouble with. I don't know if it was ever dairy free but something has changed.
Here is the list again:
"The cakes that will be dairy free are: Devil's Food, Yellow, Lemon Supreme, Butter Recipe Golden, Swiss Chocolate, Spice, Fudge Marble, Pineapple Supreme, Butter Recipe Fudge, German Chocolate, Red Velvet, and Dark Chocolate Fudge. There is no change to our brownie formulas at this
time. "
Ok- so has anyone tried the "new" old formula yet??? So curious to see if it works like it used to!
The mix that we have been having trouble with that was changed earlier this year is marked OU-D. This has dairy. Dairy isn't necessarily the problem, but they changed the recipe.
Some mixes are being reverted to the old (Non-Dairy) formula marked OU.
French Vanilla was not on the list they sent me. I'm so sad because this the one I have been having trouble with. I don't know if it was ever dairy free but something has changed.
Here is the list again:
"The cakes that will be dairy free are: Devil's Food, Yellow, Lemon Supreme, Butter Recipe Golden, Swiss Chocolate, Spice, Fudge Marble, Pineapple Supreme, Butter Recipe Fudge, German Chocolate, Red Velvet, and Dark Chocolate Fudge. There is no change to our brownie formulas at this
time. "
Thanks for clearing that up. What kind of problems were you having with the French Vanilla? So far (fingers crossed) I am just having problems with it being dry. Like dirt dry. Maybe it turned out that way because I had to cook it longer to get the middle done.
Thanks for clearing that up. What kind of problems were you having with the French Vanilla? So far (fingers crossed) I am just having problems with it being dry. Like dirt dry. Maybe it turned out that way because I had to cook it longer to get the middle done.
It has lumps that have to be sifted. After it is baked, it has lots of holes in it. I is dry and doesn't rise well. I usually mix about 10 boxes at a time but it happens even when I mix one or two. I've tried adding about half Betty Crocker and that seems to help. I'm going to try some pudding and extra eggs... but I HATE having to "fix" it.
I have decided that I am DONE with duncan hines-the brand I have sworn by for years. I made a devils food-they now have lots of bubbles on the surface and sink in the middle. Also a white that was VERy dry and tasteless. I am switching....
Made a strawberry DH cake tonight...stuck to the pan, didn't rise on the edges, rose too high in the center, shrunk away from the sides...you get the idea! So, start all over again...hubby asks why? told him the cake looks like %#*^ and I would be ashamed for anyone to know I made THAT cake! He said he didn't see anything wrong with it...did I mention the giant whole in the top that I had to scrape out of the pan and put back in place?
I swear, either he has no conscience whatsoever or he must be blind! I definitely didn't want to start over, but I felt like I had no choice!
BTW...this was one of the older mixes I had on hand! I have been able to get my hands on several of the new boxes (OU), the ones with the U in a circle, with no "D" on the box! They work much better!!! This particular mix was the OU-D...bad choice!
I made my first two Betty Crocker cakes last week. One was French Vanilla the other Vanilla. Got great comments on that. I also bougt the plane white just incase. Then I was at HEB and the DH mixes were on sale. Well I searched and found the French Vanilla - U inside O with D next to it. Still confused as to what that means, but it also has the Wilton endorsement on the top of the box next to the "Use by date". Then I checked the rest of my left over DH Mixes and they two had the Wilton endorsement on them. Just not on the front of the box where it used to be easily seen by glansing at the package. Now you have to search for it.
What's up with that? And just what did I buy? New, New "old", with dairy, w/o dairy? Good or Bad? I have to make 24 cupcakes for a oyrld. I am going to use the Betty crocker mix. I am afraid of how dry they will turn out if I use the DH, and I don't feel like trial and error, I have strep with a 102 temp. Good thing this cake is for family only.
I recently made a DH marble cake and it was terrible...I always use DH and it looked fine when I took it out but then after it was cooled it had that spongy consistancy and when I cut it forget it!! Huge holes like someone stabbed it with a pencil...when I called she said I must of done something wrong!!!!I only cooked it 25min when it says 28 - 30...my oven is calibated and I even rechecked it!! So frustrating!!!
Here's my 2 cents on the DH topic: I always use DH--last time I bought Devil's food (on sale at Wal-Mart) and poured them in my mixer added my eggs and turned it on....not Devil's Food but Red Velvet---not what I wanted since I was planning on using a peanut butter filling (wouldn't that look gross)
Also: I too used to use the directions on the inside of the box for tiered cakes--if I'd known they were going to quit doing that I would've kept my last box!
Oh well! BTW, DH did send me coupons for free cake after the red velvet incident!
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